Global Mythologies

[Pessi]

Can you give me some examples of churches built upon Finnish pagan sites? I have heard of it happening, but it would be interesting to hear more.

Unfortunately I can't remember anymore those mentioned on the lectures I attended in the 90's, but there's quite much information on the Internet about the practice of "invading" pagan's sacred sites by taking them to christian use. For example this site about the Hiisi of Pertteli mentions how determinedly the church "cleansed" the land by taking the pagan sites for it's own use and how pope Gregorius IX in 1229 granted the church of Finland all rights to all pagan sacred groves and offering sites. The cathedral of Turku is mentioned as probably have been originally built on the hiisi, a.k.a. pagan graveyard, of Unikankare, and as far as I remember, the same goes for Masku church.

Actually not all or even most pagan sites were turned upside down when they were taken by the church. Many pagan graveyards simply continued as christian graveyards with a church added to the side, especially those belonging to some specific family and that family having been converted to christianity. And quite many also continued as both, there being both christian burials (no grave goods, the feet pointing towards east from where Christ will come on the Doomsday) and pagan burials (nice grave goods, feet pointing towards north where the abodes of the dead were thought to be) with identical datings.

But in some places the church people took the cleansing a little more seriously and really bunched all the dead pagans to some corner before taking the site for their own use. I remember a lecturer mentioning how irritating this is, since from an archaeologist's point of view all the really interesting stuff is in the pagan graves (obviously, since the christians didn't get anything with them) and when the graves have been totally messed up, it's impossible to say which bones were originally buried with which grave goods.

As for the birth of bear, I've tried to find the melody on Internet but without success. It's just a simple, calm "vuorolaulu" (singin-in-turns) melody that I learned at school as a kid if my memory serves right. Makes the song a little longer and dissolves the problem of there being an uneven amount of lines when each line gets sung twice

[Hedge14]

Thanks for the info! I never knew that taking over pagan places and traditions  was guided by the Pope.  (Only thing I knew was winter solstice was replaced by Christmas in purpose.) I thought that Christian takeover of these things was just something that happened "naturally" without any guidelines or direct orders from Christian leaders.

To my understanding many modern day pagans detest influence of Christianity in pagan worship and mythology. I think it's just interesting and kind of cool how people have combined old and new beliefs. I also like that Mary is more prominent than Jesus in Finnish poems. I read speculation that mother goddess was something that Finns just felt more connected to than new masculine god. Mothers are quite important part of mythology after all.

True, repetition has habit of making things easier.

Does anybody know any other countries that have mythology clearly influenced by Christianity or some other world religion? It's often easier to name things other way around, like influence of winter solstice festivals on Christmas or pagan traditions during Easter.

[Mereven]

Well I cannot tell a Nordic myth, but I can tell one I grew up with.

Myths do not have to be Nordic...... the Nords just seem very knowledgeable and well-represented here !

I find it interesting learning here how a culture's traditions and stories have evolved over time; I mean it is a bit sad because some aspects of an indigenous culture have clearly gone extinct, but yet in other ways the original lore has survived and even influenced the 'invading' cultures, like how medieval Finnish poems talk about Mary more than Jesus because they were more accustomed to a mother goddess than a god .

Does anybody know any other countries that have mythology clearly influenced by Christianity or some other world religion?

From what it seems, the more time that two cultures spend together the more they will influence each other.  In my country, Islamic Indonesians were trading with the Aboriginals for centuries before the European colonists arrived, and if you know what to look for you can see influences of Islam on the Aboriginal culture, particularly in the North and in the artworks.  For example, in the North they revered a spirit called Walitha-Walitha, who was greater than any of the more animistic spirits, and who would guide the people to leading better lives; rather like a conscience.  Walitha-Walitha is a distortion of the phrase 'Allah ta'ala' (Allah is exalted), as is the whole concept of a there being only one omnipotent spirit.

[Sunflower]

Does anybody know any other countries that have mythology clearly influenced by Christianity or some other world religion? It's often easier to name things other way around, like influence of winter solstice festivals on Christmas or pagan traditions during Easter.

That's because Christianity, once established anywhere, tended to become part of the power structure, so it hardly ever let other beliefs stick around long enough to be merely influenced by it.  It's also less than 2,000 years old (and much newer than that in most parts of the world), which is young for a religion.

