Arresting Actors: A Sámi Drum and its Complex Relations

ABSTRACT The article centres around a well-known artefact in Sámi history, the more than 300-year-old drum that once belonged to Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen, that has recently been returned to Sápmi after a long restitution process. Sámi drums were deemed sorcerers’ devices and routinely confiscated and destroyed during seventeenth century Danish autocracy; their users prosecuted and sometimes executed. In the early 1690s, the drum was seized and sent to Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Art Chamber, whereas the owner was killed in custody while awaiting the judicial decision. The case involves one of very few preserved Sámi drums accompanied by a contemporaneous indigenous voice conveyed in the trial document. Paradoxically, at the same time as Sámi drums were confiscated and, in many cases, destroyed, some were embarking on journeys as attractive collectors’ items. Today, Sámi drums are frequently “arrested” in museum exhibitions as “shamanistic devices”, often echoing old tools and tropes of othering. The article argues that there is a tendency to translate actors like Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen and the drum into categories that immobilise them, and which prevent historical configurations to enter the narrative. It also contends that discussions about what the figures on the drumhead represent have dominated the reception and steered attention away from individual aspects of the drum and its vibrant materiality. In line with the biographical approach of the exhibition Ruoktot – The Return of the Sámi Drums by the Sámi Museum in Kárášjohka, I explore the entangled agency of the drum to help consider material aspects and concurrent meanings.


Introduction
The  of April , two powerful events were celebrated in Kárášjohka, a Sámi township on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. Invited by RiddoDuottarMuseat -Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat (RDM-SVD), the Sámi Museum in Kárášjohka, Sámi elders organised a ceremony to mark the formal handover of a drum taken from Sápmi and placed in the Royal Danish Art Chamber in Denmark more than  years ago (Figs.  and ).  The celebration coincided with the th anniversary of the opening of the museum. Founded in , as the first Sámi museum in Norway, it was crucial in the political movement and cultural revitalisation process of the time. Soon after the opening, in , the museum began to negotiate with the National Museum of Denmark to hand back the drum.  Thus, the establishment of the museum and the transfer of the ownership rights are intertwined.
The anniversary exhibition Ruoktot -The Return of the Sámi Drums, on display in the museum from April , , until September , , offers a rare opportunity to study the original drum that now officially belongs to the museum. In dim lighting, the drum is displayed in a glass case, surrounded by imageries of relatives that are still resting in storerooms in museums throughout Europe. These other drums are "returned" in different ways, in the form of D models and additional imageries in the exhibition. Accompanied by the low sound of drumbeat pulsing slowly in the background, five drums are projected on the wall. They turn gradually in correlation with the sound, so that their different sides are revealed. Details are brought through in the three-dimensional images with a perspicuity that makes the drums feel present, the skins that cover them seem almost to vibrate in rhythm with the sound. Even if some drums have returned to Sápmi, only a few of the total number of known entries are in the custody of Sámi institutions or caretakers.  Wall texts are other notable elements in the exhibition, contextualising and grounding the  drums in time and space. In the opening speech, museum leader and main curator at RDM-SVD, the Sámi scholar Jelena Porsanger, highlighted the texts as important parts of the exhibition; drums have biographies, "because we think of them as persons", she emphasised.  This perspective is also communicated in the wall text at the entrance of the exhibition: Drums are not merely objects of use but rather they are considered as powerful nonhuman beings with their own will and with a voice. Therefore, the exhibition presents the drums with respect, as persons. Their life stories are told as biographies. In this way the drums are coming home. After centuries of voiceless time and silence, the drums are once again getting a voice.  Taking a cue from Porsanger and the exhibition approach. I propose in this article to recognise the returned drum as an individual, to highlight its complex materiality, capacity, and life story. In doing that, I adhere to the robust discussion of notions of personhood in Indigenous studies and anthropological literature that the exhibition quote is alluding to.  Once treated as individuals, the singularity of each drum may come to the fore and counterbalance the tendency in museums throughout Europe to perceive Sámi drums as interchangeable "samples", intended to prove characteristics of larger categories. For instance, as art historian Mårten Snickare has shown, by exhibiting them as "specimens", as examples of general types, rather than as singular and aesthetically engaging entities.  Moreover, to recognise drums as individuals may induce a respectful attitude and contribute to confront the violence they have been subjected to through looting and efforts of destruction. Finally, it can help articulate performative aspects of the drums, to grasp them not only as passive objects to be exposed and interpreted by humans, but as complex agents with specific abilities and affordances.
The Sámi homelands stretch across what is today four national states, Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. The drum that is now under the care of the Sámi museum is one of very few extant drums from the Sámi-Norwegian area. At the moment of the drum's seizure in , Norway and parts of Sápmi belonged to Denmark and most of the drums taken to the capital did not survive the Copenhagen fires of ,  and .  Moreover, this particular drum is exceptional because it is one of very few drums accompanied by the written record of a contemporaneous Sámi voice, that of its owner at the time it was confiscated, Poala Ánde, in Northern Sámi, or Anders Poulsen, as he is known in Danish through the written historical sources. Despite the existence of such material, there is a tendency not to really accept, or to explain away this and other coexisting indigenous sources to Sámi drums, as historian of religion Håkan Rydving has argued.  I will return to this point later, when I deal with the representation and reception of the drum. For now, I want to acknowledge Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen as an important actor. Poala Ánde/ Anders Poulsen and the drum are colabourers, generating events and positioning themselves in relational ways, also as forms of resistance. In the article I aim to recognise the agency and complexity of both.
