Description
Book SynopsisStories of the primordial woman who married a bear, appear in matriarchal traditions across the global North from Indigenous North America and Scandinavia to Russia and Korea. In The Woman Who Married the Bear, authors Barbara Alice Mann, a scholar of Indigenous American culture, and Kaarina Kailo, who specializes in the cultures of Northern Europe, join forces to examine these Woman-Bear stories, their common elements, and their meanings in the context of matriarchal culture.The authors reach back 35,000 years to tease out different threads of Indigenous Woman-Bear traditions, using the lens of bear spirituality to uncover the ancient matriarchies found in rock art, caves, ceremonies, rituals, and traditions. Across cultures, in the earliest known traditions, women and bears are shown to collaborate through star configurations and winter cave-dwelling, symbolized by the spring awakening from hibernation followed by the birth of cubs. By the Bronze Age, however, the story of the Woman-
Trade ReviewThis book provides access to a wealth of traditional knowledge about women, bears, and our relationship to the natural world. Presenting profound insights with a light touch that is thought-provoking rather than polemical, it illustrates how values prevalent in early matriarchal societies remain essential today, as we contemplate ecological disaster and social collapse. This is a jewel of a book. * Natsu Taylor Saito, author of Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law *
The Woman who Married the Bear is a masterful work by two exemplary scholars. The great antiquity of their subject is indicated by its existence within Indigenous societies of North America, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Russia, Siberia, and beyond. The bear and the woman are mythic ancestors of sacred kinship within the great cycles of the living world, fostering the regeneration of life within human and animal realms, with urgent significance for today. * Joan Marler, Executive Director, Institute of Archaeomythology *
An extraordinary collaboration, this book excavates the trace hauntings of an almost lost cosmology, divinity, and rituals surrounding the figure of the Woman Who Married the Bear. The wide-ranging sources—ancient documents, cellular memories, and contemporary theories—challenge the hegemony of the Western patriarchal social imaginaries and recuperate the evidence of rich matri-centred cultures and their gift economies. A classic, welcome, highly recommended contribution to contemporary interdisciplinary scholarship. * Mary Condren, author of The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland *
Table of ContentsFirst, There Is Mother: An Introduction Barbara Alice Mann and Kaarina Kailo Part I: Indigenous North America & the Younger Dryas Barbara Alice Mann Chapter 1: Messengers of Sky, A Traditional Overview Chapter 2: A New and Frightening Reality, Analysis of Tradition Part II: Indigenous Eurasia Kaarina Kailo Chapter 3: Original Instructions, Bear Spirituality and Great Mothers Chapter 4: First Beings, The Mother behind It All Conclusion: Retrieval Barbara Alice Mann and Kaarina Kailo Bibliography Index