With that said, some scholars think the Nordic accounts of Ragnarok (the prophesied end of the world, and then its rebirth) were influenced by Christianity.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k

Beliefs aside, Christian practices and worship styles have certainly been influential in the past couple of centuries -- look at the popularity of "white weddings" in much of the world.  Also, Jewish friends tell me it's a relatively recent development (in the U.S. anyhow) for synagogues to have choral/hymn singing and organs or pianos; that was definitely influenced by church practice.

[Pessi]

That's because Christianity, once established anywhere, tended to become part of the power structure, so it hardly ever let other beliefs stick around long enough to be merely influenced by it.

Our Mikael Agricola, the reformer of our christianity and creator of written Finnish laguage, vented in 1551 in the foreword of his Finnish Psalter his disgust for the wretched folk who stubbornly kept worshipping their old gods. By doing so he also did the great favor of writing down the names of some of our old "gods" for the very first time - even if he was so strongly influnced by his classical schooling that he created his own rather greekish pantheon of them and mixed up nature sirits, spirits of the dead and ethnic interpretations of saints as well as the Devil himself.

Our old runo, the more or less pagan poems including lots of spells, were part of the living tradition in Karelia still in the 19th century, perhaps because the orthodox church ruling the spiritual sphere there was much more permissive, understanding and even adapting of the old practices than the catholic and later lutheran church of west Finland.   

[Hedge14]

From what it seems, the more time that two cultures spend together the more they will influence each other.  In my country, Islamic Indonesians were trading with the Aboriginals for centuries before the European colonists arrived, and if you know what to look for you can see influences of Islam on the Aboriginal culture, particularly in the North and in the artworks.  For example, in the North they revered a spirit called Walitha-Walitha, who was greater than any of the more animistic spirits, and who would guide the people to leading better lives; rather like a conscience.  Walitha-Walitha is a distortion of the phrase 'Allah ta'ala' (Allah is exalted), as is the whole concept of a there being only one omnipotent spirit.

That's really interesting to know! I'm not that familiar Islam or mythologies of that part of the world, so I wouldn't have guessed that Islam has such influence there. I have only read a bit about Dreamtime. It was quite abridged version so I don't know how accurate it was. Is seemed similar some ways, like the emptiness at the beginning of the world or importance of ancestors.  It also felt like that aboriginal worldview is completely alien to me at the core. In western countries time is often regarded very linear. Dreamtime has different view of passing of time, with the "past, present and future" thing.

How familiar Australians are with aboriginal beliefs? Here in Finland most people have very limited knowledge of Finnish mythology. It's hard to say what generation knows most. My father (He is in his 50's) knows only Sampo, Aino and Kullervo poems, but not even all poems about Väinämöinen. He has no knowledge about our mythology outside of Kalevala.

[Mereven]

How familiar Australians are with aboriginal beliefs?

Honestly, very little.  When our Europeans arrived there was zero interest in preserving or recognising Aboriginal culture.  For example, for almost 70 years in the 1900s it was national policy to forcibly remove young Aboriginal children from their families so they could be raised in 'civilised', church-led homes; you can imagine how damaging that was to the oral, indigenous cultures and languages.  Not the proudest episode in our history at all .

We don't have laws like that anymore; there is a lot of interest now in preserving and recognising the people and their languages and beliefs.  But there is a long, long way to go before we get anything like a Kalevala  .

Most Australians, meaning most anglo-Australians here, know the basics: dot-painting, Bunyip, maybe a story or two more, but not much more than that; and I've never heard of a non-Indigenous adult who actually believes the stories.  Although, we do teach Aboriginal culture in primary schools to young children now... so those under the age of about 10 would probably know more than those older .

As the name suggests, Dreamtime was where you (sometimes) went when you were sleeping.  It was believed that when you slept, your spirit would physically leave your body and enter the Dreamtime, which I guess was like an alternate universe... it is a bit hard to explain .  It is like the real world, only when you are there you could simultaneously see and experience things that happened years ago in the past, or years to come in the future.  Like, you could sit around a campfire having a conversation with your dead Great-Grandmother and also your unborn Great-Grandson.  You could meet the Rainbow Serpent or any of the animal spirits and they could tell you ancient stories from the start of the world, or things relevant in the present day, or things that were predictive of the future.  It was also believed that, when you died, your spirit went to the Dreamtime, which meant that you would still be able to communicate with your tribe in their dreams for the rest of eternity.  Usually it was only a wise man, or shamanic tribe leader who could communicate with the deceased and consistently receive messages from the spirits through Dreamtime and make sense of it all, but it wasn't uncommon for 'normal' tribe members to visit Dreamtime as well.

