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Herbert van Uffelen & Andrea Seidler (eds.), Erotik in der europäischen Literatur: Textualisierung, Zensur, Motive und Modelle, 2007

Mythic Discourses: Studies in Uralic Traditions. Ed. Frog, Anna-Leena Siikala & Eila Stepanova. Studia Fennica Folkloristica 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Pp. 205–254. , 2012

This article addresses a historical transformation in Finno-Karelian mythology of kalevalaic poetry (which provided the basis for the national epic Kalevala). The transformation is addressed in long-term perspective, focusing on the discontinuities from a Finno-Ugric heritage. It addresses several strata of development in terms of 'ethnocultural substrata' (see Papers on Theory, Method and Tools). These include stratified developments evident in the lexicon of the mythology; evidence of a Circum-Baltic narrative cycle connected with the spread of iron-working technology; and concentrates on the revolution in the mythology associated with a language-based technology of incantations, which included conceptual models of the body incompatible with inherited shamanism. Discussion centers on the mythological cycle associated with the mysterious object called sammas/sampo, looking at the historical backgrounds of the material and its transformation in the emergence of this mythological cycle. These transformations are considered in relation to the restructuring of the mythology and its relationship to the new category of ritual specialist associated with the technology of incantations. This paper overlaps with "Shamans, Christians, and Things in between", which is oriented to medievalists and especially Germanic scholars and discusses processes and implications of synthesis of the tradition and its spread over a large geographical area, displacing other forms of Finnic mythology and also the Sámi mythology of linguistically assimilated populations. This paper also overlaps with "Evolution, Revolution and Ethnocultural Substrata", which concentrates on the Uralic sky-gods in long-term perspective and what happened to the inherited models in Finnic cultures.

Journal of Finnish Studies

In Finland, the epic Kalevala (1835, 1849) and Kalevala-meter poetry, or oral folk poetry more generally, are often seen as nationally significant symbols of Finnishness. The Kalevala is a modern literary product constructed by Elias Lönnrot out of Finnic folk poetry especially from Russian Karelia, Finland, and Ingria. Lönnrot, who was himself among the most significant collectors of oral poetry, created the Kalevala as a synthetic, organized compendium of (reconstructed) pre-modern “Finnish” culture. Beginning from the publication of the first edition in 1835, the Kalevala has been extremely significant in the creation of Finnish national and ethnic identity. In this article, we discuss the engenderment of Finnishness and Finnish culture in terms of language ideologies by looking closely at the Kalevala's languages, language-specific reception of the epic, Lönnrot's language ideologies, and politics of language standardization in the contexts of the Grand Duchy of Finland ...

Фолклористика: Часопис Удружења фолклориста Србије / Folkloristika: Journal of the Serbian Folklore Society 4(1): 211–257, 2019

This article introduces an approach to ideologies of texts and of categories of text type for approaching the emic conceptions of things made of language or other kinds of signs. Finno-Karelian incantations of the ritual specialist known as a tietäjä provide a case study, considered in the broader context of cultures in the Circum-Baltic region. Text ideology is salient in this tradition owing to a conception that a performer will lose an incantation's power when it is communicated as a whole to someone else, but not if verses are omitted. Discussion is organized in four parts, providing different types of contextualization before discussing emic conceptions of incantations proper. It begins with a theoretical introduction to text ideologies and genre ideologies in relation to language ideologies. This section includes positioning the approach from the perspective of (Finnish) folklore studies for better multidisciplinary accessibility. The second section contextualizes the tietäjä as a social institution , the corpora and approach. The third section introduces the ritual technology of the tietäjä, the physics of the world in which these operate and what these are conceived as 'doing' in ritual performance. The fourth section turns to the understanding of incantations as a type of text object in relation to the technology and their variation in practice.

2009

Scandia 3: 655–665, 2020

2012

Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars. The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

FF Communications 296, 2nd Printing, 2023

Medieval Norse written sources, ranging from poems originally handed down in oral tradition from pagan times to prose sagas composed in literate Christian Iceland, as well as histories and laws, present acts of magic and initiation, performed both by humans in fictionalised histories and by gods in myths. The summoning of spirits, journeys to the otherworld, the taking of animal shape, and drumming are some of the features of these rites that have prompted many to see in pre-Christian Scandinavian practices some form of shamanism. But what exactly are the features of shamanism that are being compared? And how reliable are the Norse sources in revealing the true nature of pre-Christian practices? In this study, Clive Tolley presents the main features of Siberian shamanism, as they are relevant for comparison with Norse sources, and examines the Norse texts in detail to determine how far it is reasonable to assign a label of "shamanism" to the human and divine magical practices of pre-Christian Scandinavia, whose existence, it is argued, in many cases resides mainly in the imaginative tradition of the poets.

Slavic Review, 2005

Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Association Canadienne d'Ethnologie et de Folklore

Folklore, 2022

Researchers in the field of Kalevala-metric poetry have regularly connected types of incantations called communicative and origin incantations with Finno-Karelian ritual specialists known as the tiet€ aj€ at. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with this view, the assumption has never been empirically tested. This article reports a methodological experiment aimed at investigating the connection between ritual specialists and the two incantation types, based on an index of users of incantations from Viena Karelia. The analysis shows that a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods facilitates empirical investigation of the phenomenon. The results of the analysis give some empirical support to general assumptions made in earlier research, but also demonstrate difficulties of such etic categorizations. In addition, the methodology could potentially be used with materials extending beyond those examined in the present article.

