1. Introduction
Sounds created through reflection have always been the focus of acoustics, but have played a relatively minor role in music and sound studies. Such sounds, which derive from and transmit the energy of other sounds, may have been regarded as less significant by cultural researchers than the original, direct sounds. Our multi-year acoustic and archival studies show that reflected sounds, particularly echoes, have played a key role in the belief and ritual traditions historically known in Fennoscandia, the northernmost part of Europe, up until recent times (Rainio, Lahelma, Äikäs, Lassfolk and Okkonen 2018; Shpinitskaya and Rainio 2021; Valovesi and Rainio 2022; Rainio and Hytönen-Ng 2023; Vikman and Rainio 2023; Kolltveit, forthcoming). Historical Finnish, Scandinavian and Sámi communities regarded echoing rocks, cliffs, and mountains as special or sacred places, where spirit beings could be encountered and heard. Moreover, certain types of incantations and chants were performed to converse or negotiate directly with such beings or forces. Of these traditions, those related to the Sámi – the only Indigenous people in the European Union (see Saami Council 2025) – appear to be the most abundant, detailed, and versatile. This Indigenous material, gathered from Nordic archival collections and early ethnographic accounts in the course of our research, is largely unexplored and partly unpublished.
This article places sound reflections at the center of musical and sonic studies by examining the role of echoes in the Sámi historical traditions. In the following sections, we present the beliefs and practices traced from archives and old publications, reflecting on them with the help of concepts developed for sound research, especially the philosophy of sound. Since the source material shows that echoes are active and affective parts of the soundscape – more powerful than the classical acoustic definitions typically imply – we also apply a new materialist approach (Bennett 2010; Fast, Leppänen and Tiainen 2018; Chamel and Dansac 2022). In this approach, sounds are understood broadly and dynamically as vibrational energies flowing between material bodies and entities, connecting and affecting them.
New materialist and related post-humanist approaches have previously been applied to the study of the Sámi literature, music, spiritual tradition and environmental perceptions (Helander-Renvall 2010; Hilder 2017; Fonneland 2020; Lönngren 2022; Fonneland and Äikäs 2023) but not specifically in relation to sound reflections or echoes. To our knowledge, this also holds true in broader, non-Sámi contexts. Thus, the Indigenous perspective emerging from the source material not only reconfigures our understanding of acoustics and sonic cultures in the North but also helps to outline a philosophical basis for a materialist understanding of echoes, reflective material bodies, and entities as well as the acoustic spaces associated with them. As a result, this perspective contributes to the development of new anthropological concepts related to sound.
Studying the historical tradition of the Indigenous population presents numerous challenges. Old sources describing the Sámi were penned by missionaries and priests of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who often expressed resentment and condemnation of the practices they observed. Only a few of these authors, such as Nicolaus Lundius (1905 [1674–1679]), came from a Sámi background. Ethnographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by contrast, collected and analyzed archival materials according to their own epistemological and cultural frameworks, guided by the scientific paradigms of the time. Among the cited authors, only two – Johan Turi (1910) and Louise Bäckman (1975) – were ethnically Sámi. This imbalance is also reflected this article, in which we – non-Sámi researchers trained in philosophy, ethnomusicology, and acoustics – read and interpret these earlier texts and descriptions.
To address this issue, we aim to situate our research findings in relation to the perspectives of contemporary Sámi scholars and experts in Sámi studies on sacred landscapes, offering sites, ritual traditions, and the ethnohistoric past of the Sámi. In addition, in the next phase of the project, we aim to map the current meanings of echoes and acoustics by collecting new materials in Sápmi. This work has only recently begun and falls outside the scope of this article. However, based on the first interviews, it appears that the tradition of echoing sites and their sonic practices is no longer actively maintained among the Sámi.[1] This might, for example, be attributed to the traumatic histories of the Indigenous population as related to spiritual practices: drumming and chanting in the traditional Sámi way were subject to severe persecution for centuries, as they were regarded as part of the shamanistic and animistic elements of the old Sámi religion (see Järvinen 2005).
Despite the source-critical aspects presented above, the material of this article – compiled mainly from the collections of the Institute for Language and Folklore (Isof), the Finnish Literature Society (SKS), and the Norwegian Arctic University Museum (UiT) – conveys a fairly consistent and cohesive picture of the specific tradition under study. As will be shown, similar sacred sites comprising various stone and rock formations are reported from all parts of historical Sápmi, extending across the northern territories of present-day Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Similarly, stories about echo beliefs, echo beings, and echo practices related to these places have been recorded from all Sámi groups, representing Eastern, Northern, and Western Sámi. Altogether, the existence of ubiquitous sites and historical records from different areas suggests that the echoing tradition under discussion may have been a widespread and significant phenomenon in earlier times. However, its dating, origins, and connections with similar traditions of other Fennoscandian ethnic groups would be the subject of a separate article.
The article is structured around three main sections, each with a distinct approach. Section 2 presents the research material compiled from archival and historical sources, while section 3 outlines the philosophical ideas and concepts that inform the analysis. Section 4 contains the analysis itself, which examines the material from a new materialist perspective and proposes new concepts to understand the emergent sonic interactions between the human and more-than-human worlds.