Divine Feminine In Finnish Folklore

In Finnish mythology goddesses have very important role. Mielikki is the goddess of the woodlands and animals. Louhi is the goddess of shamanism and witchcraft. Vellamo rules the seas and the water areas. Akka is the nurturing mother earth. Then there are nature spirits, most of them female and they keep the nature in balance.

Transcript

Hello Fairyselves,

It is Nina,

You're watching Fairy Chamber Channel.

I thought to do something bit different today and talk to you about the Divine Feminine and what all the things I have learnt from Divine Feminine from Finnish mythology and from Finnish Pantheon.

It's a lovely day today,

As you can see.

So,

In the first glance you might think that is there is a Divine Feminine in Finnish Pantheon.

It tends to be pretty much all around the male deities at first glimpse,

But indeed there is very strong core among Finnish female goddesses.

I see that even among many Finnish deities there is,

Male deities,

There is Divine Feminine within them as well,

Of course because we all,

In the history,

Have both female and male aspects within us,

No matter which gender we are or how we divine ourselves.

So I think the first thing to understand that why it in first glimpse the Finnish spirituality and Finnish pagans might seem bit male oriented,

Especially if you read Njökka Lvala or some mythology from the Iron Age,

It seems to be quite male oriented,

But in the origin,

Origin in the beginning,

The mthorsi was more gender neutral and it was more about both entities,

Both male and female.

But to understand how come this development has happened you need to understand the history of pagan Finland and Finnish paganism and when we go back in time to the first inhabitants of what is now known as Finland,

We could say that those were the Fentzami tribes about 10,

000 years ago,

That is when the first inhabitants arrived after the ice age and the ice was melting so the people were moving more and more north and then other tribes coming after them and the Sami culture in the beginning it was very male dominant,

It was based on hunting,

They were hunter gatherers,

I think about 10,

000 years ago people were hunter gatherers at least in the north arctic areas and at that time the places where farming started that was what is now known as middle east and so on so people were still in the hunter gatherer state in the arctic areas in way more north.

So when it came to shamanism and the belief system that people had that was really animistic,

Shamanistic,

Most of the shamans were men or in some cultures it was a taboo if a woman was a shaman and this is quite common in arctic cultures that shaman was a male and then in rest part of the Europe it was believed that woman was the one who possessed magic more easier and when we go to more north it was believed that men were the one who possessed magic more natural and they were the one who had the right to connect with the spirit.

So this is also why in Finland or what is now known as Finland and what is now known as Estonia and also in many parts of Russia during the witch hunts in the 17th century majority of the witches that were killed were men when in other parts of the world there had to be women.

It's an interesting fact and when it comes to the Sami mythology that varies a lot because there are so many different Sami tribes it tends to be quite male oriented as well.

The woman had their own special roles and men had their own special roles as providers and bringing food and all that.

Then woman's job was more around home and that kind of things.

It wasn't all that bad.

Women had rights to own reindeers for example in Sami cultures in Finland and in Sweden but overall the different deities that are in the Sami culture,

The female deities in the beginning they were really linked to shamanism very much they were all about death they were linked to the mysteries of the underworld and later on when the cultures have grown the Sami goddesses they cut some other roasts they become more around birth so they are these starters of the life and the death they are really related to this kind of human growth in that sense they are very shamanistic deities.

So these four deities are Mataraka who was the Sami goddess of the earth and then there was her three daughters Yuxaka,

Saraka and Uxaka all related to birth and death and Uxaka especially is related to shamanism because she is the gatekeeper and Mataraka she is also the gatekeeper.

