Finnish mythology

Finnish mythology survived as oral tradition well into the 18th century.

Based on animistic beliefs, the Finns uphold one of the very few primitive religious traditions in Western Europe, albeit in a secularized form. The rites of the hunt (Peijainen), harvest and sowing etc. may well be held as social events, but the spiritual undercurrent is not totally absent.

Although the gradual influence of surrounding cultures raised the significance of the skygod in a monolatristic manner, he was originally just a naturespirit like all the others. The one whose name was never uttered by the Finns was the spirit whose carnal form is known in English as bear.

While active and committed belief in the ancient gods of Finland is limited to minor and mutually contradictory groups of neopagans and mostly solitary keepers of an unbroken longstanding tradition, there are still plenty of moments in most Finns life in which they unselfconciously invoke one or more of the traditional spirits, or obey the customs about how not to offend them.

The first historical mention of the beliefs of the Finns is by the bishop Mikael Agricola in his introduction to the Finnish translation of the New Testament in 1548. He describes many of the gods and spirits of the Tavastians and Karelians. Surprisingly much more wasn't written down before Elias Lönnrot compiled the Kalevala.

The Kalevala

The Kalevala is Finlands national epic. It is based on Elias Lönnrot's (1802- 1884) collection of local poems starting from 1828. They are kalevalan poetry, so they were done in kalevalan rhytm and meter. All of the poems in Kalevala are not in the form that the poem singers presented them, rather they have been modified in order to make the language consistent among them. Some of the stories have also been rearranged compared to the original recording of the poems. In some cases Lönnrot himself even filled some gaps in the text.

Lönnrot was the county doctor of Kajaani and roamed around to the east in Viena's Karjala collecting old poems. Nowadays the areas belong to russia. He also travelled in what is today Finland, but mostly in the east of the country.

Before releasing the Kalevala in 1849, Lönnrot published many shorter works that built a base for the larger epic.

The epic includes, for example, the story of how the world began from the egg of a sotka bird.

The Kalevala has inspired many authors outside of Finland, including J.R.R. Tolkien.

The ancient Finns did not know how to read or write, so the stories were passed on through the generations with the use of songs and poems which were learned by heart. Children learned them from their parents or wandering poem singers. Some songs tell about real occurances, others are about imagined heroes.

Estonia has a similar collection of poems called Kalevipoeg, and Russia has one called the bylinoi.