The Lapp Drum
The Lapp drum, the sacred drum of the Sami noaidi or shaman, made of a frame of pine with a reindeer-skin head painted with figures in alder-bark juice. The drum was beaten for divination, and the noaidi sought answers in the drumming while its figures of sun, gods, reindeer, and man mirrored the Sami cosmos; a pointer or ring moving across the painted skin gave the answer to the question asked. Many drums were confiscated by missionaries in the 17th-18th centuries and burned or sent to collections, so that only a few dozen survive in museums, each one an irreplaceable map of the old belief. T