41
regions, it is necessary to consider that the
interlocking continuum of documented Sámi
languages may primarily reflect a millennium
of interaction between mobile groups speaking
dialects of Proto-Sámi and their emerging
languages. This continuum
cannot be assumed
to reflect a single route of dispersal of a
uniform Proto-Sámi that first spread north
through Finland and Karelia and then east and
west across the Kola and Scandinavian
Peninsulas, respectively. Jaakko Häkkinen
(2010: 59–60) argues that the northeast and
northwest dialects of Proto-Sámi are the result
of language spread north through Finland, but
that mobility carried the southwest dialect over
the bottleneck of the Gulf of Bothnia from the
area where the Kyrö culture would later
emerge. However, mobile groups appear to
have been active farther south than has tended
to be acknowledged.
10
Particularly if Proto-
Sámi’s spread is connected with trade, it is
equally likely that the language was carried via
the long-established route past Åland, which
was also inhabited by a predominantly hunting
and fishing culture until the second half of the
6
th
century (Ahola et al. 2014b). According to
this model, Proto-Sámi did not spread down
the Scandinavian Peninsula and gradually
break up. Instead, two distinct forms of Proto-
Sámi with different backgrounds met there,
speakers of the southwest
dialect never having
directly encountered the cultures inhabiting
Lapland further north.
Religion versus Language
‘Culture’ can be considered “localized in
concrete, publically accessible signs” (Urban
1991: 1), within which language provides only
one system of signification. Religion is here
considered:
a type of register of practice that has developed
through intergenerational transmission, is
characterized by mythology, and entails an
ideology and worldview. (Frog 2015: 35.)
From this perspective, a register of religion
simultaneously provides models for behaviours
(Agha 2007) associated with the roles taken by
individuals within the community. A religious
register provides a framework against which
Map 3. Isoglosses of innovations from Proto-Sámi reflected in modern languages as presented by Mikko Korhonen
(1981: 22, Kuva 1; Korhonen did not include Akkala or Kemi Sámi on his map). The black dashed line indicates
Aikio’s (2012: 64, Figure 1) approximation of maximal Proto-Sámi language spread in the Ladoga region and to the
east prior to the spread of Proto-Finnic. The grey dotted line approximates a dialect or language boundary observed
in toponymy by Denis Kuzmin (2014: 286, Map 3).