This is a summarise of the drum used by the sami people in the northern Scandinavia. The sami pre-Christian religion was a belief that all life was dualistic on both spiritual and physical levels and that people must live in harmony without disturbing Nature. Alongside with the material world there was a spiritual world, called saivo, where everything was more whole than in the material world and where the dead continued their lives.

In the forest you could find trees which resembled a human body, or you could make one. These were called sieidde and they were worshiped. Also a strangely shaped stone or rock could be a sieidde.

There were shamans (noaidi) that could communicate with the other world and practise healing. To communicate with spirits and to do soul-journeys he had to get into a trance. This was done with help of the drum and the yoik.

Yoik is a traditional sami form of song. Each yoik is meant to reflect a person or place. It has traditionally been sung a cappella. It is sometimes set to other instruments. The tonality of yoik is mostly pentatonic but yoikers are at liberty to use any tones they please. (Example yoik in MP3-format.)

Most of the sami shaman drums ever existed was burned in the late 17^th century. At this time everyone should be a Christian. A lot of witches were also burned. There are only about 70 drums saved, however many Siberian and North American groups have also used drums in a similar way. It seems to be common in hunting and gathering cultures in the Arctic region. The symbols painted on the drum skin, are stylised pictures of animals, Lapp cots, different Gods etc. It is a sort of representation of the "known world" and life of the Lapps. They can be categorised by the way the symbols are painted. Basically there is the south-, central-, and north- sami drum.

On the south drums there are a sun in the middle. It has a rhomboid and four lines goes up/down and right/left, which can be associated with sunbeams to the four cardinal points. Some symbols were put on the sunbeams and the rest were mainly spread around the edge.

The north Lapp drums are divided into several fields mostly three or five. The upper most field corresponds to the spiritual world and the lowest one to the under world.

It was used by sami families to guide their daily life, foresee the future, locate things that are missing and heal diseases. There are basically four ways that the drum was used.

An indicator (arpa) was put on the membrane of the drum either by throwing it or by placing it somewhere. It could be a ring or some triangular shape of bone, sometimes with small rings attached to it. One started to drum carefully and slowly harder and harder. Only the noaidi could use the drum in all the ways above, but everyone (often the father of a family) could use it for prophecy. It was common that the noaidi went into a trance/ecstasy. He fell down and the drum was put on his back. In the "dream" he met with his helping spirits. Sometimes there was a soul-journey when he could take the shape of a fish, reindeer-bull or a bird. Whether this was done by the helping spirit's possession of the shaman's body or the other way around is more of an academic discussion. He could go to other places and talk to beings in the spiritual world.

The drummer had to interpret how the arpa moved and were it pointed. In some places, every family had a drum. The paintings on the membrane were done with paint made by chewing bark from the alder. It looked like blood and the pencil was put in the mouth to get more paint on it. One drum could have as many as 150 symbols. Each drum was personal and made very carefully. Great shamans used several drums and had several powerful helping-spirits.

There are three types of drums found but the most common was the frame and the bowl drum. The bowl drum was mainly used in the north-east and was made by carving out a bowl from a malformed part on a tree. The skin on the drum was not flat, since the opening was slightly curved, i.e. the sides is lower than the top and bottom when seeing the drum from above. The frame drum was made from a particularly hard wood. The board was formed round. The ends overlapped and was sewed together or fixed by melted tin. The drum skin was flat and was sewed on. It was stretched when used by holding it near the fireplace. On the back, there was a handle and a rope with different powerful things attached. (As for example: claws, teeth, and bear-penis bone and small silver things). The size seems to have been from about 33 x 48 cm, to almost 90 cm in length and had an oval shape.