Yuxaka she is the female protector of boys and Saraka she is the female protector of girls so they are all linked to life and death and Uxaka she was the guardian of the home and guardian of the human until she would move away from home so in that sense there is this kind of nurturing aspect within Sami mythology as well and Samitanism pantheon there was Horakkalis and Byakkamai but the most important god of the Sami people was Radi and Huwas the highest god of the skies and he was called for the bold sexiest to worship so the culture was quite male oriented then about 7 000 years ago farming and agriculture arrived to Finland and it is believed that this it arrived together with the some bardic tribes that came from what is now known as Estonia and then later on they became more bardic tribes from southern Europe and then there have been people coming from east and from the west from what is now known as Sweden and from Russia so big cocktails but when the farming arrived that also brought new deities to Finnish pantheon which at that time probably was not Finnish pantheon just yet but it was developing to become its own Finnish pantheon these people coming from different directions but when farming arrived it brought this new maternal energy from bardic countries and if you are familiar with bardic mythology it is quite female oriented it's very matriarchal like many other methodologies in the world that are more patriarchal the bardic mythology is very matriarchal and the highest goddesses in the bardic mythology are Soli the sun goddess and Mina the earth goddess so the cults of these two arrived to what is now known as Finland and they became Finnish deities or they transformed into Finnish deities and this is why Finnish mythology is very shamanistic it is quite equal what it comes to is it matriarchal paganism or is it matriarchal paganism it is quite humanistic paganism because you can find male and female counterpart for everything and then you can find male gods who have no female counterpart and female goddesses who have no male counterpart so it is very interesting mixture of a very first fundamental profound bardic mythology with different Sami,

Finno-Ukrian shamanism and Arctic shamanism so this is why it makes Finnish mythology very very fascinating and this brought a new level to the divine feminine within Finnish mythology in a quick glance on Finnish mythology Ukko might appear to be the highest of the gods and Ukko is a Finnish god of thunder and god of the skies and god of human relations and all kinds of things and Ukko is worshipped over what is now known as Finland and also in the Lapland of Finland the Sami people they had their thunder card called as Ukko and the same god his name was Rarian among other tribes and he had many different names so in a way it was a parallel god and you can find this parallel god among pretty much all cultures in Europe but also among Finno-Ukrian tribes in Russia and among Samoyedhi tribes and Uralian tribes so this idea of thunder god is very widespread there's Taranis,

Teodates,

Zus,

Thor you can find them you know all over and then in Finnish mythology Ukko had a counterpart called Akka and she's also called Rauni I think I used the word Akka here I don't know which word was in more common use I guess it depends which part of the country you lived and Finnish language is known that there's several different words for one similar one specific thing that is why with among our gods and goddesses you can find many different names for one specific god or goddess so Akka was also known as Rauni and she was also as Mahetar,

Manutar,

Manun-Eukko,

Manun-Akka and Mami means earth in Finnish so she was the earth goddess the mother earth in Finnish mythology and the thing is it is believed that when the Podic tribes arrived and as the time went by they got mixed together with the people who were already living what is now known as feminine and so the mythology developed from there so we get this kind of very equal amount of like male and female divinities to Finnish mythology,