Although historians like Rune Blix Hagen and others have dealt extensively with the sources in the context of the witch hunt process, the drum has not been the focus. Also, when the drum is discussed, there is a tendency to focus the attention to the drumhead and the painted figures on it, that is, on what they signify, and not on the material and relational aspects. Sámi drums have predominantly been studied by theologians, ethnographers, and historians of religion, while art historians have been curiously unaware of, or disinterested in, the topic until recently.  To begin with, I will briefly reflect upon terminology and conceptual choices before I start recounting the narrative and historical context of Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen and the drum. Then, I move on to discuss the particular materiality of the drum. I conceptualise the drum as a "material assembly" to help consider myriad and unfixed qualities. Here, I try to acknowledge the drum as invaluable material in its own right, not just as something that has to be illuminated by other sources. This part coincides with the next section where I consider the "distributed agency" or "entangled personhood" of the drum, inspired by conceptualisations that stem from object biography and theories of personhood and agency, and filtered through Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen's position.  Finally, I present a few examples of what I consider to be significant tendencies in the representation of Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen and the drum. I contend that they are interesting and multidimensional actors with fluid positions, that have frequently been fixated or "arrested" in reception.

Terminology, translations and conceptualisations
How to best introduce, name and describe the main subjects of this article, the "drum" and its previous caretaker, "Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen"? In a much-repeated quote paraphrasing Marilyn Strathern, Donna Haraway asserts: "It matters which stories tell stories, which concepts think concepts".  Haraway calls upon Strathern's notion to express a way of articulation that accepts the risk of relentless contingency; to get out of the habit of trying to grasp wholes or enclosed entities. It matters what words we choose; what words, worlds, and concepts they generate, and what words, worlds, and concepts they channel away. Some concepts "may overpower, perhaps even kidnap the situation that is up for description", Marisol de la Cadena maintains.  She argues for perspectives that encourage us to "slow down reasoning" to strive to avoid such arrestations and that, consequently, opens for the material to tell "a much richer story".  In this text I endeavour to narrate the material in a manner that is "big enough" (to borrow yet another phrase from Haraway), striving to evade predetermined interpretation and categorisation to the extent that this is possible.  In general, I try to avoid the overtly religiously flavoured vocabulary often associated with the drum. In accordance with the exhibition text, and some of the most recent texts written by Sámi scholars in English, I often use the word "Sámi drum".  I also experiment with conceptualisations like "material assembly" to highlight the drum as a meeting of various materials with emerging properties, and to avoid "arresting" it as a closed entity.  Thus, from time to time I intentionally slip between lingua to try to destabilise the habit of grasping wholes. In Northern Sámi goavddis, gobdis, rumbu, or meavrresgárri, can be used to denote a (Sámi) drum. Other terms to denote the drum in Sámi is goabdes, in Lule Sámi, and gievrie, in Southern Sámi.  In the court document, the drum is termed a runebomme in Danish/Norwegian, based on an earlier association of the symbols on the drum as runes. Obviously, even seemingly neutral words like "drum" signal something, like a musical instrument. Still, I would argue, it is not "kidnapping the situation" in the way for example "shaman drum" would, a term that comes with a lot of historical baggage, a point to which I will return.  Also, the antecedent "Sámi", and the larger framework and theoretical perspectives precludes a simplified understanding of the drum term. This is something that becomes clear in the quote from the exhibition text, where "drum" is used, but evidently not to signify only a "musical instrument".
An additional caveat concerning the naming of the other main actor; the caretaker, or owner, of the drum, hereto presented as Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen. He came into to historical attention through the court documents, written in Danish, and many aspects about him are unknown. As Håkan Rydving and Siv Rasmussen have argued, there was a tradition of using a double set of naming practices in various places in Sápmi at the time.  The man known as "Anders Poulsen" in the court document asserts that he was born in Torne Lappmark, thus he was probably known by a Swedish name in the earliest documents.  In addition, he would have had a Sámi name, but exactly what he was called by his family and friends is difficult to pinpoint, due to different languages and naming practices in various parts of Sápmi, and because it is not possible to say exactly where in the large district of Torne Lappmark he originated from. There is a tradition to write the name in Northern Sámi, as Poala Ánde, or as Pávval Ánde or Bávval-Ánde.  I do not reckon myself to be in a position to determine his name, and out of respect for different Sámi habits and languages (in time and place) I choose to use the name that he is known by through the historical sources for the remaining part, but keeping the instability and contingency of name giving in mind.

