lauantai 17. helmikuuta 2018

The world came into being from an egg of a bird

Hello readers, this week's topic is Finland again. My life is so uneventful that there is nothing to write about it, unless you want to read a painfully detailed description of how I process invoices every day. I guess not.. 28th of February is the day of Kalevala (national epic of Finland ) and Finnish culture, so I decided to write a bit about Kalevala and the strange and unique beliefs our ancestors had.

As s short intro to Kalevala, it is a collection of poems an aspiring doctor called Elias Lönnrot assembled in 19th century. He wandered on foot through Karelia and Viena area in search of original poetry that was very typical in Finland and Karelia until the arrival of Christianity, after which the tradition started to disappear as the church did not approve of such heretic stories as can be found in Kalevala. (In this modern era one might question this censure of the poems as the themes are relatively harmless- until we remember the story of Marjatta which I will introduce later on.) Most of Kalevala is based on ancient poems but about 3% comes from Lönnrot's imagination. He wanted the poems to be written down as a complete story with complete plot, which meant that in some places he had to step in to fill voids in the storyline.

The oldest poems are said to date back 3000 years and the newest ones appeared about the time Christianity arrived to the area. They are a mix of songs and poems in trochaic tetrameter, also known as the Kalevala metre. To put the explanation short, 8 syllables are needed to express one idea or verse "va-kaa van-ha väi-nä-möi-nen". Maybe you can imagine the agony of teenagers when they have to read Kalevala in Finnish language and literature class. I tried but it is absolutely too difficult because the language is outdated and because not all the words conform with Kalevala metre no matter how much you wish them to. When Lönnrot was compiling the poems he sometimes added or dropped syllables or letters to make the words fit in and in some parts the result is a disaster. And still, around 2% of the content of Kalevala breaks this rule of 8 syllables for one idea. But now more about the poems themselves.

Creation myth 

The Bible says "in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" but as we all know there are more explanations than this one. After all, people have always felt the need to explain how we ended up on this planet that is speeding through the vast emptiness of space and never arriving anywhere. Up there in the north people came up with the idea that everything originated from an egg of a bird that belongs to genus aythya. Now, there are many species belonging to that genus but as our ancestors apparently didn't deem it important to report the exact species but referred to it by the generic term for that kind of diving ducks, I will not start guessing either. (At least I think it wasn't reported but then again I didn't read the whole Kalevala.) So the next time you are having bacon and eggs for breakfast, just remember you might be in the process of destroying a future universe that didn't have enough time to be hatched before it ended up on the plate.

The story of Sampo

Sampo in Kalevala is a magical machine of undetermined type that produces gold, flour and salt for its owner. There are many "deep" explanations as to what Sampo actually is (world pillar, world tree etc) but it is perhaps most commonly recognized as a mill that grinds riches. It was created by a skilled blacksmith Ilmarinen for the evil queen Louhi (the whore of the story who gets impregnated by the wind, the waves and what not except for a man) in exchange for her daughter's hand in marriage. The evil queen took Sampo but refused to give her daughter to Ilmarinen after all. The reason why I wanted to introduce Sampo is the nowadays somewhat peculiar things it makes. Gold flour and salt. Wouldn't it be handier if it just generated money, low-risk-high-return on investment shares and interest-free mortgages? Or fast cars, luxury boats and expensive jewelry? But the story of Kalevala originated in archaic agricultural society where people probably were hoping to have their daily bread provided without having to toil the earth sweating in their dirty shirts during the short Nordic summer. Can't blame them for hoping.

The story of Aino

In the end Aino died. She was the only girl of her family and unlucky enough to have a very competitive brother who challenged old wise man Väinämöinen for a sword fight. Väinämöinen didn't want to fight with swords but suggested a contest of casting spells (!). The story ended with Väinämöinen singing Joukahainen into a mire and Joukahainen promising his only sister to Väinämöinen as long as the older man released him from the mire. Väinämöinen was as old as the world itself and Aino was a young girl. Fearing her faith she drowned herself in a lake and turned into a fish. Can't blame her either. Aino is a common name in Finland these days, however it is said the girl in Kalevala might not have had a name after all but she was referred to as "aino tyttö" (the only girl) and later on Lönnrot gave her the name when he started to spell it with capital letter.

The story of Marjatta

The story of Marjatta is short and scary. One day she went to the forest, found a lingonberry, ate it and the berry made her pregnant. Beware, ladies, if you go picking lingonberries it is not just wolves and bears you should be afraid of. Of course you might always contradict the story and say that Marjatta came up with this lingonberry theory to dupe e.g. her parents and that there was an actual guy involved in Marjatta's "oops" moment. Her parents being old and having forgotten the act then swallowed the little lie their daughter spun and saw her pregnancy as something else than the accident is was. Or whatever. Marjatta's story is one of the new poems of Kalevala and she is interpreted as the Virgin Mary of the north, giving birth to a son in a stable and so on.

These were just some examples of traditional Finnish story-telling. When Kalevala was first published, it served as means to awaken the national spirit and became the cornerstone of national identity. It has served as inspiration to artists of all fields. The importance of Kalevala can still be seen in Finland e.g. in people's names. Aino, Ilmari, Sampo, and Marjatta are all names that are used today and there is name Väinö that could be related to Väinämöinen. Also, we have Sampo bank and a construction firm Lemminkäinen. (Lemminkäinen was Kalevala's general good-for-nothing guy tempted by ladies and war. In the end he is killed and the body chopped to pieces. His mother retrieves him from the underworld and brings him back to life. Why, it is a mystery to me. Who can understand a mother's heart except another mother and luckily I am no one's mother. :)

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