This is a bit different from The Dreaming, which is the individual interpretation of the Dreamtime, or the set of beliefs unique to one person, a family or one tribe.  Dreamtime was where the stories happened and the ancestors lived; but Dreaming was the experiences, and therefore beliefs, that were specific to one group of people.  As a broad example, if an Aboriginal from the East entered Dreamtime they might see a lyrebird spirit, but they would never see a thorny devil spirit because they would have never seen a thorny devil in life before, so people from the East and the West would have different Dreamings.  One tribe would not communicate with another tribe's ancestors because they simply would never have known them in life.  So a Dreaming is more unique and formed the basis for individual beliefs, whereas Dreamtime was pretty well understood in the same way across the whole country. 

[Hedge14]

Hi! I'm glad to hear that children are taught about aboriginal culture at such young age. I had heard about horrible treatment of aboriginals (mainly because movie Rabbit-Proof Fence.), so it's good to know about how things have been progressing. Do you think aboriginal beliefs should be made more "taught" to adults as well? I think art would be the most important tool to do so. In Finland many know Finnish mythology only through music, paintings or other art.

Now that you told me more about Dreamtime, it starts to seem more clear to me. We have beliefs about seeing future, past, deceased or other vision as well, but these are all separate experiences. Dreamtime is interesting because that, you get all those different thing as one singular belief. Anyway, do aboriginals think Dreamtime as place at all, or is it more of state of mind kind of thing? Also, do you know any accounts about entering Dreamtime? It think it would be interesting to read.

Dreaming being family or tribe oriented is very interesting concept too. I understand that thing appearing in dreams would vary according place people lived, but what other beliefs varied between other tribes? How fragmented aboriginal beliefs and mythology really are?

[Sunflower]

I just found this 8-minute video, a nice overview of Norwegian troll folklore (with music) and how it's survived in America.  Since we're about to meet Captain Eide from Norway and head out into the Silent World, this can serve as an appetizer.

[Mereven]

Hedge, you are testing the bounds of my knowledge here !  How it was explained to me was that Dreamtime is an actual place, but you needed to be in a certain state of mind to visit it; this state of mind was achieved usually by just having a really vivid dream, but could also be induced through fasting, dances, at certain times of the year, by shamans, by going on Walkabout, at certain sacred sites etc.  But these days, we are all modern people so our dreams are of cities, machines and dragons, so to speak, not ancestors and native spirits.  I am not sure if there is anyone who actually believes that its more than an identity and a history now.

How fragmented is the mythology, this I can't say for sure: There are some underlying concepts such as Dreamtime and the spirits, but within that framework there are many different stories.  For example, I have heard several very different Creation myths, and each one is as much the 'real' version as the other .  It's probably better to think of the Aboriginal lore as being a product of several hundred different cultures, rather than trying to understand it as one big culture.

Sunflower, thanks for the video... I've seen those little things with furry tails before but didn't know they were the same as Nordic Trolls xD.  Now why can't Minna's trolls be cute like that?

[Pessi]

We don't have laws like that anymore; there is a lot of interest now in preserving and recognising the people and their languages and beliefs.  But there is a long, long way to go before we get anything like a Kalevala  .

Let's hope you get something better than Kalevala. Kalevala isn't "original", it's Elias Lönroot's creation based on his conviction that the fragmentary old poems he had collected had originally been parts of a coherent epic. He arranged the stories in a way he thought the right one and created lots of new lines to connect the collected fragments. So kalevala could well be called a fiction, a poetic novel based on old poetic material.

Our secondary school mothertongue teacher pointed out one example of this: In kalevala's Aino poem Aino, a young maiden, is promised as wife to old Väinämöinen. She is sad about this and starts crying, and her mother tells her to cheer up, go to the storage and dress up in the fine clothes and belts she'll find there. She does as she is told but then wanders to the lake shore, sees maidens of Vellamo playing in the water, joins them and drowns. She then becomes one of them and later appears as a fish/maiden to Väinämöinen, who has fished her out of the lake without recognising her and then lets her go before realising who she is.

