This picture by Johan Turi is dominated by the hovering head of a spiritual being, probably stállu. In Sámi mythology, stállu is a dangerous, evil, simple-minded spiritual figure. The smaller head on the right might be luttak, its ‘wife’. The couple seems to be riding on a sleigh. Turi also made another version of this motif. Both pictures are in the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm. Though he did not apply titles, the curator Ernst Manker, who knew and wrote about him, refers to the other version as stállu and [its] wife luttak (Markens Människor, Stockholm: Médens, 1944). That image is now well-known from later publications, such as the editions and translations of Turi’s account of the Sámi originally published in 1910, Muitalus sámiid birra (2010 and later).

I suggest the same descriptive title for the little-known version I write about here. Wide-open eyes with black pupils and blue irises against white stand out strongly within shapes like elongated almonds. The gaze is penetrating to the point of freezing us into a trance.

We do not know much about Turi’s possible sources of inspiration for stállu’s powerful appearance. Its penetrating gaze may remind us of the devastating ‘Evil Eye’, exemplified in Greek mythology by the single eye of the Cyclopes, or the gaze of the Gorgon Medusa who turned those who looked on it to stone. In the Muslim world the 'evil eye' symbolizes taking power over someone or something through envy or with evil intent.  

In opposite terms, staring eyes may stand for intellectual perception, the eye of the Sun God (Egyptian Hor, Horus). In Christian iconography, God’s watchful eye can be shown in an equilateral triangle. Christ’s powerful glance and halo are central to his appearance as Pantocrator or Maiestas Domini. Religious cycles (Jewish or Christian) may also include seraphim and cherubim, winged faces who see us all. Closer to Turi's time, large and strikingly expressive eyes can be found in romantic and symbolist imagery.

In Turi’s picture, how does stállu’s gigantic face and head relate to the sleigh below? No actual body is hinted at. What, then, may be the significance of the powerful fields of green and grey brushstrokes which partly encompass, partly radiate from its head? Do they represent a veil? Or do they indicate something less concrete, a ‘cloud’ of light, an aureole, a halo, traditionally signs of holiness and the divine, but here turned into the opposite as deadly destructive forces? Turi described stállu as half human and half ‘troll’ (monster) or devil. Might we compare his descriptions of stállu to any of the mentioned mythologies? In his words, stállu, in plural stálut,

were beings that are part human and part mánnelaš or beargalat [demons]. It was strong and a diehtti [shamanic practitioner, noaidi]. And the jiehtanas [giant] was much the same, but it did not hate people the way that the stállu did. The stállu killed people and ate them.

[Johan Turi, An Account of the Sámi: A Translation of Muitalus sámiid birra, based on the Sámi original, translated and edited by Thomas A. DuBois, Kárášjohka: ČállidLágádus, 2012, p. 157 (slightly modified).]

Here, stállu really comes forward as ominous, hateful and murderous. It is dangerous, but also, as Turi tells us, simpleminded. In his picture, the staring gaze of stállu ensnares us. But there is more. The look of the eyes seems directed both inwardly and outwardly. The violent and strong coloured surroundings of its almost frozen facial expression strengthen the visual impact of stállu’s head as an evil force coming at us.

Adding to this is Turi’s idiosyncratic use of proportions. The sleigh seems too small for this enormous head. They appear against a ground of slightly yellow carton, perhaps indicating snow. But stains of colour near the edges of the carton interrupt. To the right a brushstroke and a dark spot of red expose the carton’s surface and thus the artificial nature of the picture as a ‘hand-made unreality’. The dark blue fingerprint below, perhaps Turi’s own, reinforces this impression, and that of a drawing made on cheap reused carton. It is anobjet trouvé, indicative of Turi's relative lack of means. In the context of his account inMuitalus, the image confirms his intention of explaining the truth about the Sámi, including spiritual values and worldviews. With the wording of the Russian contemporary Wassily Kandinsky, it is a powerful demonstration of the artist’s ‘secret power of vision’. The value of Turi’s drawing lies precisely here, in its complex compound of whatever is at hand, personal handcraft, Sámi storytelling and visionary imagination. This picture is, in my view, Turi’s expressive masterpiece.

Essay by Svein Aamold