Goahti
mainly presaging death.
Animal Omens
Miedus, which meant a prey that was caught in an unusual or unexpected way, often too easily, or an excessively fine specimen of an animal, was a certain sign of death.
The idea behind the concept of miedus can be taken to mean that life should not be too easy; excessive good fortune meant a change in the normal order of things, which in the end could not have favorable consequences.
Many birds were used as omens. It was said that if a woodpecker flew and called out in front of a person, a relative of the latter would die, and if it flew behind the person, he or she would die. The cuckoo was considered a particularly evil bird and a harbinger of death. In the Finnish dialect of Lapland it was called korttolintu, which means "the bird of ill omen".
People believed that if a person heard a cuckoo call for the first time in the spring before he or she had had anything to eat in the morning, it augured certain death during that year. This belief was a strong one, and it was taken so seriously that many Sámis always kept a snack under their pillows.
There was a similar belief about the arctic loon, the swan, the goose, the great tit and some other birds. The cuckoo's call was also used for calculating the years of life a person had left.
The idea of a bird of ill omen recalls the birds that were believed to be the assistants of the shaman. When shamanism and beliefs associated with it were criminalized, these came down into the later tradition in a demonized form. The shaman's bird was inevitably interpreted as working for an evil witch and thus was auguring and causing death. On the other hand, the Siberian jay was regarded as a lucky bird, which if it approached a person who was outside or asleep was a sign of good fortune; finding its nest, on the other hand, once again meant death.
The mass migration of lemmings means war and unrest, but when they appeared in reasonable numbers in the summer, they portended good years for reindeer herding and hunting. Similarly if they dug into the snow in winter like reindeer, it also meant good years for reindeer herding.
Source courtesy of: The Saami. A Cultural Encyclopaedia. Ed. Kulonen, Seurujärvi & Pulkkinen (2005)