Originally the poems about Aino and the fishing of Vellamo's maiden were totally separate, but Lönroot wanted to connect them, so he made up the part about Aino going to the lake and drowning. In the original versions she goes to the strorage as her mother indicated, but instead of dressing up in the fine clothes and belts she just takes the belts and hangs herself with them.

One theme we discussed on the Kalevala lectures in uni was also Lönroots view on women and how it has affected kalevala and through it our idea of the iron age human relationships. In Kalevala happy love and marriage seem to be impossible to achieve: Aino kills herself because she doesn't want to marry Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen first wins the maiden of Pohjola just to loose her to the beasts Kullervo incites on her for revenge, then tries making himself a wife of gold (he is the mythical smith after all) just to realise a woman made of metal is cold to touch, and then finally abducts the younger sister of his dead wife just to have her harass him untill he gets fed up and sings her into a seagull. Lemminkäinen marries Kyllikki who turns out to be unfaithful and Kullervo seduces a girl who then turns out to be his own sister and kills herself. The only women a man can trust in kalevala are his mother and in some cases his sister. Otherwise women of Kalevala are just bringers of ill luck and unhappiness - which is not the case in the old poems as far as I know. Lönroot just happened to despise the lyrical poems, "women's songs", and much preferred the epical ones that men used to sing, in addition to obviously having a little distorted view on women himself.

[Hedge14]

Mereven, thanks for answering my questions so thoroughly! You seem really know these things, even if I throw so much questions at you. :) Thankfully (?) your latest post does not raise any more of those. I will try reading more about aboriginal mythology on my own, as your explanations make it seem quite entertaining and interesting. ( I know I have at least one book, that has some stories from aboriginal in it. )

I think it's really important point to remember that all mythologies are fragmented. So often people talk about these things like they were some new books, which have only one linear and clear view of things and characters. (Kalevala is a bad kind of example of that. Lönnrot wanted something that had clear narrative and made "sense".) But Mythology is based in oral tradition, so there is often disparity, variance and conflicting ways about how the stories are told.

Pessi, I have thought that drowning part of Aino's story was somewhat based to Estonian or Baltic stories. But I googled it  now and I found no such information. Do you know anything about that? Also, according this link, story of "Aino" had nothing to so with Väinämöinen in first place?

[kjeks]

You could still go on about the details of aboriginy culture, I won't mind it's really interesting .

About religions influencing each other espescially mixing book religion with native practices I highly recommend "Theo's Odyssey" by Catherine Clement. It may just seem a book for teenagers, but she's very accurate in discribing how islam mixed with indian, african or even tribal arabic practices when spreading all over the world. As well as Christian Africans still seem to practice some feasts and ceremonies known by voodoo-kults.

[Sharion]

Being amongst the General Discussions, I almost forgot about this thread...

Pessi, I really like your comments. You mentioned that you have many-many legends about bears. Care to share some of your favourites? Also, do you know any "trustable" pages about Nordic myths in english? Kalevala was a recommended reading in school, but our teacher never pointed out where it was mended, just mentioned it, so I'm curious about the differences.

Does anybody know any other countries that have mythology clearly influenced by Christianity or some other world religion? It's often easier to name things other way around, like influence of winter solstice festivals on Christmas or pagan traditions during Easter.

I think that stand for all the European countries.
For example, our first king (and also the one who "redeveloped" Hungary to be a country in European terms) I. István (Stephen in English) got the title "saint" from the pope after his death because he was the one who deemed us Christians (that was followed by major bloodshed). He asked for missionaries and gave them lands and support. Although I'm not religious, but I know that it benefited us: European countries started to think of us as civilised (although still rather strange) beings, so they started to trade with us; also it helped to hold the people in one place. The drawback was that we lost our past, and much of our identity, which I feel is part of our problems even now. What was left, was "saved" by turning legends into tales, and we kept some superstition and renamed folk customs. One of the latter, for example, the ironically named "Saint István day's fire-jumping" on 24. June. On the day of Saint John, which is incidentally also the day of the summer solstice.
One of the habits they couldn't beat out of us, even in the modern times: when we say something about supposed success or strong hopes (for example: "Oh, I'm sure you win that race." or "I hope I can get that job, so I can pay the bills"), we "knock it off" on wood, with the left hand, three times, from the underside to chase bad luck away. I'm not afraid of black cats, but sometimes one need some extra guarantee to keep her peace of mind, so I also often do this without stopping to think about it.