Historical contexts and life stories
The first written description of the drum now owned by the RDM-SVD in appears in a court-record from February  (Fig. ).  The use of the drum was the outward reason for arresting the owner. He was detained in Unjárga some months earlier and taken to Č áhcesuolu, then the administrative centre in Eastern Finnmark.  Poulsen had kept and used "an instrument, named a runebomme, and thereby practiced the evil and wicked art of witchcraft", the record stated.  In other words, Poulsen and the drum enters the official documents as actors in the witchcraft cases in the northern part of Europe of the time. They form part of a grim statistic, as historians like Liv Helene Willumsen and Rune Blix Hagen have shown.  The Finnmark witchcraft trials took place throughout the s, with Poulsen's case as the last one. According to Blix Hagen,  persons were accused of practising witchcraft in Finnmark and  of them were executed.  Thus, many of the persons accused of witchcraft were sentenced to death and the number of cases is relatively high compared to the total amount of people living in Finnmark at the time. Moreover, a special feature of the prosecutions in the northernmost part of Denmark-Norway is the presence of Sámi people among those tried.  The numerous witch trials in the high north during the seventeenth century are commonly viewed in the context of the implementation of the Reformation and aspiring governmental aims. The Reformation in Norway was introduced when the Lutheran king Christian III of Denmark took control of the Norwegian Council of the Realm in -. The King stated that Norway should no longer be an independent region but rather completely integrated as a province of Denmark.  The reorganisation of the church as part of the governmental apparatus helped implement measures for standardisation and regulation in the various parts of the Danish kingdom. Exact borders had not yet been drawn between Denmark-Norway, Sweden-Finland, and the principality Muscovy in the northernmost region.  Blix Hagen argues that, as a collective, the Sámi posed a threat to the territorial integrity of Denmark-Norway, its state building, and its efforts to spread Lutheranism in the far North: "The Sámi and their special pattern of mobility were considered by the Nordic state authorities as subjects in need of proper integration into the individual realms".  As a consequence, the north faced more extensive missionary activity and an increased number of witch trials during the "protracted reformation".  The Sámi drum was a centre of attention for both the religious and the political authorities, which were tightly interwoven.
According to the court document, Poulsen presents himself as almost one hundred years old and born in "Torne Lappmark" on the Swedish side of Sápmi. He had spent most of his adult years in the coastal areas of "Nordlandene" and in "Finnmarken", where he currently lived and paid taxes. He was the father of many children, now adults living in various parts of Sápmi.  The drum had travelled with him over the Swedish and Danish-Norwegian borders. A resolution from the interrogation conducted the day after the arrest states that Poulsen first confessed that he made the drum himself. While on trial a couple of months later, he explained that a man named Anders Pedersen gave the drum to him in Torne Lappmark.  He also confessed to having used the drum, but only to do good deeds. Poulsen held the testimony mainly in Sámi, but he also used Karelian language during the trial, according to the court document.  The Sámi historian Siv Rasmussen has studied additional documents, including land registers from the Swedish side, and she argues that Poulsen was born in the southern part of the Torne lappmark and suggests that he had connections to the nearby Lule Sámi siida through the border area Gáidum where he paid taxes for a while.  In any case, Poulsen's command of different languages, tax records showing that he had paid taxes both to Norway-Denmark and Sweden-Finland, and his own testament in court give insight into the Sámi "pattern of mobility", emphasised by Blix Hagen.
The purpose of the trial was to determine if Poulsen was a sorcerer and to what extent he had performed the work of the devil. At the end of the trial, no sentence was passed. Although Poulsen possessed "great impiety" and "knowledge of devilish art", the precise crime and idolatry to which Poulsen had confessed was not mentioned in the legislation. Besides, no one had witnessed that he had actually harmed anyone with his drum. While the court found it "highly necessary to statute a repugnant example confronted with such ungodliness", they concluded that the case was "very unusual" and required consideration from superior authorities in Copenhagen.  Poulsen was to be kept in custody in Č áhcesuolu until the answer arrived. However, before the resolution from Copenhagen came, Poulsen was killed; struck with the back of an axe in his sleep. The person who did this, a servant in the regional governor's household, was later declared insane.
Whereas Poulsen was immobilised, killed, in Č áhcesuolu, the drum travelled further. In  it entered the Royal Danish Art Chamber (Kunstkammer) in Copenhagen, established around . This collection formed a basis for later museums, including the National Museum of Denmark. In , the king's collection of artefacts from different corners of the world was split and sent to several newly instituted special museums. Until recently, Poulsen's drum was officially owned by the National Museum of Denmark as a part of its ethnographic collection, although on long term loan to Sámid Vuorká-Dávvirat since . 

The material assembly
In accordance with Haraway's request to get out of the habit of grasping things as wholes or enclosed entities, in this part I conceptualise the drum as an assembly, to acknowledge that it is composed out of various materials with different abilities. This move is also an appeal to recognise the drum as something that carries a force and which forms active parts of relationships. Thinking alongside W.J.T Mitchell, who considers the ability of images to have requests and desires, one could ask: What does this particular assembly want, or phrased in another way, what actions and relationships does it establish, encourage or demand?  Seen from a material perspective, in terms of its affordances and the way they appeal to human capacities, the drum invites to be held and touched. Two oblong holes have been cut in the curved shape of the pine tree, so that a hand could easily slip through and clutch the remaining piece of wood. The pine is polished and oiled so that the shaft feels good in the hand. Also, the size of the drum ( ×  ×  cm) makes it possible to hold and carry. Its outline is circular, or rather, oval, symmetrical along the long axis and curved toward the ends, one end slightly narrower than the other. The wooden bowl is carved of a single piece, a large pine burl, hence the convex bow. Animal skin, in this case prepared reindeer leather, probably rawhide, is stretched over the open mouth of the wooden bowl and fastened with sinew onto the carved plait-patterned border on the reverse side.
