Summer Solstice In Finnish Folklore

Here in Finland Summer Solstice has always been a special festival. Sun doesn't go down. Air is nice and warm, but did you know Summer Solstice was an old fertility festival to honor Ukko the thunder god? Summer solstice includes magical traditions, going to sauna, dancing around bonfires and my favorite part making lots of spells!

Transcript

Now we meet the lovely people,

It is Nina,

You're watching Fairy Chamber Channel.

Let's continue with the Finnish pagan holidays.

Next one is going to be Johanus and it actually takes place tomorrow,

Yay!

So Johanus,

It is probably the most pagan Finnish holiday that there is.

The old name of Johanus was Ukkonmakkad to honor the Finnish thunder god,

Ukko.

I have another video made about Ukko where I talk about him more precisely.

I'll put the link to the description box,

You can check that out from there.

And it's very interesting,

I highly recommend that if you are interested about Finnish mythology.

So anyway,

Ukkonmakkad was the pagan name for this festival,

Another pagan name was Mitthumari which comes from the Swedish word Midsummer Festival,

So Mitthumari and Ukkonmakkad,

They were celebrated between the 20th and the 22nd of June,

Which is obviously the Midsummer Solstice in Northern Hemisphere and in Northern Hemisphere in Finland during the Midsummer Solstice the sun is most closest to the earth and because Finland it is very much north,

The sun doesn't go down at all,

So that it is the summer of the Midsummer sun,

How do you call that in English,

The sun doesn't go down and then in the winter the sun is most far away from the earth as you can imagine,

That's why it is dark 24 7 obviously and it's the Midwinter Solstice.

Anyway in the pagan times Ukkonmakkad which is now known as Johanos that was celebrated during the Midsummer Solstice between the 20th and the 22nd of June and then in the early Middle Ages Finland was converted into Christianity and in case of many different Finnish pagan festivals the Church Fathers they succeeded,

Turned the festival into a Christian party but not when it comes to Johanos,

Despite the fact that the party has a Christian name it is very much the same as the original pagan holiday even though today most Finns are quite non-religious,

I wouldn't say non-religious,

Finnish people have very neutral approach to religions so you know people don't really analyze their religious views,

I think that's the right way to put it.

Anyway still today it has way more pagan traditions than,

Well I don't think it has any Christian traditions anyway only the name comes from Johan Kaste which is in English John the Baptist so when the Christian Church Fathers wanted to convert the Finnish pagans into Christianity pretty much all the pagan holidays the main guard figure in any holiday was turned into a Catholic saint so in the case of Midsummer Solstice and Ukkonmakkad the saint was John the Baptist so that is why the name was turned into Johanos.

And John the Baptist already had his own day in the Finnish almanac back in the Middle Ages that was 4th of June but when the Church Fathers wanted to melt these two festivals together the official date for Johanos became 24th of June and it remained 24th of June all the way to the 1950s when it was changed in the Finnish almanac that Johanos should be celebrated in every Saturday between the 28th and 26th of June so it is always the Saturday between the 20th and the 26th of June that is Johanos or in Finland we pretty much celebrate all the weekends so it starts on Friday and ends on Sunday so it is a long Johanos weekend Johanos week on Lopu but that is where the name Johanos comes from and in Finland Johanos is a national holiday it is non religious holiday and it is just people leaving the city behind most people go to the countryside and celebrate there or in their summer cabins or somewhere and it is just really about being together with friends or with family and staying in nature and having a good time.

So now they still even though Finland is quite non religious country Johanos the pagan traditions they are still alive and well especially around Johanos.

So Uka was the god of fertility and in the pagan times Finland it was very much an aquaculture society and it was based on farming it was a farming culture and who do you worship when it is a farming culture you worship the thunder god obviously so Uka was very important god and in many other cultures the thunder gods they have lots of different kinds of meanings like being the god of wars and all kinds of nasty stuff but Uka in Finland he has always been quite peaceful god in fact and he was also the protector of lovers and families and he was people approached Uka as being the god of fertility and being god of the good luck bringer and protector of life not just human life but our life all the life came from Uka and Uka pretty much Uka is Uka's spouse or her name is also Rauni and unfortunately in Finland we don't have much information left about Uka because during the middle ages the church both Catholic and the utilitarian church they pretty much destroyed all the cults the cult of Uka was pretty much destroyed and those female Finnish deities that were left they were either turned into Virgin Mary type or they were demonized as witchy bitches yes anyway unfortunately we don't have that much information about Uka if you know Kjallarhorn and you have heard the songs Suvedar I think that is about Uka pretty much it's one of my favorite Yuhannes songs anyway when there was Uka and Vaka during the midsummer solstice it was a big party it was huge celebration for Uka and that included eating and drinking and dancing and just having a good time and this still takes place in Finland today because that's what Yuhannes is about it's about eating and having a good time and spending time in nature and Uka and Vakkat means a sacrifice done for Uka and for Uka people usually sacrificed bread and booze and beer and grains and all kinds of food from the farms and that's what Vakkami so it was good as Uka and Vakkat and Uka he was the god of fire because he rules the thunder so obviously the element of the midsummer solstice is fire and he was the god who protected the fertility of the land he also protected the fertility of the people this is why in Finland many times during Yuhannes people did lots of love magic and love spells and I know many people who still do them today around Yuhannes one custom related to Yuhannes was to have these kind of birch trees or trunks of birch trees and they were put up next to houses and if you know something about Swedish summer midsummer celebration they have the midsummer pole like they had maypoles as well so it was a bit similar in Finland back in the days but nowadays people don't really do that anymore and so many people live in the city so you can really chop a birch tree and put that in front of your door anyway but back in the days people did this a lot and those birch trees they were called as Yuhannes koi with the Yuhannes birch tree and they were decorated with ribbons and flowers and like fresh leaves and so on and just in general houses they were cleaned and rubbed and saunas they were cleaned and staples they were cleaned for Yuhannes and they were decorated with fresh flowers and these reds that were made from leaves and they were all over and it was all very very pretty I can imagine and children they did lots of reds for their herds flower reds and they were also given to animals so they might put some flowers to the cow horns and for the horses also little reds for the horses so I imagine it has been very pretty and just to celebrate summer and life with those flowers and each flower and each tree they all have different pagan meanings I've been thinking about doing another series maybe in Finnish about different flowers and trees and their symbolism can't do that in English because the biological vocabulary in English I'm not very good at that but I will put the subtitles don't you worry and there's lots of these summer magic related to Yuhannes obviously and one very common spell was to collect nine different kinds of white flowers and it also could have been five seven or twelve white flowers depending on the source and then you would put them under your pillow and during the night you would see your future spells in your dreams I used to do that a lot when I was a child but I can't remember my dreams maybe I should do it again anyway it's a quite nice spell and another very common one was to go to the forest and try to find a spring or a well a little spring or a well in the forest and if you would stare there in the midsummer solstice or Yuhannes night you would see your future spells there so there was lots of that kind of magic going on and bonfires that's the most common Finnish Yuhannes tradition that still lives today and the bonfire that goes all the way back to the shamanic times like 10,

