Suomenusko, the Modern Revival

Suomenusko, literally "Finnish belief," names a modern reconstructionist movement that draws on the Kalevala and on older Finnic folk-religious material to revive pre-Christian Finnish religious practice, honoring figures the runic poetry names, including the sky god Ukko, alongside a wider cast of nature spirits and ancestral figures attested across the collected folklore. Like other modern Pagan reconstructionist movements, it is a living but numerically small tradition rather than an unbroken continuation of pre-Christian Finnish religion, which had already given way to Christianity centuries before Lonnrot began collecting.

The distinction matters for how the Kalevala itself should be read: it is a work of nineteenth-century literary folklore compilation, not a scripture composed for or by a continuously practiced religion, and its adoption as source material by Suomenusko practitioners is a modern development layered onto an older literary text rather than evidence that the Kalevala was always used liturgically.