The skin is light in colour, like parchment, and has painted drawings on it. Most likely the membrane was greased to protect the skin from drying out and the drawings to fade.  In the first interrogation Poulsen supposedly explained that he made the drawings with his own blood, tapped from below his chest, while in the court record it is stated that the paint is made of boiled alder bark.  The alder extract gives a reddish-brown colour that contrasts with the pale leather, although in some places only traces of it are left on the worn skin. I will return to the drawings and the discussion of what they represent, but for now I want to linger a little longer with the material presence.
If we could touch the membrane with our hand or with a tapper, we would produce vibrations, or movements, in cooperation with the drum, and thus sound. In this sense, the material touches us, it reaches out and affects us, not only mentally, but also physically through the touch of sound on our skin.  This is vibrant material, in the most basic meaning.
The drum too is touched by the relations and actions it has participated in. An animal claw is attached to its back, probably remains from the indigenous Sámi practices it was part of during Poulsen's stewardship. The court document mentions a fox face, two fox ears and a fox claw attached to its back.  Other important actors that collaborate with the drum are the veažir, a horn tapper with a handle covered in tanned skin from a young reindeer, and the vuorbi, a small, convex brass disc, often referred to as a pointer in English.  They are companions to the drum, not integrated into the material assembly that constitute it, but accompanying entities denoted as "ritual partners" in the Ruoktot exhibition.
Like most individuals, the drum is changed and marked by life in a corporeal sense. It has scars, wounds and bruises, reminiscences of injuries and assaults but also of efforts of healing and repair. An open crack runs along the handle on the back, there are several fissures on the skin, and the dermis is stitched several places to prevent the surface from dissolving.
Very explicit evidence of the drum's life as a museum object are found in the inscriptions added after the drum was taken from Poulsen. For example, the code "BAf. " is tattooed with black ink onto the skin. It is placed right above the head of a figure that he refers to as the "Diermis" in the court documents, to which I will return. The same number is repeated, in the same colour and style on the reverse side of the drum skin, further down and partly visible through the opening in the wood on the back. Here, another inscription appears; "La " is written with a lighter ink and has a different, more scribble-like character. The same number is repeated in a tidier lettering style, this time in white and with punctuation marks, L.a.., on the wooden side of the drum. An acquisition number is a unique identifying code that provides information about when an object was added to a collection. The number is physically attached to the item and appears on records which relate to it. Organisations have their own code for acquisitions, and when an artefact changes hands it is assigned a new number. The "BAf. " was allotted to the drum when it entered the Royal Danish Art Chamber towards the end of the s, whereas the L.a.. refers to the code it received in  when it was transferred to the ethnographic department in the newly established National Museum in Copenhagen.  In the fraught case of the drum, bearing in mind the way it was taken from its owner by force, and considering the prolonged ownership discussion, it becomes especially poignant how the labelling not only functions as a practical tool, but as an explicit marker of property. The prominent place of ownership marks, especially the first-mentioned, penned directly on what is commonly perceived as the front side, and almost touching one of the drum figures, underscores this purpose.
Other remnants of the drum's museum life may not be visibly evident in the same way, but the effect could be just as palpable. For a long time, it was common practice for museums to apply a variety of pesticide agents to vulnerable items in their collections to preserve them from dilapidation by microorganisms, fungi, and other pests. Because such conservation was not always documented, it is often unknown whether specific objects are contaminated before tests have been conducted, but as the director for Riddo-DuottarMuseat, Anne May Olliwho is trained as a conservatorhas shown, it is commonly the case with the old Sámi items.  Recent tests indicate that much of the material from the National Museum in Copenhagen has been impregnated and contains high levels of pesticides. Olli's inquiry reveals that even though the drum has been cleaned, it should be regarded as infected and come with prescriptions to prevent infesting humans.  Although invisible, this toxic heritage adds to the material assembly of the drum and governs its handling and interactions.
Despite efforts of "arrest" through incarceration and conservation, the double-edged sword of care and detention, the drum is still "alive". It still has the capacity to stir emotions and cause activities, to compel others to act, behave, understand, and relate in certain ways. It is not only arrested; it is arresting. The drum has (among other things) the power "to stop the viewer in his or her tracks, to convey an arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention", to quote Stephen Greenblatt.  Moreover, the meeting of skin, sap, blood, sinew, bark, wood, grease and other substances forms a lively materiality in itself.  But, there is more to it than that, more than the organic assembly and vigour of the physical substance. Like human actors, the drum can be said to have an aura or a character, or a special quality that makes it stand out as something more than the sum of its parts. In the exhibition Ruoktot at RDM-SVD, the drum energy is conceptualised in terms of determination and expression, as the aforementioned exhibition text states: "Drums are not merely objects of use" they are rather "considered as powerful non-human beings with their own will and with a voice". 

Distributed agency
Clearly, Poulsen saw his drum as something more than "merely an object of use". According to the records from the interrogation, he said that "if he lost the drum it would cause great misfortune for him, his wife, and children, people and everything they had; indeed, they would not know how to worship [tilbede] or know how things would go".  For Poulsen the drum obviously had a capacity to act in the world; as a bearer of knowledge, with healing and communicative powers, and as a way to worship and pay respect to one's surroundings, with multiple other sides to it. Importantly, it was to be treated in a certain way, and had great personal value and emotional significance for Poulsen as well as others that related to it. He could communicate with his drum in the same way as when two people speak with each other, he explained in court.  Through the drum he could receive knowledge of people, animals, places, and weather conditions. He could also use the drum to help people and animals, to interfere in and improve their life. When he was asked if he could cast a bad spell over someone, a curse known as a gand, he admitted being able to lift the spell out and send it back to the person who cast it. He also acknowledged that through the drum he could punish a thief, make him become dry and weary like a piece of dead wood.  It is important to note that even if Poulsen knew how to do these things, he did not admit to having carried it out, at least not in the realm in which he was on trial, that is, in the kingdom of Denmark-Norway.
