Spåmannsslekten ”Jungen”
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The church and copper smelting works at Sulitjelma. Photo:Sulitjelma Historical Society’s photo collection. The shaman family and the legend of Sulitjelma By Wenche Spjelkavik The legend of a Sami shaman’s prophecy of the creation and ruin of Sulitjelma is familiar not only to those who grew up in the mining town, but also to many from far away. In particular, many remember the prediction that if a spire were to be erected on the church tower, then Sulitjelma would “go under”. A spire was never put on the church and the legend remained alive. The name of the shaman, however, has been forgotten. In the local narrative tradition, the legend of the future of Sulitjelma has been linked to a person, most often described as “a Sami”. The name of this person has not been widely known. The legend has been told as an event that really happened, and not a fictional story. It is unknown whether there are other stories and legends that have survived in the folklore of this area. The survival of the legend It is not unusual for a mining town to have a legend about how a Sami randomly found the ore, or about a reindeer bull that kicked away some moss and uncovered some precious metal. In Sulitjelma, the Sami was Mons Andreas Pedersen, who found the ore in about 1858. Older memoir material occasionally mentions the name “Jungen” for the Sami who gave Sulitjelma the legend of the church spire and the downfall of the village. That the legend has remained alive in folklore until the present day is not so strange. The fate of mining communities who live by producing metals is inextricably linked to international politics and stock exchange prices for currencies and metals, and thus to economic ups and downs. Political events on the world stage have certainly influenced life in this northern-Norwegian mining town. For example, the outbreak of the First World War brought with it an extraordinary increase in the prices of copper and pyrite. In 1915, the enormous profits realised by the mining 1 company became obvious to everyone when the railway was extended by 10 km from Hellarmo and into the smelting works in Fagerli. A brand-new workers’ housing area with architect-designed homes was also constructed in Glastunes. By November 1918, however, the war was over, and the market for those products suddenly evaporated. The 1,545 workers faced massive lay-offs. By October the following year, only 420 workers remained.1 After such dramatic changes, the legend was surely recalled and refreshed by those who had been affected. People experienced similar sudden upheavals in the mining and economic situation almost every decade, until the mine in Sulitjelma was shut down in 1991. Consequently, there have been many situations where workers have brought up the legend of the Sami who had a vision of the building and downfall of Sulitjelma. The identity of the soothsayer was forgotten, along with when this “vision” was supposed to have taken place. This article aims to attempt to shed new light on both the prediction and the shaman. The Church and the mining company’s relationship with the prediction. Johannes Aanderaa came to Sulitjelma as a resident curate in 1915. After two years in the mining town, he wrote an account of the place: They say that about 60–70 years ago, a clairvoyant fjellfinn (Mountain Sami) stood on Sulitjelmatoppen and looked out over the Sulitjelma Valley, [...] down to the hills with the lush, green grass and luxuriant forest, which had been his permanent station for many years. There was an excellent pasture for reindeer, and there were plenty of fish in the rivers and grouse up in the woods. And there he ruled, mostly alone. However, as he stands there and looks out over his kingdom, a strange sensation runs through him; he becomes psychic and sees into the future: Large boats with no oars or sails steaming up Lake Langvatnet. The forest disappears, and great houses are erected along the lake. Places where there used to be reindeer paths are teeming with people. They dig into the mountains and retrieve an expensive metal. Everything is changed, and bustling prosperity prevails. A church is also built, but when the church spire is raised, everything will have reached its peak. From then on, the village begins its decline. With certain variations, this is how people retell the vision of the future supposedly seen by a fjellfinn, long before copper deposits were discovered here.2 The Sulitjelma church was completed in 1899. The priest Aanderaa wrote that the church had, remarkably, been built in such a exposed location that no one dared build the church tower as high as was originally intended. The tower was shortened by four metres, and, among the people, this has been interpreted as being due to the legend. Aanderaa does not mention that the church had a cross on the tower and not a spire.3 The church was consecrated with great fanfare, but not without the prediction casting its long shadow among the parishioners. Olaf Amundsen, the parish priest in Skjerstad, had written the text for a cantata that was performed at the consecration. The director of the mining company, Emil Knudsen, had composed the music and was himself the soloist. And, in one of the verses, Knudsen sang: An ancient legend runs along the mountainsides, and spreads across these villages, That gone forever are the times of ore, when a house of God is built in this place.4 The legend and the shaman in folklore In the memoirs of the mining engineer Fredrik Carlsson there is a story told by a miner in Sulitjelma, Frants Holmstrøm. Holmstrøm came from Arjeplog and worked in Sulitjelma from 1891 to 1935. He said: Kristine Jungen in Fagerli was a cook and old maid. It was her paternal grandfather who had visions in Bursi. He saw that Sulis would be populated as a big city with lights and houses, and steam boats on the lake, dragging barges behind them, and he saw the church being erected. But if the spire were also raised, it would mean that Sulis had reached its peak and would begin to decline. He then foresaw the construction of three smelting works and that the third would be at Sandnes and that it would explode and lay waste to the area, and many lives would be lost – and then the fortunes of Sulis would enter a state of flux.5 2 Steamers with pyrite barges on Lake Langvatnet, about 1913. The unique thing about Frants Holmstrøm’s retelling of the prediction is the information that three smelting works would be built. Three smelting works were indeed built in Sulitjelma, and the last one was built in Sandnes and stopped production on 3 February 1987 after an explosion!6 This marked the end of copper smelting in Sulitjelma. The prediction also said that the place would be desolated and many lives lost. The halting of copper smelting did indeed lead to a rapid decline in profitability of mining operations. This was because they would now have to sell copper concentrate, which was significantly less valuable than “blister copper” from the smelting works. In addition, by the time the smelting works closed down there was no longer any market for pyrite. From the time when mining started in 1887 until it stopped in 1991, about 120 workers lost their lives. As for whether the place will eventually be deserted, that remains to be seen. Holmstrøm said that the shaman was Kristine Jungen’s paternal grandfather, without providing any more detail about how he could know that. He probably didn’t know the name of this grandfather. The first time I heard the name of the shaman was a summer evening in the mid 1970s, on the Swedish side of the Sulis Mountains. It was Lars Ranberg (b. 1903) in Stenudden by Tjeggelvas, who spoke of “Jungen” and the prediction about Sulitjelma. Jungen belonged to the Mavas sameby (corporation of Sami reindeer herders). The family was now extinct, and no descendants were known of in Sweden. In his childhood, Lars had often heard about Jungen and how he had seen a steaming serpent slithering both on water and on land through Langvassdalen. This had been interpreted to be the steamboats on Lake Langvatnet and the railway.7 Lars Erik Ruong (1937–2007) was brought up in Mavas and had been a reindeer herder for many years. He was known as a local historian with great knowledge of the areas bordering Sulitjelma. In a conversation with Ruong in 1995, he said that for many years after “Jungen’s” death, his walking staff stood as a monument in a rocky desert in the mountains east of Mavas, where it had remained for many, many years, weathered by wind and rain, until strangers to the area arrived around 1920 and used the staff as wood for their fire. In 1940, the nomad Peder Nilsson Ruong (b. 1889) told of several known people one would visit during one’s stay with reindeer on the Norwegian side of the border. He mentions Klihpa Jåuna (Jonas Klippen).8 He was the son of Junga, who saw what other people could not see – among other things, how the Sulitelma [Sulitjelma] mining community would spring up in a place where there was still a small Lapp lavvu.9 Based on the story told by Nilsson Ruong and curate Aanderaa, the shaman’s prediction/vision was supposed to have happened long before any ore was discovered, i.e.