Herder und das 19. Jahrhundert / Herder and the Nineteenth Century (Hrsg. Liisa Steinby), 2020

The article explores traces of ‘Herderian thought’ in Elias Lönnrot’s (1802–1884) conceptual thinking. Lönnrot collected Finnish oral folklore, and on the basis of his findings produced several publications; most famously the Kalevala, which later became the Finnish national epic. There is only limited evidence of the direct influence of Herder’s works, but textual comparisons reveal that Lönnrot shared several ideas highly similar to Herder’s. The article examines the way in which Lönnrot, drawing on Herderian notions, viewed language, poetry and culture as historically determined. Lönnrot thus believed that Finnish folk poetry would also serve as a key to the unique Finnish national character. Yet he also viewed language and poetry, and therefore culture as a whole, as undergoing gradual but constant formation. At the same time that he had the utmost respect for Finnish folk poetry, he also argued that culture could and should move forward in time, and that premodern oral poetry should be developed into a modern literature. His motive was thus not a conservative attempt to restore past forms of culture. Rather, he was concerned, in a Herderian manner, with a universal capacity for education and formation, or Bildung, as the definition of humanity.

2006

Translating iconicity from Finnish into English: the case of the Kalevala The Finnish epic poem Kalevala (1849 1) is a written transcription leaning mainly on a collection of ancient narrative songs of the Finnish people. This means that when trying to translate the written Kalevala into another language, the relationship between the content-text and the organization of the texture-that is, the way the particular linguistic realizations fit the goings-on as a whole-shifts from a singer's memory-based creative process in front of a live audience to a translator's reaction in the presence of a written product.

Lietuvos etnologija, 2022

The Iliad as Finnish, Kalevala is sometimes called. The epic has a firm place in world literature. More than one hundred years ago, on the 6 th of December, 1917, Finland became a sovereign state and the epic played an important role here. This multifaceted outline of this famous monument of Finnish language has been written on the occasion of this jubilee year. We will try to shed new light on this epic from four different angles. We will first describe the life and work of the editor of Kalevala, the physician and botanist Elias Lönnrot. Subsequently, we will highlight the development and content of the epic. Then we will discuss the vision of the most famous son of Finland, the composer Jean Sibelius. Lastly, the remarkable spiritual interpretation of the Finnish philosopher and writer Pekka Ervast will be addressed.

Laulut ja kirjoitukset: suulliset ja kirjalliset kulttuurit uuden ajan alun Suomessa, 2017

"Songs and writings: oral and literary culture in early-modern Finland" has been written at the crossroads of historical and folkloristic studies. Our purpose is to study the interface of literary and oral cultures in early modern Finland, focusing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book renews the understanding of exchange between the learned culture of clergymen and the culture of commoners, or “folk”. What happened when the Reformation changed the position of the vernacular language to literary and ecclesiastical, and when folk beliefs seem to have become an object for more intensive surveillance and correction? Why did they choose particular song languages, poetic modes and melodies for their Lutheran hymns and literary poems, and why did they avoid oral poetics in certain contexts while accentuating it in others? How were the hagiographical traditions representing the international medieval literary adapted to folk traditions, and how did they persist and change after the Reformation? What happened to the cult of the Virgin Mary in local oral traditions?

2012

The discussion of Uralic theonyms in this 2012 conference paper have been significantlu developed and discussed in more detail in "Language and Mythology" (2017): https://www.academia.edu/35369652/Language_and_Mythology_Semantic_Correlation_and_Disambiguation_of_Gods_as_Iconic_Signs The discussion of internal developments in Finnic mythology are discussed with emphasis on the epic Sampo-Cycle in "Confluence, Continuity and Change in the Evolution of Mythology" (2012): https://www.academia.edu/3687105/Confluence_Continuity_and_Change_in_the_Evolution_of_Mythology_The_Case_of_the_Finno-Karelian_Sampo-Cycle and with emphasis on the role of the ritual specialist in "Shamans, Christians and Things in between": https://www.academia.edu/4049431/Shamans_Christians_and_Things_in_between_From_Finnic_Germanic_Contacts_to_the_Conversion_of_Karelia

In Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages. Ed. Leszek Słupecki & Rudolf Simek. Studia Mediaevalia Septentrionalia 23. Vienna: Fassbaender. Pp. 53–97. , 2013

North Finnic religions underwent a transformation during the Iron Age. This paper argues that the transformation occurred through the assimilation of Scandinavian ritual practices that produced a new type of ritual specialist that gradually displaced inherited forms of shamanism (and later displaced Sámi shamanism). Within the context of the volume, this is addressed in the framework of conversion. This paper concentrates on changes in conceptual modeling systems and the relationships of Finnic gods to the corresponding gods carried with the Germanic models. The text is oriented to scholars interested in Scandinavian or Germanic traditions with little or no knowledge of the Finnic traditions discussed. The study shows that comparisons of these traditions can be mutually illuminating. Der Aufsatz behandelt eine auf germanischen Modellen beruhende religiöse Umwälzung in den nordostseefinnischen Kulturen. Dieser Prozess passierte, bevor das Christentum eingeführt wurde, und verdrängte den traditionellen Schamanismus, wodurch das mythologische System vollständig verändert wurde. Dieser Aufsatz konzentriert sich auf die Veränderungen in den Vorstellungssystemen und auf die Beziehungen der finnischen Götter (Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Ukko) zu den entsprechenden germanischen Göttern (Odin, Thor), wobei gezeigt wird, dass ein Vergleich dieser Traditionen gegenseitig erhellend sein kann.