Ukko and Akka for example and they represent the fertility myth you know Ukko is the thunder father god and Akka is the mother earth but when Christianity arrived to Finland in the early middle ages that during the reformation the catholic church they really started to destroy the cult of Akka that there was so this is why from Finnish kava poetry and world is best and chance that we have we cannot really find poems from Akka that much because those poems they were collected in the 19th century and written down back then so compared to many other mythologies and pagan customs in the past Finnish mythology and paganism it was also quite female oriented in many ways when we think about for example neighbor countries Sweden and Norway the culture was more masculine and yes there is very powerful female goddesses there as well but often they've also been given this kind of warrior characteristic and masculine characteristics as well it's quite interesting and when it comes to Finnish paganism it is really more nature based and not that much about like human aspects like we think about the deities in different deities in ancient Greece they were all about human relations and and human psyche and all that but then Finnish mythology is about human psyche but it has more emphasis on nature and nature worship it's very very important I think and that is very very fascinating but for me think about the habit culture of the pagan times in Finland for example or ancient Finland father was not necessarily the head of the household if a man died the widow became the head of the household first before the oldest son and it's possible that if a young man wanted to propose a girl they might ask hand from the mother and not from the father necessarily if father wasn't there so I have something that was quite common in ancient Finland but then in Sweden and Norway it was always the man who was head of the house and not the woman you would call to the father to ask the hand of the lady you wish to marry I think it's quite interesting and if you have read Kalevala different versions of Kalevala there's several different versions the grooms they always there ask hands from the mothers not really from the fathers which is quite interesting and there's lots of mothers in Kalevala poems that don't really have like husbands there then in Finnish mythology there's lots of groups of four cadets or three cadets not necessarily like maiden mother groan aspects but just these groups of three or four cadets that represent different things also nature is very heavily personified so everything in nature has its own spirit or elf or guardian whatever you want to call it and nature spirit and nature spirit can be a gender neutral or it can be a man or a woman quite often in Finnish mythology the different three spirits are female we have the hilatar and that is the spirit of the robot tree kvaiutar the goddess or spirit of the birds tree and so on so they tend to be female and then there is emus but emu it can be a man or a female or something from between emu is the first creature of the species the creator of species so for example in Finnish mythology the emu of the cats is an elf and karretar is the is the karret emu of foxes and katte is the goddess emu of the trees and so on so there we have also both female and male spirits some of these groups of three could be the daughters of lohi and lohi is also known as lohetar and she is the goddess of witchcraft goddess of north and when christianity arrived in finland lohi was the goddess who was very heavily demonized and let me think about the most well-known finnish goddesses aka merely kivelomo and lohi lohi's daughters they could be seen as this kind of group of three deities or three weavers of destiny or one of them you know they are very common in european mythologies the group of three women who weave the destiny but the daughters of lohi they are more similar to these daughters of mataraka in the sun mythology that are related to birth and death yuksaka saraka lohi's daughters are tuoni,