When Poulsen was instructed to perform in court, he first crossed himself, then the drum, and recited Our Father, as well as several other "prayers and adorations" using Karelian and Sámi words and phrases. He did this with dedication and tears in his eyes, and uttered some of the words in a low voice, making them difficult to decipher, according to the judge Niels Tygesen Knag's comments.  He recounts how Poulsen's prayers were directed towards the pictures on the drum, and that some of the gods [en del af Guderne] did not want to answer because he played in a Norwegian house [spiller i Nordmands huus].  The ritual partners were also set to work; the court record describes how Poulsen rotates the drum, lifts and lowers it, taps with the veažir, and receives answers through the vuorbi dancing on the top of the membrane. Clearly, the vuorbi, or the palm, which is the word Poulsen is reported to have used, was an important companion. Knag once pretended to have misplaced it and describes how Poulsen was afraid and mourned until he got it back and responded with laughter and gratification.  Most of the court record centres around the drawings, referred to as "the painted gods".  In terms of composition, the pictorial space is divided into five parts, created by the lines that run horizontally over the surface. The lines can be interpreted as the ground that anchors most of the figures. To illustrate this grounding, it is helpful to look at Ánde Muitalus (Anders Poulsen forteller), a woodprint by the Sámi artist Elle-Hánsa/Hans Ragnar Mathisen from  (Fig. ). Here, the horizontals of the drum paintings are connected, indicating a slightly curved landscape that ties the figures to the same track, with some variations. The motive is repeated and somewhat altered in three sections on a rectangular print. The title reads "Ánde's narrative" and "Ánde narrates" in Sámi and in Norwegian respectively.
The court record describes the composition on the drum from top to bottom.  The first figures are explained as the Ilmaris and the Diermis, humanlike representations of bad weather and thunder, and the Gvodde, a wild reindeer. The next row shows a circle divided by a vertical line, hovering over the ground, it is Peive, the sun, Poulsen explains. There is also a building, a cathedral, dom Kirch, surrounded by figures explained as Christ, or Jumal barn, and God the Father, or Jumal Etziem, and The Holy Spirit, Engil. Poulsen describes the two first figurations on the middle line as St. Anne and St. Mary. Next comes three figures, Julle peive, that are connected to the three days of Christmas. Above the fourth horizontal line, a circle appears again, this time without the vertical line, and this is the moon. Here is also another building with crosses, explained as Poulsen's local church, the one to which he and others have gifted votives such as wax candles and money. On the left side of the building are two men, "Olmoug Mane Kirche", on the way to church. On the other side of the church is a figure placed on the same level as the moon, and not connected to the same line or ground as the others; this is to be interpreted as someone approaching the church. Shorter vertical lines are painted on the side of many of the humanlike figures, these are staffs or canes, Juncher Sabbe or Stur Herr sabbe, that is, staffs to be held by persons of importance: "Just like the masters on earth carry staffs, so do these", Poulsen explains.  The lower part differs from the rest of the pictorial space. Here, instead of a single horizontal line connecting the figures, each figure has its own, shorter line, and they are placed at slightly different levels. This area is given explanations that correspond with Christian ideas of hell, purgatory, and punishment in the afterlife. There are four humanlike figures in this section. In the court document they are referred to as devils or demons. One that kills people and represents disease. Another one is a devil that governs hell and rummages around in the world. Yet another, called Hvenaales Gvolisis, is connected to a stick, this is "the devil that was put in chains when God created the world", Poulsen states.  The fourth figure, the one dressed in a similar way as the two first figures on the third row, is a female figure, a woman belonging to Hvenaales Gvolisis. There are also three figures not shaped as humans. One represents fire, the fire that consumes human souls in hell. Then there is the cauldron of boiling tar, where human souls are boiled. Finally, there is the grave of hell, Hilvet Haufd, where all the humans that believe in the devil are thrown by God. In the court record, the descriptions of these figures ("the fire", "the cauldron" and "the grave") are accompanied by drawings.  Even if, when pressed in court, Poulsen asserts that he "has not forsworn God in heaven or Christianity, but when he worshiped the painted gods, he meant by them God in heaven", there is no simple, straightforward answer to where the power of the drum resides.  Poulsen is ascribing agency to the drum itself, to its ritual partners, the veažir and the vuorbi, and to the figures, the "painted gods", as well as to a nonmaterial source, presented as "God in heaven" in the court document.
Of course, agency must also be credited to the person that knows how to handle the drum, as well as to the act itself, and to the process of making it. The knowledge about handling the drum was transferred from Poulsen's mother and/or a man identified as Anders Pedersen from Torne Lappmark, in the court record.  The position of the drum maker is equally ambiguous, if it was made by Poulsen or given to him by Pedersen.