000 years ago and there were first people in the area what is now known as Finland and those people who had like shamanistic virtue and that's how long the bonfire tradition is and it was connected to Ukkah as well because Ukkah obviously was the god of fire and bonfires they were lit to get rid of the bad and evil spirits but also as the as a symbol of abundance for the people and it the whole idea of the bonfire and the ukkah and the thunder it actually goes all the way back to the time when people did not worship human shaped figures as their gods but animal shaped figures as their gods and archetypes and if you're familiar with Finnish and Finnobatic mythology especially there's huge amount of stories about birds Finnish and the Baltic countries there was this there is this long old expression to describe but Finnobatic people as the people of the wild the bird because there's so many myths about different birds and birds were very holy for the people and so before Ukkah there was the Thunderbird there was the Thunderbird which was the eagle,

Kotka in Finnish and if you have seen eagles they are massive birds they are huge and eagle in at least in Finland eagle was seen as the omen of thunder because the eagle it flies in the summer quite often before the thunder comes because that's the time when it prays and the before people worship these human shaped gods they worshiped the animal gods and the Thunderbird was one of the most respected bird gods you could say that and a Thunderbird that is connected to bonfire and to the story of the phoenix which is obviously extremely old story and the thing is with the eagle,

Eagle can actually create themselves again from the ashes literally because when an eagle gets old and it gets very tired and the feathers are going off they can actually choose to you know die eventually or they can choose to go through this rebirth process that is when they land and they will pluck away their old feathers and grow again new ones new tail and everything and that actually extends the life of the eagle and in a way they are reborn again nature is amazing and this is where the whole myth of the Phoenix bird comes from and this is why eagles were worshiped as the Thunder gods during the shamanistic times in Finland and around the world because you can find this myth all over and pretty much in every single culture where there is a Thunder god the symbol is the eagle for example in ancient Greece eagle was the symbol of Zeus even more if you go to the Native American cultures there's huge amount of stories about the Thunderbirds the eagle so I always find this myth very very interesting and very empowering but that's how eagle,

Ochko and the bonfires are connected together and there is lots of different different kinds of symbolism related to flowers and to trees and to different deities in Finnish mythology and during Johanos it was a very good time to see fairies and elves and if you could see below of the wisps those little flames in the forest the elf flames and then you could follow them and those elf flames they would lead you to the treasure that was buried by the elves so if you want to become rich maybe you might want to go to the forest to see if you could see those little flames and follow them and maybe you will become rich we have lots of stories about buried treasures in Finland and there's one very very funny superstition as well if you went to the spring in the midsummer not midsummer sauce this night but the Johanos night between the 24th and the 25th of June in the midnight the water in that well it would turn into vodka oh that might be interesting to try and morning dew that is something very very sacred ingredient around midsummer sauce as well one very common midsummer sauce to spell was that if you would go outside during the night of 24th and the 25th of June and then you would roll naked in the morning dew you would remain beautiful for the rest of the year obviously and but there's lots of different kinds of magic related to the morning dew one was that it would heal all the head pains if you would have headaches you would just like put some morning dew around your face and that would get easier or if you had pain in your ear you would put some mid morning dew to your ears and if someone has tingling in their ears they might want to try that and one very interesting superstition towards morning dew was that if you would drink the morning dew after the Saturday maybe in the Sunday morning if you would go and drink some morning dew or in the Saturday morning you would get a beautiful singing voice so these are very very interesting stories from Finnish folklore and I think nowadays it's still very much the same because it's all about going to nature the cities get really empty people travel to their summer cabins or countryside have some good times they eat well and they drink well and many people go to sauna pagans do lots of summer spells and Finnish pagans are very active when it comes to Jöheim spells and I would really be interested to hear if someone tries these spells and reports them so if you do please let me know I have tried some of them and they are very very entertaining at least if they don't work some of them do work some of them don't you know it's all about what are your goals and what you want.