Kalma and surma tuoni was the spirit that took care of the passed away people who have died natural death kalma took care of those people who had died because of diseases and surma of those who died because of violence or who were murdered or things like that so there we have first group of three lohi herself is a goddess of witchcraft goddess of the north and she is the gatekeeper of the world of the living and world of the dead and a ruler of the underworld and unfortunately if you think about the european mythologies all the goddesses who have been connected to death and magic and mysteries they will be demonized so this is something that was done for lohi as well and she is also known as lohi attar and lohi attar I need to make a video about her at some point and what is very interesting about lohi is that there isn't any mentioned in any of the poems who is the father of the daughters and this also said that lohi had another bunch of children who were tulatar vimatar and pakkanen and tulatar is the goddess of the very hard wind and vimatar is the goddess of the cold wind and we don't know if pakkanen was a man or female it's gender neutral world some poems that pakkanen was a like young mischievous boy and then some stories poems that it was a girl I don't know and then he also had nine daughters or who would also be nine sons those were different diseases so you can see how demonized this goddess was an original role of lohi was to be the goddess of the moon gud which is also something that I heavily link to the sami mythology where the some poems tell that the daughter of the sun and the wife of the moon they were sisters and there's lots of variations on that myth but it's very fascinating lohi is very demonized goddess as the same as the sami goddess of the moon is as well so then we have akka who was the finnish goddess of the earth she's also known as araoni and the name is believed to become the swedish word ron which means the roman tree and roman tree it was a very sacred tree in northern europe back in the days so roni is one of her names but akka she is the goddess of the earth but she is the goddess that provides life goddess that gives everything to the earth to the fields the flowers the trees the essence of everything and when we go to the iron age we get a new name for this goddess ira ira nedo the maiden ira and this is something that later on was transformed into virgin mary because ira and both akka and ira they are seen as the the world the the word ira is one explanation for that is that it comes from the old finnish word which means the world or which is a word for the world so actually akka and ira would both mean the world and ira would be the mother of the world so in the mythology that comes from the iron age that is the time when fins had counter like meetings with the vikings and the other tribes a lot so the finnish tribes met the neighbor tribes a lot so that is when we get lots of like influence from nordic mythology and this starts the stories of bainemöinen and like heroic sakas in finnish mythology and the stories from the iron age that ira was the mother of bainemöinen ilmarinen and yokahainen who are the heroes in different versions of kalava and then when we go to the reformation ira was turned into virgin mary and if you read the stories of bainemöinen he made lots of miracles he's like a wonderful finish shaman that everyone hyped about back in the day so his miracle works some of them were quite similar to the stuff that she stayed so in that sense when the church fathers were trying to confirm things to christianity they changed ira to virgin mary and okko naturally became the christian father god when it was the god of the skies basically who was in control of everything they just switched the name of okkoto the yuma the christian god so that is how the reformation switched pagan gods to one christian god who had a mother who had also magical abilities so that was that story in a nutshell but this is how the cult of akka and you know as well was completely watched over from finnish paganism which is quite sad at least in my eyes but then i do think that some of those karises that have been really really like been stuck in finnish paganism for all these thousands and thousands of years mieriki well and velamö and rohi as well in a way they're all representations of akka the world goddess the mother earth mieriki is the goddess of forest and the goddess of hunting her husband was tabi who was the god of the forest and mieriki she's one of my favorite finnish karises she's the goddess of abundance she's goddess of good luck she's also goddess of hunting and she's also goddess of wounded animals and healing and she's like goddess of herbal medicine all kinds of cool things and she's goddess of wild forest and free nature and then her husband tabi ohi is the god of the forest and you could say that the forest both good and the bad aspects of the forest they all exist in a tapio it is the same with mieriki she has another name called kuriki and kuriki is a form of mieriki that punishes those people who misbehave in the forest when tapio as a god when he has his like dark side on it means those bad things that might happen in the forest that people might get lost there or that night time might frighten people who are wondering the forest and don't know where to go so in a way finnish mthochi is like very based on finnish it has scoring finnish like human psyche but also the surrounding nature and our relationship to the nature then we have velma who is the goddess of the sea and water and i don't think she also has this kind of quality what's mierikash because she can create massive storms and then she can give fish to the fishermen and she can take care of the lakes and all them mason sea maidens and sea boys they are all her children and her husband is akhthu is the god of the sea and god of the fishermen so in a way all these gods they have like dark side and they have their light side same way as humans but they are all like very created from their nature they are born from the nature we have another group of three or four and this group is heavily based on baltic mythology more than the sani mythologies and that has created these characters of finnish mythology and these are paivatar,

Kutar,

Otavatar and in some cases tehretar.

