Uno Harva
Born(1882-08-30)30 August 1882
Ypäjä
Died13 August 1949(1949-08-13) (aged 66)
Turku
NationalityFinnish
Other namesUno Holmberg
Alma materUniversity of Helsinki
Occupation(s)Theology, Sociology

Uno Nils Oskar Harva (known as Uno Holmberg until 1927; 30 August 1882, Ypäjä – 13 August 1949, Turku) was a Finnish religious scholar, who founded the discipline in Finland together with Rafael Karsten. A major figure in North Eurasian ethnology and study of religion, Harva is best known for his body of work on Finno-Ugric and Altaic religions.[1] He is considered to be one of the foremost 20th-century European interpreters of shamanism.[2]

Career

Harva conducted fieldwork among the Siberian Ket and Evenk peoples in the 1910s, researching their mythology and religion. He also spent the summers of 1911–1913 with the Finno-Ugric Votyaks (Udmurts) in the Urals and the Cheremis (the Mari people) on the Volga. He is considered to be an important anthropologist of Siberia.[3][4]

His study Der Baum des Lebens (The Tree of Life; 1922–23) was the first to show that the world tree from Norse mythology had many parallels in Europe and Asia.[5]

Harva wrote the fourth volume of the book series The Mythology of All Races in 1927. It contains a classic general description of Subarctic shamanism.[3]

Principal works

References

  1. ^ Juha Pentikäinen, ed. (1996). Shamanism and Northern Ecology. Walter de Gruyter. p. 32. ISBN 9783110811674.
  2. ^ Jeroen W Boekhoven (2011). Genealogies of Shamanism: Struggles for Power, Charisma and Authority. Barkhuis. p. 112. ISBN 9789077922927.
  3. ^ a b Andrei A. Znamenski, ed. (2004). Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology. Psychology Press. p. 263. ISBN 9780415332491.
  4. ^ Mark Nuttall; Terry Callaghan, eds. (2000). Arctic: Environment, People, Policy. CRC Press. p. 418. ISBN 9789058230874.
  5. ^ Anders Andrén (2014). Tracing Old Norse Cosmology. Nordic Academic Press. p. 34. ISBN 9789185509386.
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