The late Iron Age bear-tooth pendants in Finland: Symbolic mediators between women, bears, and wilderness?

Abstract

In the article I discuss the different functions and meanings of bronze bear-tooth pendants in the Finnish Late Iron Age (800-1150/1300 ce). I first focus on an analysis of the pendants in terms of archaeological methodology: chronology, typology and find context. The second focus of attention, and in this article the most important one, is on the interpretation of these pendants. They are usually interpreted as magical items, amulets. In my opinion this is not the only possible interpretation. I suggest that the pendants can be interpreted as magical or religious, but that their possible protective use as amulets does not exclude other functions, such as a decorative and/or social one. I emphasise the possibility that bear-tooth pendants may be linked to a symbolic form of expression involving the idea of control of the forest and wilderness. Finnish folk tradition and mythology point to a metaphoric and métonymie relationship on the one hand between the bear and the wilderness, on the other the bear and women. The bronze bear-tooth pendants - possibly worn only by women - may have carried a symbolic message of control over the wilderness; this control could have been mythology-based and practised by ritual acts; at the same time it could also take the form of concrete acts, such as utilization of the wilderness: a fur-based economy and control over the fur trade. © The Finnish Society for the Study of Religion.