the frame drum. The frame drum type is more reminiscent of other ceremonial drums used by the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The membrane and its symbols The membrane is made of untanned reindeer hide. Lars Olsen, who described his uncle's drum, the Bindal drum, in 1885, said that the hide was usually taken from the neck of a reindeer calf because of its thickness. The symbols were painted with a paste made from alder bark. The motifs on a drum reflect the worldview of the owner and his family, both in terms of religious beliefs and in their modes of subsistence. A world is depicted via images of reindeer, both domesticated and wild, and of carnivorous predators that pose a threat to the herd. The modes of subsistence are presented by scenes of wild game hunting, boats with fishing nets, and reindeer herding. Additional imagery on the drum consists of mountains, lakes, people, deities, as well as the camp-site with tents and storage-houses. Symbols of foreign civilizations, such as churches and houses, represent the threats from the surrounding and expanding non-Sámi community. Each owner chose his set of symbols; there are no two drums with identical sets of symbols. The drum mentioned in the medieval Latin tome Historia Norvegiæ, with motifs such as whales, reindeer, skis and a boat would have belonged to a coastal Sámi. The Lule Sámi drum reflects an owner who found his mode of subsistence chiefly through hunting, rather than herding. A typology based on the structure of the patterns can be divided into three main categories: Southern Sámi, characterized by the rhombus-shaped sun cross in the center Central Sámi, where the membrane is divided in two by a horizontal line, often with a solar symbol in the lower section Northern Sámi, where the membrane is divided by horizontal lines into three or five separate levels representing different worlds: the heavens, the world of the living and an underworld. In Manker's overview of 71 known drums, there are 42 Southern Sámi drums, 22 Central Sámi drums and seven Northern Sámi drums. The Bindal drum is a typical Southern Sámi drum, with the sun-symbol in its center. Its last owner also explained that the symbols on the membrane were organized according to the four cardinal directions around the sun. South is described as the "summer side" or "the direction of life," and contains symbols of the Sámi's