The archetypal image of the bird in the tales of the Kola Sami (in the records of the 18th-19th centuries)

The images of animals in Sami folklore remain beyond the scope of research interest, meanwhile they are part of the pagan conception of the northern people about the surrounding world. The purpose of our study is to find out mythological representations of an ethnos that underlie the fairy-tale image of a bird and the further development of its semantics. The material for the study were the excerpts of the Sami myth about the world creation in which the sacral image of a waterfowl plays a major role, along with the collections of Sami fairy tales. The semantics of the image from its mythological up to its folkloric meaning was traced. The episodes of the Sami cosmogonic myth reveal traits of Finno-Ugric (the emergence of the world from the eggs of the bird) and praural (the demiurge is a waterfowl) views. The folkloristic image of the bird is based on mythological ideas of the ethnos about it as a demiurge, the bird is a mediator between heaven and earth, marital relations between birds and people reflect the totemic beliefs of the ancient Sami. A mythological image of the bird expands its semantics in fairy tales, where the bird becomes an assistant of people and participates in deciding on their destiny. Along with the mythological images of ducks, doves, ravens in fairy tales there are images of a goose, a swan, an eagle, a sea-gull, a dove, a falcon. All birds in folklore are related to the motif of werewolves.