A clue in the Kalevala?

[Vulpes]

I recently finished reading the Kalevala - in translation, obviously; the Keith Bosley version, which is most enjoyable. I have no other translations to compare it to, and certainly can't fathom the original, but anyone who manages to work in a reference to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, making a terrible pun in the process, is all right in my view. But I'm not doing a book review, I'm curious if those more familiar with the work think this idea makes sense.

There are various discussions of the Kalevala deep in forum-land, but they all seem rather dormant, so I'm starting afresh. I didn't read every word of them all, but I don't think this point was raised. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Near the very end is what I understand to be a metaphorical depiction of Christianity pushing aside the old beliefs. After baptizing what is clearly meant to be Jesus, Väinämöinen was "angry and ashamed". He "sang for the last time" and cast off in his boat, with this final message:

    'Just let the time pass
    one day go, another come
    and again I'll be needed
        looked for and longed for
    to fix a new Sampo, to
        make a new music
        convey a new moon
        set free a new sun
    when there's no moon, no daylight
        and no earthly joy.'

When I read that, I thought hey, that time has come in the SSSS universe. Wise old Väinämöinen is back, as promised, when there was no earthly joy.

Reasonable interpretation? Or am I reading too much into it?

[Jitter]

Oh, I thought I had responded to this already... yes, this would seem like a time for Väinämöinen to return! In a way he has too, Christianity has been abandoned and the people follow the old gods again. Väinämöinen’s nature is a bit ambiguous, on the one hand he’s the hero in the stories and behaves rather human-like, but on the other he was present when the world was created. Maybe he is among the gods the Finns worship, we have unfortunately seen very little about that!

[Vulpes]

Thanks for the reminder of Väinämöinen's ambiguous nature, I'd forgotten the beginning. There are a lot of dramatis personae to keep track of! And it's not the sort of thing you grab for a quick re-read.

Bosley provides pretty good notes, but doesn't really get into the not-quite-gods properties of the Finnish... um... not-quite-gods. It's an interesting belief system. I wonder in how much detail Minna has thought out what the survivors believe, and whether she's based that on Kalevala (for the Finns) and other information on folklore of the various Nordic countries, vs just kind of winging it.

[Jitter]

It’s also important to remember that the Kalevala os not a record of Finnish belief. It’s a fictional book written by Elias Lönnrot based on the folkloristic material he collected. The material was oral tradition and collected at a time when the legends were myths already, not living and lived in religious tradition. People had been (more or less) Christian for generations by the time the songs and poems were collected.

I think the poems were not presented as “this is how the world was made” but rather “this is an old song about how people used to think about the creation of the world”. On the other hand I know spells and magic instructions were collected in the 1800’s from people who were practicing the magic, and many of the sources were marked to be “renowned wiseman”, “powerful wiseman and bear hunter” etc. So, it’s far from clear. Also a factor to bear in mind is that education was largely arranged by the church. So even though Lönnrot wasn’t a member of the clergy (he was a medical doctor and a botanist in addition to his work on the Finnish language and folklore), his education probably was pretty heavy on Christianity anyways.

There is a small religious community of practicers of Finnish faith, Karhun Kansa (People of the Bear) and they stress that the Kalevala is not “the holy book” or a faithful representation of the faith. I don’t know how they reconstruct what has been lost, or whether they consider to have a continuation of the tradition stretching back in time to before the crusades. It would be interesting to learn.

[Róisín]

Maybe the situation with the Finns was somewhat like that of the Celts? I grew up in back-country farming communities in Ireland, Australia and several other places, where the formal public religion, if there was one, might be some flavour of Christianity, but the actual real-life day to day interactions with the land were unchangedly Pagan. The old songs and tales still persisted in the culture, I learned most of mine around the kitchen table while doing various jobs that were better accompanied by singing or storytelling. Not much of it ever got into books.

[Buteo]

It's a great pity that so much of the old lore was not stored in books. For isolated people such as myself, in books or online would be the only way I'd be likely to find it. I don't have friends or relatives to ask.

[Róisín]

There were folklore collectors in plenty who wrote bits of it down, but that simply isn’t the same as hearing such things live and as a regular part of life. A book I recommend is ‘The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries’ by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. He basically walked over many of the Celtic lands, talking to farmers, fishermen, old folk in villages or whoever would talk to him, and writing down whatever they said about local folklore, traditions and interactions with local landspirits. Because he had kin or friends in most of the places he went, people were willing to talk to him even though he was an academic. And something he discovered which also worked for me in my wanderings: people are far more likely to talk while they are doing something rather than while sitting like a stuffed dummy being interviewed by some scholar. And are far more likely to be helpful to someone who will pitch in with the harvest or hold the baby and amuse the toddler while they get the bread made. Being neighbourly is both good in itself and an excellent way to learn things.

