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<P align="justify"> <i>Bajánal … <P align="justify"> <i>Bajánalmmái</i>, the God of Thunder, was one of the most powerful and widely known nature divinities. He was a sky god ([[Pre-Christian gods|Gods]]), associated with the weather and prosperity, who was known to all the Saamis albeit by different names. The Thunder God was believed to cleanse the air of diseases and to send rain. He also protected the reindeer against predators. However he was ambivalent in nature, a divinity both benevolent and malevolent, and sacrifices were made to appease his fury and ensure his good will. The shaman ([[Shamanism|Shamanism]]) was thought to have a special relationship with the Thunder God. </P>
<P align="justify"> In the northern and eastern Saami traditions, the God of Thunder was a divinity that killed and destroyed evil spirits (cf. the role of the ancient Scandinavian god Thor as a persecutor of hobgoblins), but he also struck the Saami themselves and their sacred places. Some eighteenth- century sources concerning the southern, and partly also the northern, Saami areas claim that a shaman might contact the God of Thunder by chanting and drumming, and the divinity would then help him to free a reindeer herd or a person from an evil spell (bijahat). The eastern Saami associated the God of Thunder with the creation of the world (cosmology) and with its destruction (eschatology). In the Skolt Saami tradition, the Thunder God taught the first people of the world to build lodges. In the creation myth of the Ter Saami, the God of Thunder was the supreme celestial god, and he also had the power to destroy the world ([[Cosmology|cosmology]]). In eastern Saami eschatology, the Thunder God is depicted as a celestial hunter pursuing a heavenly wild reindeer; when he shoots it dead with his flaming arrow, the world will be plunged into chaos, the heavens will fall, and the whole earth will be enveloped in a conflagration.</P>
<P align="justify"> Among the eastern Saami groups, the thunder divinity was called <i>Tiermes</i> or <i>Tiirmes</i>, which was probably of Finno-Ugric origin and derived from the same word as the Khanty Torem. In modern Kildin Saami, the rainbow is called <i>tiirmes-jukks</i>, the bow of Tiermes and lightning tiirmes-tooll, the fire of <i>Tiermesi</i>. The bow and the flaming arrows would appear to be the original weapons of the God of Thunder. <i>Tiermes</i> corresponds to the North Saami <i>Dierpmis</i>; the latter name is now obsolete, but it was used particularly in the maritime Saami region. A better known name among the North Saami is <i>Baján</i> or <i>Bajánalmmái</i> God of Thunder. The name <i>Baján</i> is etymologically related to words meaning above, and it is used in modern North Saami in words referring to thunder. In many places in Swedish Lapland and among the Inari Saami, the thunder is called grandfather or old man. <i>Áddjá</i> grandfather and corresponding forms were used in areas where Ume, Pite and Lule Saami were spoken, while the Inari Saami used the name <i>Äijjih</i> (cf. Finnish <i>äijä</i> old man ). In sources relating to the South Saami region, one finds the name <i>Horagállis</i> (gallis old man ), the first part of which has been thought to derive from the name of the Norse god Thor. In the shaman s drum, <i>Horagállis</i> is depicted with a hammer in his left hand, and this together with the name has been taken as evidence of a Scandinavian cultural borrowing. However, the form of the name of the God of Thunder in South Saami is Hovrengaellies (hovre to make a noise ).</P>
<P align="justify"> There is ample information in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century source material about sacrifices to the God of Thunder. The Lule Saami built a sacrificial platform on which they erected an image of the god with his hammer. In the Saami region of Norway, it is known that reindeer and wooden mallets were sacrificed to the Thunder God. According to one description, the sacrificial tree to Addja had to be a birch that was erected upside down. In terms of the study of religion, this was an expression of semantic ambivalence: although the God of Thunder was topographically a higher god, the tree points down, towards the underworld, indicating a sacrifice to the nether gods. The reason probably lay in the equivocal nature of the God of Thunder, who had a destructive as well as a creative side. ([[Sacrificials|Sacrifice]])</P>
<P align="justify"> According to the Inari Saami tradition, and corroborated by archaeological finds, there was a local culture of worship of the God of Thunder <i>Äijih</i> in the Inari region; <i>Äijih</i> was worshipped on a rocky island called <i>Äijih-sualui</i> Thunder Island on Lake Inari. The sacrifices were made at thefoot of a large stone which lay between two rocks and was believed to have been placed there by <i>Äijih</i>. In a cave at the place of worship it is known that even in the late nineteenth century there were reindeer antlers and metal objects left there as sacrifices to placate the God of Thunder. According to legend, <i>Äijih</i> had a wife, Akku (cf. Finnish <i>akka</i> old woman ), whom he could reach from the cave by way of an underwater cavern. </P>by way of an underwater cavern. </P> +
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