Then there is of course the agency of the material, on its own and assembled with other materials. Some reflections by Iver Jåks (-), a Sámi artist and skilled duojar, come to mind when thinking about this. He underlines how important it is to consider what options the raw material affords us […]. We also have to ensure that we shape the raw material so that it is strengthened, not weakened.
[…] If we are using several materials in one object, we have to know how they interact. What their sum total creates, if they complete another structurally. We must know what attributes the material has, but also how it is to be treated.  Such attention to material properties is evident in Poulsen's explanation, for example he says that the drum must be made of pine, "or else it will not do [den duer intet, uden den er af Fyrretrae]".  This can be interpreted in several ways, that pine is the most functional material for the purpose, but it could also point to the drum's efficacy. A rich tradition testifies to the powers of some of the other materials connected to the drum as well, such as the brass and the alder. Brass is said to have healing and protective powers, whereas sap from the alderconsidered a holy tree, "the tree that bleeds", as Jåks' has phrased itplayed important roles in bear hunt rituals, for example.  In addition, it is essential to consider Sámi prescriptions on how to behave when gathering the material, so as to not spoil either the material or the surroundings. Here, other agencies may come into play as well. For example, as the Sámi philosopher Nils Oskal has discussed in relation to the concept of "reindeer luck", it is important to "get along well with the landscape", to behave in certain ways, for example by asking for permission when drifting and dwelling in the landscape, and to act humble and polite toward the siedi; a stone, boulder, or another powerful formation in nature, found throughout Sápmi, considered important and to be treated with respect.  This could be done in various ways, for example by gifting it bones, fish oil, coins, or personal items, or simply by greeting it when passing by.
One of the points I am trying to make here is that various energies, agencies, realities, beings, and personalities come into play with regard to the drum, and that this is not possible to render as simple one-to-one causal relationships with clearly marked boundaries between who (or what) is moving whom (or what). I have endeavoured to sketch out such complexities, enchantments and entanglements without mystifying or simplifying, but strived to present them in a straightforward and descriptive way.
Similar to animal or human bodies the drum's body is multiple, its materiality is shared between various organisms and entities. Also, like humans and animals, the drum's animacy, agency or personhood can be described as dispersed and compound; it is resting in, or attributed to, a variety of sources and kins, andas with humans and animalsit is addressed in both thing-like and person-like modes.  Where the drum's power or agency ultimately "comes from" cannot be pinpointed in one single answer, or to one sole originator, even if that is what the clergy and authorities tried to do when they named the drum an "instrument of the devil". 

Trapped in translation
As seen in the court records, one common way the colonial authorities perceived Sámi drums in the th and th centuries was as "evil" and "pagan" tools. Through the drum, the devil could act in the world and do harm; this is how the authorities legitimised the gathering and destruction of drums, and the detainment and execution of their owners. Paradoxically, in tandem with the aspiration to abolish Sámi drums ran an aspiration to conserve them. Thus, at the same time as drums were confiscated and destroyed, they were regarded as attractive collectors' items. They became prominent parts of both scholarly and imperial collecting and display practices, entered curiosity cabinets or art chambers in various places of Europe, and circulated as part of global and colonial exchange patterns.  As already noted, the drum ended up in the Royal Danish Art Chamber. It is included in the printed catalogues of the collection, the Museum Regium complex, four in total, written by Holger Jacobaeus for Christian V. The first edition was published in . Here the drum is described together with a Sámi drum that had entered the royal collection through the collecting of Ole Worm after he died in .  Evidently, Poulsen's drum had reached the King's collection in , when it was sent from Finnmark by a missionary. Both drums are depicted in a vignette, in what might be the first visual representation of the drum in question (Fig. ).  As with textual translations, only some aspects of the extant material are conveyed through the visual translation. We only see the front of the drum, though its presence as a real-life body is hinted at; it is slightly tilted, so that the side is visible and creates an illusion of three-dimensionality. Still, there is a lightness to the drawing that does not bring forth the impression of the solid material, nor the weight of the assembly of wood, skin, sinew, and grease. Also, some of the drum figures are lost in the translation, the "moon" is missing and two of the "demons" are gone, and a building is added next to the "church". To be fair, the drawing was probably not intended as a detailed representation of the drum, as part of a book vignette it functioned to embellish, stimulate interest, and present the topic. The symmetry and overall impression clearly were important, still, the selection of what to include in the picture was not random and purely decorative. The vignette refers to specific drums and other objects located in the royal collection and is an introduction to the chapter on what was later translated as "ethnographical objects" placed in the "Indian chamber" in the King's collection.  The next instance I have found of an illustration of the drum is in the Norwegian linguist Jens Andreas Friis' book Lappisk Mythologi, Eventyr og Folkesagn from  (Fig. ).  Here the focus is chiefly on the drumhead. Although illustrations of the backside of two other bowl drums are included, as well as the drawing of two tappers taken from Johannes Schefferus' woodcuts in Lapponia from , they act merely as general illustrations, or as examples of how these elements look. Individual attention is only given to the frontside of the drum, and not so much to the front itself and its materiality, but rather to the figures on it. Friis presents ten drums, or more precisely, drum fronts, with Poulsen's drum as no. . The drawings are two-dimensional and schematic; a line indicates the outline of the drum on a flat surface as seen from above, and the figures are rendered as symbols, each with a numeral that matches a brief explanation of what they presumably represent. Friis' image is re-used by the Norwegian scholar and politician Just Qvigstad in Kildeskrifter til den lappiske mythologi, from .  This representation technique is also followed by the Swedish ethnographer, Ernst Manker in his monumental work on Sámi drums. Manker's two volume work, Die Lappische Zaubertrommel, could a fill an entire research project, and I will point only to a few aspects here. The first volume from , Die Lappische Zaubertrommel: Die Trommel als Denkmal Materieller Kultur, maps all known existing drums, many of them located by Manker in collections throughout Europe, and he attends in detail to their provenance, material, technique, and construction.  The main part of the book is a meticulous comparison and contextualisation of techniques, constructions, and materials in relation to various sources. This book introduces an organisation and categorisation of the drums according to geographical origin and technique which is still in use today, both in scholarly and popular reception of drums. While the emphasis in the first book is on material aspects, the second volume from , Die Lappische Zaubertrommel: Die Trommel als Urkunde geistigen Lebens, attends more to the "spiritual" side of the drums, as the title suggests, associated with the frontside and the paintings.  Here Manker detaches the figures from the material context, the drums on which they occur, and organises them in themed groups according to what they presumably represent. In other words, they are treated as signs or symbols (Fig. ).
