Hello,
I'd like to learn more about bear worship (arctolatry). I don't think a comparative study has been done about practices among different cultures, since unfortunately I have a hard time even just locating per se this kind of subject in literature. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Some populations which first come to mind would be the Ainu of Japan and the Forest Sami of Fennoscandia, however I am not finding much literature particularly about the latter.
Could you please recommend me some papers or books?
Thank you
The classic work on this subject was by A. Irving Hallowell in 1926. This included "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere," American Anthropologist 28, 1926 and a small book, Circumpolar Bear Cults of the same year (I don't have the exact title and I can't find it online - but it was something like that). This set the stage for defining a circumpolar, shared tradition regarding bears, how they were regarded, and how people interacted with them.
You may find this site of use.
Hallowell looked at Inuit, Ainu and Sami culture - as you indicate, but his work included other Native Americans and Siberians.
I hope that helps.
According to a column ('Bear Hunting and Rites') in Lars I. Hansen & Bjørnar Olsen, Hunters in Transition: An Outline of Early Sámi History, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 120f., the main primary source of Bear Cult among the Saamis is a small Swedish treatise written in the 18th century:
Fjellström, Pehr. Kort berättelse om lapparnas björna-fänge, samt deras der wid brukade widskeppelser. Stockholm, 1755; rep. Umeå, 1981.
It seems to be not so difficult to get a reprint copy (around SEK 60+ plus postage) in secondhand book shops, but its language (Swedish) is probably problematic. Some synopsis of this work in English, seems to be available at another site that /u/itsallfolklore had already mentioned below.
Broadbent, Noel D., Lapps and Labyrinths: Saami Prehistory, Colonization and Cultural Resilience, Washington, DC: Arctic Study Center, esp. Chap. 8 (pp. 173-91) also deals with the possible relationship between bear ritual and circular sacrificial site finds, mentioning the names of additional primary sources from 17th and 18th century Nordic countries as well as secondary literatures (unfortunately many of them are again in Swedish). [Added]: He handles with the comparison between Saami's bear ritual and that of Ainu, though just a little:
As for Ainu's Iomante, I fortunately by accident found the following English article:
This might also be a good question for r/askanthropology