As for creatures...
There is the garabonciás, or "garabonciás student". It originally was a kind of evil táltos (shaman).
In the middle ages it's appearance similar to a poor university student, and was said to read the spells from a tome, what he got from the Devil in exchange for his soul. It knocks on the door and asks for bread and milk. (One should always give them a full loaf of bread and a full pitcher of milk.) If the people of the house said they don't have any, the garabonciás told them: it knows that they do, and if he doesn't get the food, they will regret it.
If he was rejected again, he could raise hail or call a dragon. As for the latter I heard two ways how one was born:
- It could be some kind of snake (or, on occassion, some other reptile) who lived in a bog for at least seven years.
- It was hatched from and egg laid by a rooster (in some cases: black rooster). The garabonciás put it in a deep well, where it suckled from a snake. When it grew up, it left the well and let the garabonciás ride on his back, creating a very serious storm. It was said that the dragon could even tear down the roofs of houses with it's tail. (Although the latter method of creating one reminds me of cockatrice or basilisc, and those are clearly from another culture.)
Nowdays when someone speaks of a dragon, we usually mean the type in D&D or GoT. -__-

Priests seemed to be really angry of women, so it's a wonder how strong Mary cults became here, too. (From István's time: some missionaries wrote outraged or bewildered reports about Hungarian women who rode horses the way men did: legs on both sides of the animal. I guess that was the first time some of them realised that women doesn't have a fish's tail under their skirts. )
When I think of places, Csallóköz comes in mind first. There supposed to be some fairies, whose queen was sometimes seen to be travelling on a swan from one side of the Danube to the other. And yes, it has a Mary-shrine now.

I just found this 8-minute video, a nice overview of Norwegian troll folklore (with music) and how it's survived in America.  Since we're about to meet Captain Eide from Norway and head out into the Silent World, this can serve as an appetizer.

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I hoped to watch that movie, but it wasn't shown here. Same with Thale.

Mereven: this is the first time I hear the difference between Dreamtime and The Dreaming.

I also hoped to read some Russian, Slavic or African myths here, since I couldn't find enough on the theme, but I just realised how much more could be found in Scandinavian and Australian mythology. I'm waiting for your next posts.

(Eh. I seem to be unable to write anything serious under a certain word count...)

[Bobriha]

Well, Russians have nearly the same situation with their mifology as Hungarians. There was knyaz' in Kiev called Vladimir Sviatoslavich who brought christianity to Russia (to Kievan Rus' if more accurate) due to he was going to marry daughter of Byzantine emperor. This Vladimir is also concidered to be saint by orthodox christians. It was not his first experience in religious reformations. That is, there wasn't any general pantheon in Kievan Rus' before. Different slavic tribes worshipped different gods, though, still related. So, in order to unite these tribes he proclaimed six gods - Perun (god of thunder; in christian times his atributes partically came to st. Ilia), Hors (god of sun), Dazhd'bog (also related to sunshine), Stribog, Semargl and Mokosh (which was supposedly goddes of crafts) - to be main gods and to be worshipped by everyone. There were some widespreaded gods, as, for example, Veles the God of cattle, left behind this pantheon.
Unfortunetly, slavic mythes weren't written. Some of them probably became fairytales. Such almost obligated characters of russian (and generally slavic) fairytales as Baba Yaga, Koschey the Immortal or Zmey Gorynych should defenitely come to pagan beleifes. Also in our tradition Death is female, because of goddes of death and winter Morena, whoes straw figure we burn every spring in big fire on the last day of Maslennitsa fest up to nowdays. There are some others fest traditions which come to pagan beleives. In literature they were indeed beatifully discribed by Nicolay Gogol in his collections of short stories "Evenings on the farm near Dikanka" and "Mirgorod", which I hardly recomend to everyone interested.
While main gods were forgotten and had gone, faith into lower creatures of slavic pantheon remains even in morden sotiety. These creatures are neither good, nor bad, they can be friendly to people, but also can cause damage. Domovois who live at home and owe houses along with their human owners, Banniks who live in saunas, Leshiis, the masters of the forests, Vodyanoys, the masters of rivers, lakes and ponds and so on.