Poulsen's drum is included in both books, as drum no. . In the first volume the drum is illustrated using black and white photos, displaying its front, its side, and its back.
Here provenance, material, construction, and technique are in focus, while the second volume is illustrated with black and white drawings in the style of Friis' publication, focusing on its iconography (Fig. ).  That is, in a design that renders the drumhead in a schematical way, as a flat and uniform image, and the paintings on it as symbols to be deciphered, numbered, and attached to a corresponding explanation. What is lost in such translations are of course the weight and physicality, the measures and the proportions, the effects of shadow and shape, details such as fractures, scratches, and other irregularities, in addition to the other sensory aspects conveyed by the actual material. This is not to say that drawing cannot convey materiality and sensory experience, my point here is that as a rule such aspects have not been given attention in the drawings of drums, which has focused on the figures on the drumhead, and rendered the drum body in a schematical way.  Something is also added in translation in a very concrete way, as both Manker and Friis have their own interpretations of the figures that are not completely visible on the original drum. In addition, to make them clearer and more visible, they depict them in slightly different ways. For example, the staffs are dissimilar and "the cauldron" is indicated by a closed ring in Friis' drawing, whereas in Manker's it is marked by a dotted line. Neither of them represents it with a smaller circle on top, as is done in the court document.
Manker also used the drawings in other, more commonly available publications, such as in the popular books Nåidkonst: Trolltrummans bildvärld and Samefolkets konst.  In the course of time, the frontal representation of drums and the individual figures from his books seem to have taken on a life of their own; they have become parts of a broader visual culture where the figures circulate across various media and contexts. Illustrations and explanations that first occurred in Manker's second volume, are used today almost by default on internet sites, in museum exhibitions and tourist leaflets, often without acknowledging where they are taken from (Fig. ). Although for those who know Die Lappische Zaubertrommel, it is easy to recognise where they originated from.
As Håkan Rydving has pointed out, Ernst Manker frequently substitutes the meanings in the indigenous Sámi sources with what he considers more authentic significations.  Several of Poulsen's explanations in the court document have been replaced by Manker's scholarly presumptions. For example, figure no.  in the drawing of the drum is not interpreted as a cathedral, as Poulsen said, "but perhaps a reflex for the concept of saajve (the world of the spirit helpers in South Sámi belief)" and "no.  is not St. Anne, but the goddess Maadteraahka, no.  not St. Mary, but a counterpart to the goddess Saraahka, etc".  Rydving argues that the rich imagery of the drums should be regarded as Sámi innovations and as resistance to the limitations set by Christianity, a religion that demanded an exclusiveness that many Sámi opposed by continuing to follow indigenous customs while they were integrated into the ecclesial system. Also, it should be noted that indigenous ritual practices were not as problematic in the Catholic church as they would later become in the Lutheran, and that transcultural entanglements are reflected in the material and visual culture of the time and area.  For example, Sámi scholar Maja Dunfjeld maintains that a "Sámi cosmic world" became entwined with Christian Catholic symbols, and that emblems like the gothic A and M silver coils (Fig. ), still in use today on the Sámi gákti, would link Saaraakhaa and Maadtheraka with St. Anne and St. Mary.  Thus, these symbols have several, concurrent meanings, she concludes.
