- Each god has a variety of little abilities they can offer, and a list of behaviors that they hate. Some of those are broadly shared, some are god-specific. They also like sacrifice. For everyone who is not a noraide, you get your cultivation by bringing sacrifices to the local noraide. They do a ritual, offer the sacrifice up to whichever god you're propitiating, get back qi-equivalent in return, and weave some (but usually not all) of it into knacks for you. Those knacks tend to be things that are handy for surviving in miserable conditions on marginal land, rather than stuff that makes you good at fighting. For example, you might have a knack that just lets you survive on less food, or be more resistant to the cold, or whatever. You can also get general favor, which is what lets you power those knacks.
My own research basically disagrees that these would only be 'little abilities'. Some would, certainly, but in terms of attitudes towards the Sami, the Norse seem to have thought they had a fairly significant amount of fairly potent magic with it influencing their own magical traditions (some of the stuff I looked at mentioned the Norse seemingly thinking they got a lot of their magic from the Sami), and there are some indications that early versions of Loki (where he is less adversarial and an ally) were based on how they viewed the Sami (with, one presumes, Thor and/or Odin then being how they viewed themselves comparatively). Like, there's a decent amount of evidence they thought the sami were
a lot better at Seidr and magic in general than they were. Additionally, the Finns
also thought the Sami were pretty magically potent, so it seems to have been a common outsider's view.
So basically, definitely not as combative as the Norse, but probably a powerful seidr equivalent practiced by a lot of people (which you mention in terms of rituals and the noaide, but would likely go further than that...the noaide would be best at it, but a lot of stuff seems to indicate it as more widespread), shapeshifting, and trickery on top of the survival stuff (and probably
some combat...especially archery). The Noaide would also definitely have a fylgja equivalent (as in an actual companion spirit) and one of their most mentioned abilities is the ability to send this spirit invisibly to see far events, providing basically scrying. Which is neat.
This is supported by the fact that the Norse and the Sami actually mostly got along and viewed each other as peers and equals for the most part, at least early on (700s-900s), and the Sami actually built a lot of the boats that the Norse used locally (as opposed to, like, ships for raiding) for whaling and the like, and were actually probably better hunters, fishermen, and craftsmen and thus better off economically with the Norse buying a lot of things from them (boots and other clothing of various sorts, mostly, on top of the aforementioned boats). Their territories overlapped a fair bit and there was intermarriage.
There is, however, not a lot of history indicating that the Norse raided them. Now, I'm sure it happened, but the fact that it was apparently fairly rare (and rarely mentioned by either) despite the Sami being both decently well off in material goods and
right there seems to indicate that the Norse thought doing so was a bad idea, and that should definitely be kept in mind when deciding how Sami Cultivation works.
Now, how exactly that manifests is another matter...though much later Norwegian folklore does attribute the noaide with the ability to use sympathetic magic to kill people from hundreds of miles away, slay entire herds of animals, and unleash plagues, so going to that as inspiration isn't unreasonable (though all those stories are post-Christianization and the view of outsiders rather than the Sami themselves, but it still might provide inspiration). They probably would also all be cultivators, though as less combative ones than the Norse most might not be their match in a fight. Still, even a not-very-combative cultivator is more of a combat threat than a mortal.
In reality, the relative lack of attacks is likely because the Sami were primarily hunters (they didn't farm, being nomadic) as well as herders...and fighting experienced hunters willing to make traps and engage in guerilla warfare (which they were, by all accounts) who have no actual home base for you to target is a
bad scene. Odin's bow, when he has one, is supposedly made by the Sami and archery was considered one of their primary skills along with magic by the Norse. So that would probably also play a part in their Cultivation in a xianxia world.
Which is not to say I disagree with the rest of this post, but it's a big enough difference (and brings enough additional cultural context) that I thought it was worth commenting on.
To be clear, I got all this from various stuff on Norse/Sami relations, so it isn't likely to show up in a book on Sami mythology and religion, and it's entirely understandable why you didn't find any of it, but it does provide what seems to me to be much needed context on the likely power level of the Sami.
EDIT: Continued reading had me add the archery/guerilla warfare paragraph, which seems well worth noting.
