Ethnographers Karl Tirén and Just Qvigstad use early phonographs to record hundreds of Sami yoik (luohti, juoiggus) performances across Sápmi (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia). These short vocal poems personify landscapes, animals, ancestors, and spirits (sieidde, čuolda), using vocable syllables and timbre modulation rather than lexical meaning. The cylinders preserve pre-Christian shamanic sound-poetry before missionary suppression and hydroelectric flooding of sacred sites.

The yoik recordings profoundly influenced Sami poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (Áillohaš), who incorporated yoik's vocable patterns, circular structure, and nature-identification into his picture-poem book Beaivi, Áhčážan (Sun, My Father), winner of Nordic Council Literature Prize (1991). Yoik's non-semantic poetics provided models for 'sound poetry' experiments (Henri Chopin, Jaap Blonk) and eco-poetics seeking pre-linguistic voice. The tradition demonstrates how shamanic sound poetry, lacking dictionary meaning, challenges text-centered definitions of 'poetry' and expands possibilities for Indigenous literary expression.