The Craft of Yoiking: Philosophical Variations on Sámi Chants

The yoik is a vocal technique practised by the Sámi of Northern Europe. It relies on circular melodies, chanted in everyday life and a cappella, with or without lyrics. Each melody evokes a particular being, usually a person, an animal species, or a place. ‘Yoiking them’ is a way of making them present, exploring an attachment, and unfolding memories. The yoik is considered by many of its practitioners as a gift received from the environment, a mysterious craft that they come to know through personal experience and experimentation. This thesis is based on conversations with yoikers, active in either the ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ practices, and an apprenticeship in the craft of yoiking. It constitutes a series of essays, or ‘philosophical variations’, aimed at taking the yoik seriously and unfolding some of its philosophical affordances. As in the musical variations on popular melodies by classical composers, writing the yoik in variation means hosting it within another practice bearing its own constraints and possibilities. Practices of yoiking and writing are thus put in a dialogue at times converging, at times diverging, but always intended to be mutually stimulating. Various voices from social anthropology, ethnomusicology, psychology, theology, ethology, and the history of philosophy join the dialogue along the way. The variations are ‘philosophical’ in that each of them creates one concept: horizon, enchantment, creature, depth, echo, primordial. Each concept seeks to capture a layer of depth perceived in the yoik’s practice: (1) the risks of metamorphosis; (2) the chants of animals and the wind; (3) the creation of yoiks as outgrowths of the sensuous world; (4) the inner landscapes of humans; (5) the resurgence of past memories and of the dead; (6) the roots of human chants in a chthonic, original past; and (n) the power of repetition and interruption