Jabez L. Van CleefGod Wears Many Skins: Myth And Folklore Of The Sami People

This charming but peculiar little book includes verse renderings of stories and texts from the Saami people and a bit of the Kalevala of the Finnish people. It's interesting and even well done and has heartfelt good intentions behind its creation, but there really ought to be citations for what stories and texts are being used to recreate the prose/poetry. What edition and translation of the Kalevala is used here? Where do the Saami stories come from? Norway? Sweden? Finland? Russia? While I do like the book, it's a bit like buying a piece of Saami jewelry that is not made by a Saami person or person of actual Saami descent.

loved it as a reminder of my own ancestry.

Interesting.

This is not actually the myth and folklore of the Saami people-- it's a person who has taken the folklore and turned it into children's poetry. Title is misleading, but my own fault for not googling the author to make sure his first name was "Dr." (I'm a grad student who studies Scandinavian music and folk culture-- so this book was not at all helpful).

was not what I thought was going to be, sorry

A very disappointing book. This is first of all a relatively slim volume (140 pages) and of those pages nearly 20 are taken up by an essay on Christian evangelism and 35 are taken up with a long quote from the Kalevala (a Finnish Epic widely available online). Neither essays on evangelism nor sections of the Kalevala have anything to do with Sami folklore or mythology.So we get to the actual bit of the book we wanted, and it is around 70 pages of double spaced type, so you get about 20 short lines of text to the page. He has written these folktales in a sort of blank verse style which I'm not sure suits them. I'm not even sure any of these are Sami stories because at least one (the Fox and the Bear) is a Native American story from the Iroquois. Another, Kari Woodencoat is a Norwegian folktale, a version of Cinderella, again nothing to do with the Sami.So in short do not buy this book. The title is misleading and the contents cannot be trusted.I am extremely disappointed and regret this purchase.

A very disappointing book. This is first of all a relatively slim volume (140 pages) and of those pages nearly 20 are taken up by an essay on Christian evangelism and 35 are taken up with a long quote from the Kalevala (a Finnish Epic widely available online). Neither essays on evangelism nor sections of the Kalevala have anything to do with Sami folklore or mythology.So we get to the actual bit of the book we wanted, and it is around 70 pages of double spaced type, so you get about 20 short lines of text to the page. He has written these folktales in a sort of blank verse style which I'm not sure suits them. I'm not even sure any of these are Sami stories because at least one (the Fox and the Bear) is a Native American story from the Iroquois. Another, Kari Woodencoat is a Norwegian folktale, a version of Cinderella, again nothing to do with the Sami.So in short do not buy this book. The title is misleading and the contents cannot be trusted.I am extremely disappointed and regret this purchase.