“BURNING PELTS” – BROWN BEAR SKINS IN THE IRON AGE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL (1–1300 AD) BURIALS IN SOUTH-EASTERN FENNOSCANDIA

Abstract

This paper deals with the use of brown bear (Ursus arctos) skins in the Iron Age and Early Medieval death rituals in south-eastern Fennoscandia. In this area, the practice of wrapping bodies in bear skins endured for over 1,000 years, starting in the Roman Iron Age in south-western Finland and ending with the Medieval Age inhumation burials in the Karelian Isthmus. The wrapping of bodies in predator skins is hypothesized by the numbers of 3rd phalanges (i.e. claws) which have been found in burials, especially in cremation cemeteries under level ground (400/600-1000 AD). Firstly, the role of the bear was studied by analysing bear skin remains, specifically the 3rd phalanges and bear hairs, which have been found in burials, and secondly finds and their find contexts were analysed in terms of references made to them in Finno-Karelian Kalevala-metric poetry. The results stress the role of bear skins in constructing the identity of the deceased as a warrior and as an ancestor. The concept of a warrior as a predator is widely known among Eurasian populations. In south-eastern Fennoscandia the distribution and find contexts indicate that this ritual was adopted mainly from the Germanic cultural sphere. Introduction The practice of using animal skins in funeral rites as coverings or shrouds was a worldwide phenomenon that lasted for millennia in Eurasia (e.g., Douny & Harris 2014; Harris 2014; Koryakova & Epimakhov 2007, 100). In Finland, this ritual could have been part of some Neolithic inhumation burials, where the shape of some grave pits suggests the use of skins as stretchers or wrappings (Ayrapaa 1931; Torvinen 1979). The best preserved archaeological evidence was deposited in the Late Iron Age inhumation burials, where cow, bear, and especially cervid skins were commonly used to wrap the body (Kirkinen 2015). In the Iron Age cremation burials, the remains of predator claws have been interpreted to indicate the cremating of skins along with the bodies (e.g., Mantyla-Asplund & Stora 2010, 62; Petre 1980; Schonfelder 1994). In this paper, the Iron Age tradition of cremating brown bear (Ursus arctos) skins has been analysed by combining archaeological data with folklore evidence and ethnographical sources. The aim is to identify the origins and meaning of the phenomenon. The studied zooarchaeological evidence, i.e. the 3rd phalanges and hairs of a bear, comes from the major Iron Age cemetery areas in south-eastern Fennoscandia: southern, eastern, and western Finland, and the Karelian Isthmus. In this area, the practice of wrapping bodies in bear skins extended over a 1,000-year period, starting in the Roman Iron Age in south-western Finland (Kivikoski 1965) and ending with the Medieval Age inhumation burials in the east (Kirkinen 2015). The present archaeological material stresses the use of bear skins in Europe that originated in Scandinavia and in Central Europe, specifically in Germany and the Czech Republic in the east to the British Isles in the west, and which practice hypothetically spread first to the western parts of Finland from Scandinavia (Mohl 1978; Petre 1980; Schonfelder 1994; Gustavsson et al. 2014; for the Estonian material, see Jonuks 2009, 281). The wrapping of bodies in bear skins was, however, a wider phenomenon, as skin remains have been discovered, for instance, from North American shamanic burials (Russell 2012, 140, and cited literature) and from historical Sami cemeteries (Holmberg 1915, 16; Korhonen 1982b, 109). The burning of skins, in any case, represented a new practice in an area in which the roots of the human-bear relationship were located in circumpolar bear ceremonialism. In this ancient tradition, the bear was considered to be the King of the Forest, a holy animal, and a kind of human being, the killing of which was strictly ritualized (Krohn 1915/2008, 146 ff.; Hallowell 1926; Pentikainen 2007; Sarmela 2009, 80 ff.; Siikala 2012, 380 f. …