Paivatar is the goddess of the sun and she is very similar to the kalesole in lithuania and latvia and in finnish mythology the day at the moon our sisters paivatar and kutar are sisters some stories tell that they are twin sisters and they have third sister otavatar to know if she is a little sister or a bigger sister otavatar is the is the goddess of the constellation of the big bear and the small bear and in some cases otavatar she is also known as tehretar which is the goddess of the stars and some stories tell that they are two different entities i don't know they might be both stars anyway in finnish mythology paivatar and kutar they win the trade of destiny of the people which is very very poetic and kales paivatar she is connected to akka so she might be actually counterpart of akka as well or parallel symbol parallel kales to akka then we have merik you can be parallel kales to otavatar because merik is connected to the bear and bear was also one of the gods in finnish pantheon and then we have velamo who is most likely connected to kutar because the sea is of course connected to the moon and the tidal waves these are very fascinating also lohi she is in many times connected to kutar that she is maybe the old goddess of the moon maybe she's like proud of finnish goddess of the moon before kutar became or maybe they are one and the same entity i don't know it's very very fascinating and the list continues there is also the female personifications for different directions there is pohiatar which is the goddess of the north or personification of the north and pohiatar she is connected to the winter and death and darkness night time then we have etelatar who is in some cases also connected to akka the earth goddess etelatar she is connected south etela is south in finnish of course and to warmth and to daytime then lanetar the goddess of the west she is connected to west to evening time and fire as an element and then we have etelatar the goddess of the east she is connected to the east and to spring time and fire and to the sun the sun rising and also the wind so there we have even more goddesses female entities there is lots of female energy when it comes to finnish mythology and when i talk about female energy i don't think it is just meant to be preserved only for women but it's preserved for everyone i do think that because we've had this like both male and female energies and deities so much within finnish pagans and in the old times that has affected a lot in our subconscious of course there was this long time period of mainstream christianity that was ruled by a male god that was quite dominant and has been quite harmful in many ways for the human psyche especially the time of reformation in some areas of finnish more than others like in labland for example the very heavily the stadium movement and all that shit that has been very harmful for many people and for many generations so i do think that this equal relationship that there was between the male energies and the female energies that it has had its effect on finnish subconscious well you know if we go more recent history back to the past finnish was one of the first countries in europe where women get the right to vote and in overall in the denordic countries are quite high when it comes to the men and female equality compared to many other countries like for example the uk i do think it's very important to preserve these stories of finnish female deities and also understand the nurturing aspect that there has been also in the finnish male deities but also that in the finnish female deities there has been the nurturing aspect and the dark aspect but that has also occurred in the male deities you know he was the father god he was the god that woman asked help when they wanted to get pregnant also and he was a male god he was a god of the shamans as well someone that people did seek help in every aspect of their lives so in a way uk had lots of female but we might now perceive as female aspects as well as with male aspects i guess it depends how you define what is the male aspect and what is a female aspect but then good example of maiden mother crown could be mielki one of my favorite goddesses i guess you could say that in finnish pantheon mielki would be my maiden goddess so within finnish pantheon mielki she can appear as a young maiden who rides with a bear there's been poems like that she can be a nurturing mother in a pure cloak mielki is also one of those goddesses who was very heavily tried to transform into virgin mary so that's why sometimes she also has a blue cloak and simply because she was the goddess of the herd animals and herd people as well so mielki can also have the mother aspect and she's the mother of several different nature spirits as well and then there are also poems and stories that mielki has appeared as an old woman wearing a bear coat or something and people have asked questions from this wise crown so mielki can have the maiden mother crown aspect same way as with boghi is very extremely misunderstood goddess in finnish mythology she is the goddess of the shamans and this proves how the shaman can also be a woman not just a man like in arctic cultures many times shamanism was only preserved for men even though all the lifestyle of people was quite paganistic and people believed two different deities the shamans and the spiritual rites in arctic cultures they were preserved only for men and well in some tribes in russia the example of you know korean and samarit tribes there are actually people and tribes where only women can be shamans which i find very interesting that like breaks the pattern and there are also tribes that only that only worship a certain female deity something i need to research more but that also breaks the pattern well when we take her way her way from this demonizing aspect when it comes to shamans and that is always like gender neutral the magic itself is gender neutral but being the goddess of the moon she is very linked to the emotions and the female emotions that can be destructive and it can also be healing and well that applies to male emotions as well and when it comes to miyariki she is also the goddess of hunting so we have this kind of goddess that has these like a male contribute she's the hunter that is something that is traditionally in western society seen as a male aspect hunter aspect and then we have goddess that is the ruler of this white aspect between a woman but then she is at the same time the nurturing aspect of the woman and that's what miyariki represents she can be the hunter and she can be the nurturing mother so she is the white woman and in a way she's also the tamed woman so this is something that Finnish mythology has teach me about divine feminine with all these different deities that i talked to you about how they can how they how in within the divine feminine among different gods and goddesses there are these gender roles that are all the time but miyariki especially for me she represents these different roles that women have and oh yes well and a great fellow all these goddesses i think i have talked enough so thank you for watching guys i'll put links to the description box about these videos i've made about these pacific gods and goddesses that i have mentioned in this video so thank you very much for watching guys i will see you next time take care bye