Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing

Shamanism has always been of great interest to anthropologists. More recently it has been "discovered" by westerners, especially New Age followers. This book breaks new ground by examining pristine shamanism in Greenland, among people contacted late by Western missionaries and settlers. On the basis of material, most of which is only available in Danish, and presented here in English for the first time, the author questions Mircea Eliade's well-known definition of the shaman as the master o...