[Suominoita]

Well, the 45th poem of Kalevala speaks about Louhi, envious of the good fortunes of Kalevala's folk; how the daughter of Tuoni (death) gets pregnant by the wind and give birth to 9 sons: these are, by name, various diseases - in Louhi's sauna, Louhi acting as her midwife. Thus the people of Kalevala were cursed by diseases. Väinämöinen healed them.

The poems never say anything about Louhi going away. I'd say it looks like she might be active again... and without Väinämöinen, the Disease got free reign...

[Vulpes]

It’s also important to remember that the Kalevala os not a record of Finnish belief. It’s a fictional book written by Elias Lönnrot based on the folkloristic material he collected. The material was oral tradition and collected at a time when the legends were myths already, not living and lived in religious tradition. People had been (more or less) Christian for generations by the time the songs and poems were collected.

Yes, absolutely! My initial comment reads like I understood otherwise, but it was very interesting seeing the obvious scraps of Christianity scattered through it, and I would love to know how much derived from old beliefs and how much from other sources. It seemed somewhat at odds with itself, with all these stories that presumably originated in folklore overlaid with bible stories, and then the rather odd ending with Väinämöinen going off in a huff, appearing somewhat defeated but saying, essentially, "I'll be back."

<snip> And something he discovered which also worked for me in my wanderings: people are far more likely to talk while they are doing something rather than while sitting like a stuffed dummy being interviewed by some scholar. And are far more likely to be helpful to someone who will pitch in with the harvest or hold the baby and amuse the toddler while they get the bread made. Being neighbourly is both good in itself and an excellent way to learn things.

This brought to mind an old family friend, Helen Creighton, who was a folklorist in Nova Scotia (Canada) in the 1930s. She was a small, almost delicate woman (at least when I knew her, which to be fair was when she was getting well on in years) and very proper, but she travelled all over Nova Scotia at a time when it was a great deal less accessible than it is now. She would trek in to tiny fishing villages and farms with her great hulking recording equipment in a wheelbarrow, find someone who knew a song, and get them singing. They would often be sitting on the wharf mending nets, or in the house spinning yarn, as they did so. I don't know if she ever dandled the baby while someone sang, but she certainly seemed to be able to quickly gain people's trust and collected many old songs.

Well, the 45th poem of Kalevala speaks about Louhi, envious of the good fortunes of Kalevala's folk; how the daughter of Tuoni (death) gets pregnant by the wind and give birth to 9 sons: these are, by name, various diseases - in Louhi's sauna, Louhi acting as her midwife. Thus the people of Kalevala were cursed by diseases. Väinämöinen healed them.

The poems never say anything about Louhi going away. I'd say it looks like she might be active again... and without Väinämöinen, the Disease got free reign...

Oh, that's a nifty idea. No reason Louhi didn't midwife a new and awful disease into being.

[Róisín]

Your friend Helen sounds like somebody with whom I would have got on well. I didn’t use recording equipment, because that would not have gone well with many of the folk whose tales I wished to learn and because such machineries were heavy and difficult (while strong for my size I am physically tiny). And some of them were not comfortable even with tales being written down. Fortunately I have a decent memory for stories and songs.

I was fortunate in that my mundane jobs often took me into areas and among people whose magic and stories interested me. Whether I was collecting samples of mud along the length of a river in New Guinea, documenting the occurrence of rare plants or collecting their seeds in outback Australia, Nepal or Borneo, marking the locations of remnant Ice Age flora in the Burren or being camp cook and wilderness survival person for various expeditions all over the place, my leisure time went into listening to people tell their stories and sing. And being useful while I listened always seemed to help.

[Suominoita]

Just thought a bit more of the 9 sons -- the last, unnamed one had something to do with Kades and other nasty magic-users. Somehow, The Rash seems to be his kind of thing, considering the spiritual aspect a Kade is involved with.

[Jitter]

Hmm, interesting, the Rash as one of the Diseases of divine origin... a lot more powerful than the others, but it would fit well!

[Vulpes]

Just thought a bit more of the 9 sons -- the last, unnamed one had something to do with Kades and other nasty magic-users. Somehow, The Rash seems to be his kind of thing, considering the spiritual aspect a Kade is involved with.

Interesting idea - I'll have to re-read that section, I kind of missed that number nine wasn't named. This is why I stunk at English Lit in school, I gloss over important points and miss broad themes because I tend to get caught up in rushing through to "see how it ends". The book I read most recently was almost entirely plotless, so I actually may have got more out of it.  :'D