Norwegian Woods (OT)

During the late Bronze Age, a hunting-cultivation culture arose alongside the ancient wilderness culture, along the coastal and inland areas of the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. As had happened in other shamanic cultures, the transformed economic basis of the hunting-cultivation culture strained the limits of traditional shamanic practices. It led to the development of a unique ‘Finnish solution’ to the crisis, building upon, but also departing from, elements of wilderness culture.

First, in order to maintain protection and guidance, the new hunter-cultivators continued to embrace and honour their ancestors, as the wilderness culture had done. However, over time, hunter-cultivators changed their allegiance from the clan to the extended family, or lineage. At the same time, they continued their respectful relationships with the spirit persons of nature, the haltijas, reflecting their continuing reliance on wilderness subsistence activities.

The second development, in response to the crisis of relevance of the ancient shamanic practices for the hunting-cultivation culture, was the appearance of a new transitional shamanic practitioner, the proto-tietäjä. This figure was a variation on the Siberian model of the “independent shaman”, who could be mobile and could serve the former members of various clans. However, the new proto-tietäjä lacked a cohesive base of support and recognition, as the wilderness band had provided for the noita.

In developing new forms of practice relevant to hunting-cultivation life, the proto-tietäjä had access to unique resources: nearby bands of the wilderness shamanic culture, with their shamanistic noitas, as well as rich cultural influences arriving on their shores from Baltic and proto-Scandinavian areas. The fruit was the development of Kalevala metre runes. The runes incorporated the ancient shamanic world view in sacred folk poetry, in fixed form, that would be passed on thereafter through a vibrant oral folk tradition.

The photo above from the 19th century depicts the singing of runes, in which one singer leads and the other responds. It suggests the ancient roots of the tradition in wilderness culture: “The specific position taken by the singers and their cooperation could be a vestige of shaman activity. The fore-singer corresponded to the shaman and the after-singer to the shaman’s helper.” (Pentikäinen: 1999)

Over time, tietäjä-poets began to add songs to the body of runes composed by the wilderness noita-poets. Their songs, while maintaining wilderness motifs and images, also reflected sacred themes of the hunter-cultivation, and later swidden, culture.

According to Oinas (1997), singing the runes was not seen as “art for art’s sake, but an act of magical significance. These songs contain the most sacred and powerful knowledge that could be used to influence man’s life”. In effect, they encoded the ancient shamanic world view of the Finns and later additions to it by tietäjä-poets.

Formerly this world view had been maintained as part of the “grammar of mind” of the wilderness noita, but now it was the property of the people of the hunting-cultivation culture (and eventually, the whole Finnish people), including the tietäjäs, in the form of the Kalevala metre runes.

The body of runes or magic poems were carried down from singer (laulaja) to singer, generation to generation, over centuries and millennia in Finland. “Men and women sang—either in groups or alone—as they worked in the fields, hunted, fished, or attended to domestic duties. In the evening the men and women sang and listened to each other as they performed household tasks, the men spinning or weaving, the men carving or mending their nets.” (Kuusi, et al: 1977)

Because the runes were passed on orally, in the words of Comparetti (1898), they became a “fluctuating mass of verse, of poetic thought…in a perennial state of transformation, of decomposition and of recomposition.” In spite of the often superior aesthetic qualities of this body of verse, it never became the property of elites, including ‘artistic’ ones. Comparetti says, “In truth the traditional poetry of the Finns is popular poetry in the full sense of the word”.

The Rise of Kalevala Era Shamanism: The Kalevala Metre Runes: http://spiritboat.blogspot.dk/2012/04/rise-of-kalevala-era-shamanism-kalevala.html

While the old folk sat around cackling away like black-clad crows, we youngsters wandered off outside. The boys from Missouri followed us out. They were twins, aged about eight, dressed in smart suits and ties. They spoke English to each other while Niila and I conversed in Tornedalen Finnish; they kept yawning due to jet lag, and were shivering noticeably. They both had crew cuts and looked like miniature marines with ginger hair, like their Irish-American father. You could see they were bewildered by being transplanted to the Old World and their mother’s roots. It was May, the snow was melting after the long winter, but the river was still covered in ice. The birches were naked, and last year’s grass was flat and yellow in the meadows where the snow had barely finished thawing away. They trod cautiously in their patent leather shoes, peering around uneasily on the look-out for Arctic predators.

I was curious and started chatting to them. They told us in sing-song Swedish-American that on their way to Sweden they’d broken their journey in London and seen the Beatles. I told them to cut out the fairy-tales. But they both swore blind the Beatles had driven past their hotel in a long, open Cadillac through rows of girls screeching and shrieking. It had all been filmed from a lorry following close behind.

The twins had bought something as well. They produced a paper bag and took out a record with an English price tag.
“Beatles,” I spelled out slowly. “Roskn roll musis.”
“Rock ’n roll music,” they chorused, correcting my pronunciation with a grin. Then they handed the single over to Niila.
“It’s a present. To our cousin.”

Niila took hold of the record in both hands. Fascinated, he slowly slid out the circular piece of vinyl and stared at the hair-thin grooves. He was holding it so gingerly, as if afraid it would crack, like a wafer-thin disc of ice from a frozen water-bucket. Although this disc was black. Like sin.

“Kiitos,” he mumbled. “Tack. Fenk yoo.”
He sniffed at the plastic, then held it up towards the spring sun and watched the grooves glittering. The twins glanced at each other and smiled. They were already composing the story about their meeting with the natives they’d recount for their buddies back home in Missouri as they all sat around chewing hamburgers and slurping coke.