Producer unknown to us
Soul bird of a shaman
Asia, Russia, Krasnoyarsk region, Lake Jessei
Before 1906
Wood; carved
Context of acquisition unknown to us
Exchanged with the St. Petersburg Ethnographic Museum in 1906
NAs 1751
The wooden sculpture originates from the Evenkian shaman:innentum and depicts a bird. This was attached to a pole above the head of a deceased shaman. After their death, shamans were buried on high piles or special trees in a kind of coffin.
Shamans acted as intermediaries between the human community and the spirit world. During their journeys to the afterlife and in contact with spirits, shamans are guided by protective and helpful spirits who serve as leaders, “bodyguards,” and advisors. They have extraordinary knowledge and power and appear in human and animal form - often as a bird. This bird could probably have served the shaman as a “mount” with which he traveled to the upper and underworld during his séances in order to make contact with the spirits.
There are also forms of shamanism in which a mythical mother animal/bird “hatches” the future shaman in the afterlife. The shaman only meets this bird a few times in life: at least during the initiation - the “shaman's birth” - and at death. However, the bird could also take on the role of the leader of the other guardian spirits. Shamans had certain duties towards the guardian spirit. If it was neglected, the shaman could lose their abilities or fall seriously ill.
Marita Andó, Kevin Breß