ABSTRACT
Bodies of water – sea, rivers, lakes – have always been integral to mobilities and communication in the northern boreal world. The constant presence of water, and living in close proximity to water, have also infused northern water-worlds with complex cultural and cosmological meanings. Water-worlds have been associated especially with death and the dead – a central concern in northern cultures also more generally – although the perceptions and associations of water and bodies of water in the northern world are significantly more diverse.
Ships and boats were obviously important in such a water-world, both as real-world vessels used in travel but also in various symbolic functions, such as journeys to the Otherworld. The meanings and imagery of ships and the sea has been rehearsed in many different forms through ages, including the curious elk-boat imagery of Stone Age rock art, the famous Viking Age ship burials (but also Mesolithic burials in dug-outs and boat-shaped stone settings from the Bronze and Iron Ages), images of solar boats Bronze Age rock art and razors and so forth. This chapter discusses the metaphysical roles of boats and waterways in the northern cosmology: it considers boats as vehicles of the shaman in otherworldly travel, the role of boats in burial rites and boats as sentient beings in both ethnographic accounts and in historical and folklore material relating to the seaboard.