Such concurrences speak of dynamics and preclude the idea of Sámi drums as products of a stable and closed-off cultural unit. It may be useful to grasp Poulsen's drum through the concept of "contact zones", coined by Mary Louise Pratt as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power".  What Pratt terms "arts of the contact zone" incorporates pieces of the representational repertoire of the dominant society in a selfdeterminate way, resulting in a polysemy, or ambivalence, that impedes absolute homogeneity of meaning. Pratt observes a tendency in the reception of such art to "clean it" in the analysis, to make it appear as more uniform, or more in accordance with established expectations, something that is also noticeable in the reception of Poulsen's drum and of other Sámi drums, as Rydving has shown. In addition, not only the symbols, but also the users of the drums are frequently framed more uniformly than the sources imply. As a rule, the users are denoted as male, even when their identities are unknown and although one drum could have had more than one user. The authorities who interrogated the Sámi focused on male practitioners, and the way they questioned them and how it was phrased obviously played a role in the framing. Still, there are glimpses into female and other identities in the source material. As noted, Poulsen acknowledged his mother as a teacher in the art of using the drum. Also, other sources point to female noaiddit, especially when Sámi oral traditions are considered.  Moreover, the practice of using drums tends to be communicated as more streamlined than the variety of sources testify to. A paradigmatic example is the installation of a copy of Poulsen's drum in a display of "Shamanism" as "a common trait among the Arctic people", in the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History. Here a copy of the drum is presented among diverse items, texts, and images, from various times and places, to demonstrate that it forms part of the same practice of shamanism throughout the vast area commonly referred to as the Arctic Fig. .  When drum practice is translated as "shamanism" it enters a category that tends to homogenise it as "a ritualized practice to gain ecstasy".  The narrative converts it into a uniform practice, notwithstanding all the other actions the drum could be involved in; for example, as a communicative, orientational and curative device, as described by Poulsenwho does not mention it as an aid to enter a trance-like condition. This idea of the ability of the drum to immobilise its user hails back to the representation of the drum as a sorcerer's device and an instrument of the devil.  In a way, then, the drum has been "religionized", it has been turned into a "demonic device" or a "mythical compendium" while Sámi sources point to ecological and therapeutic uses as parts of practical life.  In accordance, missionaries, theologians, and historians of religion have long been among the main contributors to the scholarly study of Sámi drums.

Closing remarks
To summarise, there is a tendency to translate actors like Poulsen and the drum into categories that immobilise them and prevent actual historical configurations to enter the narrative because they do not fit outsiderestablished expectations and ideas concerning Sámi authenticity. Moreover, I would argue that the debate about what the drum figures represent has steered the attention away from individual aspects of the drums and their vibrant materiality, perceiving them predominantly as passive transmitters of symbolic content and turning them into twodimensional images.
In this article I have considered the particular materiality of the drum and its compound agencies. I have tried to emphasise the complex positions and agencies of Poulsen, the drum, and their relations. This approach is inspired by theoretical and methodological attempts to find ways to get out of the habit of grasping things as "wholes" or distinct units. I found it useful to think along the lines of Marisol de la Cadena and her methodology of "not only", a formula "to acknowledge the translation and signal its limits".  The material assembly that has been the focus of this study can be rendered as "a drum", but it is "not only" that; one of its most prominent caretakers can be comprehended as a noaidi, but he was also so much more than that, et cetera. As de la Cadena maintains, "not only" leaves the possibility open for other descriptions, but also for what she calls "ontological openings", for that which may emerge "beyond the limit of epistemic knowledge and thus exceeds the way 'we' know".  The most severe consequences of the constraint and translation of Sámi drums affected their owners. Apparently, the young man who killed Poulsen did so because, as he confessed in court, "Poulsen was a sorcerer and, accordingly, ought to die".  Undeniably, the ecclesial and governmental translation, the othering of Poulsen, the drum, and their practices had effective and deadly consequences.

Notes
. Sámediggi, "Erenoamáš rumbočájáhus čájehuvvo Sámiid Vuorká-Dávviris", https://sametinget.no/aktuelt/uniksamling-trommer-vises-pa-samiid-vuorka-davvirat. .aspx?sprak= (last accessed August , ). The museum changed the official name from Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat to RiddoDuottarMuseat -Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat (RDM-SVD) in , as part of a merger of several Sámi museums into a larger organisation, the RiddoDuottarMuseat. The current physical location of the museum, the building from the s, designed to house the museum, is often referred to as the Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat. To ease the reading, I will refer to the museum as RDM-SVD or simply as the Sámi museum, or the Sámi museum in Kárášjohka, if a specification is needed. When the overall organisation is referred to, I use its name RiddoDuottarMuseat. When the museum before the  merging is addressed, I will use Sámiid Vuorká-Dávvirat. . "Torne Lappmark" was an area in the Swedish Lappmark system; a way to divide and control the northern area of the Swedish empire. The area denoted as "Torne Lappmark" stretched over parts of today's Norway, Finland, and Sweden. In this text I will use the term Sápmi, which includes a larger part of the traditional Sámi area, when I am not referring to the old system or to specific regional places and place names. The trial document shows that "Anders Poulsen" was also in command of Karelian language, which further complicates the name giving issue. It should also be kept in mind that the standardised way if writing names is a more recent practice.
. Ruoktot. Sámi rumbbuid máhcaheapmi/Tilbakeføring av samiske trommer/The Return of the Sámi Drums [exhibition leaflet], Kárášjohka: RiddoDuottarMuseat -Sámiid Vuorká Dávvirat, , unpaginated. This part is also based on informal discussions with Siv Rasmussen and other experts in the field over the years. . The lack of attention to the material aspects of Sámi drums is paradoxical since there is a long tradition for recording items in museum collections through drawing, and the drums have such a long history as museum items. In this drawing method attention to material properties, effects of shadow and shape, and to details such as fractures and irregularities, is essential. I do not claim that such documentation drawings have not been made, but that this drawing style is hereto not reflected in the public discussion on drums.
I draw here also on discussions with art historians Hanne Hammer Stien and Irene Snarby about Iver Jåks' documentation drawings.