Cats in Finnish mythology and folklore.
So here in Finland we had cats since the end of the Iron Age,
About few thousand years,
Quite a long time.
Domesticated cats especially.
Cats they are very very famous animals throughout the world.
There are stories about cats in every single culture and every single continent and cats are pretty cool.
Probably the most magical animals in the world.
Like if you would ask different people what would they consider to be very magical,
Like domestic animals,
They probably would answer cat.
Cats really are very magical creatures.
If you have seen cats eyes shining green or yellow in the dark you know what I'm talking about.
It's pretty amazing.
Here in Finland we've had cats obviously a long time.
People have quite dual relationship with cats and big part of that is the Christianization and demonizing the cats as witches pets and I think it has all to do with the fact that cats are quite feminine animals.
People connect feminine qualities with cats quite often.
Here in Finland many people have a dual relationship with cats,
Like some people absolutely adore cats,
Some people don't really care about cats that much.
When there was these witch hunts in Europe,
For example in 15th century when they burned cats in Middle Europe,
That never happened in Finland because Christianity just arrived.
We never really had that kind of cat.
During that time came that kind of dual relationship for cats when cats started to be demonized.
They also brought the black dead to Europe when they burned the cat.
All the mice and rats spread disease.
That's where the black dead started.
This never happened in Finland in that way.
It happened in Middle Europe around that time because Finland got Christianized pretty late.
I'm going to read you the Finnish poem called the bird of the cat and after that I'm going to read the same poem in English and then explain it.
This is the way cat was born in Finnish mythology and folklore.
I know of the cat origin,
The incubation of a gray beard.
The cat was cutting on a stove,
As a girl's nose,
A hair's head,
A tail of his plate of hair,
Claws of a viper,
Tail of snakes venom,
Feed of cloudberries,
The rest of its body is of the wolf's race.
This poem,
It tells us that the cat was given a life by a gray beard and gray beard is a Finnish elf and that this particular elf it gave cats a life in the stove of the sauna.
This is absolutely one of my favorite Finnish myths ever or Finnish folk tales.
I absolutely love this.
The whole concept that cat was given a life in a sauna,
Basically here the gray beard,
The elf,
He throws different ingredients to distill from the steam comes the first cat.
Finnish elves,
The gray beard is very connected to ancestors and there are different elf races in Finland.
There can be like forest elves that are more wild and then there are these elves that are connected with different houses and buildings.
For example the sauna elf was the person who would build the sauna or he would be the first person to go to the sauna and take a bath there and then when he would pass away he would become the guardian spirit of the sauna or part of his soul would return and become the guardian spirit of the sauna.
There was elves for every single building.
The house elf would take care of the house,
The family,
The stable elf would take care of the animals.
There was also mentioned about elves in castles,
Also a church elf,
Whole concept of protective spirit of a building.
It's also in Scandinavia.
The Finnish word for elf,
Tontu,
It comes from the Swedish word tontte and that comes from the word toten which means the place of the house.
Actually the Finnish elf stories they're a bit darker for example than the ones in Denmark that are more light-hearted.
Also in Denmark actually they have two type of elf races.
There's this more Scandinavian nysto type then there is Lord of the Rings type.
So the Finnish elf is more related to the houses and the ancestors.
Usually the Finnish elves they were described to be old man or old woman just smaller usually a slice of a three or four years old children.
Quite small man or a small woman.
So I really loved his mitt where the elf would give a life to a cat or just want to create this kind of a special magical animal we could hang out with.
Cats are really closely connected with elves.
Elves use different ingredients to create this cat.
Cat was cutting on a stove as a girl's nose so he used the nose of a human girl.
Hare's head,
Cat's head comes from a rabbit.
A tale of his is a plate of hair.
Here he has different meanings in Finland and in Estonia overall in Baltic area.
He originally meant a sacred grove or this kind of worshiping place where people give sacrifices for gods or worship these spirits and nature spirits.
When we go to more Scandinavian concept,
His or her sometimes referred to be goblins or trolls and in Finland sometimes also as giants.
So it could be giant's hair or if we go to this kind of idea of sacred grove it could refer to cat's nature how cats are very wild still even though they are domesticated.
Claws of a viper tale of snakes venom.
Cat's nails would be snakes teeth and cat's tail would be snakes body.
Feet of cloudberries.
If you haven't never seen a cloudberry it is an orange berry that is very similar looking like raspberry and if you look at cat's boy it does look like a cloudberry.
And the rest of its body is of the wolf's race.
That could also refer to cat's white nature.
Kjertakun kisakumabor a cat circling around hot porridge and it means someone who has something in their mind but they don't know how to reach it or it means like approaching the topic carefully.
Kukashe hänna nosta e legisä itse.
Who would lift the tail unless it was the cat itself.
So it means if you want to achieve something you need you just need to do it.
Söjö sää kisakinkalaya mutte kas delisitastujaan.
Cat could go fishing but it does not want to get its paws wet so this would mean that someone would want something but they want it straight away.
So this one is Finnish saying.
Täväl olsi paras rikkan kisasan.
Täväl olsi paras rikkan kisasan.
During the winter time it would be the best to be a rich man's cat.
