Shamans are an integral part of communal religious traditions, professionals who make use of personal supernatural experiences, especially trance, as a resource for the wider community's physical and spiritual well-being. This Introduction surveys research on the topic of shamanism around the world, detailing the archaeology and earliest development of shamanic traditions as well as their scientific 'discovery' in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonization in Siberia, the Americas, and Asia. It explores the beliefs and rituals typical of shamanic traditions, as well as the roles of shamans within their communities. It also surveys the variety of techniques used by shamans cross-culturally, including music, entheogens, material culture and verbal performance. The final chapters examine attempts to suppress or eradicate shamanic traditions, the revitalization of shamanism in postcolonial situations, and the development of new forms of shamanism within new cultural and social contexts.

Shamans are an integral part of communal religious traditions, professionals who make use of personal supernatural experiences, especially trance, as a resource for the wider community's physical and spiritual well-being. This Introduction surveys research on the topic of shamanism around the world, detailing the archaeology and earliest development of shamanic traditions as well as their scientific 'discovery' in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonization in Siberia, the Americas, and Asia. It explores the beliefs and rituals typical of shamanic traditions, as well as the roles of shamans within their communities. It also surveys the variety of techniques used by shamans cross-culturally, including music, entheogens, material culture and verbal performance. The final chapters examine attempts to suppress or eradicate shamanic traditions, the revitalization of shamanism in postcolonial situations, and the development of new forms of shamanism within new cultural and social contexts.

Digital media-GIFs, films, TED Talks, tweets, and more-have become integral to daily life and, unsurprisingly, to Indigenous people's strategies for addressing the historical and ongoing effects of colonization. In Sami Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North, Thomas DuBois and Coppelie Cocq examine how Sami people of Norway, Finland, and Sweden use media to advance a social, cultural, and political agenda anchored in notions of cultural continuity and self-determination. Beginning in the 1970s, Sami have used Sami-language media-including commercially produced musical recordings, feature and documentary films, books of literature and poetry, and magazines-to communicate a sense of identity both within the Sami community and within broader Nordic and international arenas. In more contemporary contexts-from YouTube music videos that combine rock and joik (a traditional Sami musical genre) to Twitter hashtags that publicize protests against mining projects in Sami lands-Sami activists, artists, and cultural workers have used the media to undo layers of ignorance surrounding Sami livelihoods and rights to self-determination. Downloadable songs, music festivals, films, videos, social media posts, images, and tweets are just some of the diverse media through which Sami activists transform how Nordic majority populations view and understand Sami minority communities and, more globally, how modern states regard and treat Indigenous populations.

Digital media-GIFs, films, TED Talks, tweets, and more-have become integral to daily life and, unsurprisingly, to Indigenous people's strategies for addressing the historical and ongoing effects of colonization. In Sami Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North, Thomas DuBois and Coppelie Cocq examine how Sami people of Norway, Finland, and Sweden use media to advance a social, cultural, and political agenda anchored in notions of cultural continuity and self-determination. Beginning in the 1970s, Sami have used Sami-language media-including commercially produced musical recordings, feature and documentary films, books of literature and poetry, and magazines-to communicate a sense of identity both within the Sami community and within broader Nordic and international arenas. In more contemporary contexts-from YouTube music videos that combine rock and joik (a traditional Sami musical genre) to Twitter hashtags that publicize protests against mining projects in Sami lands-Sami activists, artists, and cultural workers have used the media to undo layers of ignorance surrounding Sami livelihoods and rights to self-determination. Downloadable songs, music festivals, films, videos, social media posts, images, and tweets are just some of the diverse media through which Sami activists transform how Nordic majority populations view and understand Sami minority communities and, more globally, how modern states regard and treat Indigenous populations.

Focusing on particular characters, situations, or emotions—usually with little or no explicit plot—lyric song poses interpretive challenges to the listening audience. Without an overt plot, how does one understand what a song is about? Are there rules or norms for how to interpret them? Do these rules remain the same from culture to culture, or do they vary? By looking at the ways in which cultures in Northern Europe interpret lyric songs, Thomas A. DuBois illuminates both commonalities of interpretive practice and unique features of their musical traditions. DuBois draws on sets of lyric songs from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to explore the question of meaning in folklore, especially the role of traditional audiences in appraising and understanding nonnarrative songs. DuBois's examples range from the medieval and early modern periods to the late twentieth century. His nuanced study explicates folk practices of interpretation—a "native hermeneutics" existing alongside folk songs in North European oral tradition. He examines lyric songs—particularly formal laments—embedded with prose or poetic narratives; the ritual use of lyric as charms and laments in premodern Europe; the development of personalized meanings within hymns and devotional prayers of the high Middle Ages; Shakespeare's lyric songs and their demands on the audience; and the ways in which professional lyric singers encourage certain interpretations of their songs. The only study to examine a range of northern European lyric traditions as a unified group, Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe will be of interest to scholars in medieval studies, literary studies, and folklore.