The Old Finnish Religion, and the Epic That Is Not Its Scripture

The pre-Christian religion of the Finns and Karelians was an animistic and shamanic tradition of the northern forest and lake world: a sky-god (Ukko), owner-spirits of forest and water (Tapio, Ahti), the dead who remained present, and the tietaja, the "one who knows," whose sung charms carried power. Its cosmos was charged with vaki, the concentrated force of different domains, which had to be handled with the right words.

Finland was Christianised comparatively late and gradually, from around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and much old belief survived in remote Karelia into modern times, which is where the runo-songs were collected. It is essential not to treat the Kalevala as this religion's scripture: Elias Lonnrot's epic (1835, 1849) is a literary synthesis of collected oral poetry, an invaluable record but also a shaped nineteenth-century composition, not a sacred book the old Finns possessed.