Finnish paganism

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The elk is a common image in many Finnish petroglyphs

Finnish paganism was the indigenous pagan religion in Finland, Estonia and Karelia prior to Christianisation. It was a polytheistic religion, worshipping a number of different deities. The principal god was the god of thunder and the sky, Ukko; other important gods included Jumi, Ahti, and Tapio.

Finnish paganism shows many similarities with the religious practices of neighbouring cultures, such as Germanic, Norse and Baltic paganism. However, it has some distinct differences due to the Uralic and Finnic culture of the region.

Finnish paganism provided the inspiration for a contemporary pagan movement Suomenusko (Finnish: Finnish faith), which is an attempt to reconstruct the old religion of the Finns.


The Finnish pagans were polytheistic, believing in a number of different deities. Most of the deities ruled over a specific aspect of nature; for instance, Ukko was the god of the sky and thunder. These deities were often pan-Finnic, being worshipped by many different tribes in different regions. The Finnish pagans were also animists, worshipping local nature deities at site-specific shrines to that particular deity.

Finnish paganism was based on deities of nature, and it evolved in a time where the Finns were highly dependent on the natural world for survival.

Major deities[edit]

  • Several key deities were venerated across nearly all of Finland and Karelia. These pan-Finnic deities controlled many aspects of nature.
  • The chief god was Ukko (also known as Perkele), who was the ruler over the sky and thunder. A corresponding figure is known amongst other Scandinavian, Sami, and Baltic religions, such as the Norse Thor and Baltic Perkunas.
  • Another deity that appeared very significant to the Finnish pagans, but about whom modern scholars know very little, was Jumi, whose name is related to "Jumala", the modern Finnish language word for a monotheist God.
  • There were many other important deities who ruled over a specific aspect of the natural world, and who have been referred to as "kings"[citation needed]. The king of water was often called Ahti, and the king of the forest was Tapio.
  • Other major deities included Äkräs, the god of fertility; Mielikki, the goddess of the forests and the hunt; Kuu, the goddess of the moon; and Lempo, the god of wilderness and archery.
  • Great heroes, who had, in mythology, once been human, such as Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen, were also objects of worship, in a way similar to the Greek pagans' worship of mythical human heroes like Herakles.


Main article: Haltija

Local animistic deities, known as haltijas, were also worshipped. These haltijas could be male or female, and could take a human or another animal's form. Haltijas could be found everywhere in the nature, both in the biotic and abiotic parts. Every human has a haltija, usually called haltijasielu (haltija soul) or luontohaltija (nature haltija), which is one of the three parts of a person's soul.

Maan Haltija[edit]

Certain haltijas, known as maan haltija (literally "tutelary of land"), guarded the property of an individual, including their house and livestock. Votive offerings would be given to these maan haltija at a shrine, in thanks for the help given and also to prevent the haltija from causing harm.

Sometimes haltijas of certain families and farms acted against other families and their farms by stealing their wealth or making the animals infertile, for instance.

Many local haltijas were believed to have originally been the sacred spirits of ancestors. In some cases a haltija was the first inhabitant of house. Sometimes while making a new house a local spirit of nature could be "employed" to work as a maan haltija.

Väki Haltija[edit]

Different elements and environments had their own haltijas. Haltijas were grouped into types or races called väki. There were, for instance, different väki of water, forests, and graveyards.

Väkis could become angry if people acted in a disrespectful manner in their area. For example, cursing close to water made the väki of water angry. When angry, väkis could cause diseases and other misfortune to befall the human victim. Some väkis were always angry, like the väki of fire, explaining why every time you touch fire it burns, no matter how respectful you are around it.

Each tribe of väkis belonged to specific environments and if they were misplaced, problems occurred. For example, most väkis were misplaced if they attached to a human being, and they made the human being ill because they were in the wrong place. Illnesses were removed by sending väkis back to their right places. Shamans who cured diseases were returning the cosmic balance.

According to the concept of väki being divided in two (into power and folk of haltijas) the ancient Finns believed that the world was totally animistic in that no force of nature or intelligent life existed without väkis or haltijas. In other words, nothing happened in the universe without it being caused by a group of spirits. Even a person's soul consisted of many spirits.

Soul, death, and the afterlife[edit]


See also: Soul dualism

The pagan Finnish belief about the soul of a human was different from that of most other cultures across the world, in that they believed the human soul to be composed of three different parts: henki, luonto and itse. Each of the three were autonomous beings on their own.

Henki (translated as "life", "breath" or "spirit", sometimes also referred to as "löyly") was a person's life force, which presented itself as breathing, the beating of one's heart and the warmth of their body. Henki was received prior to birth and it left at the moment of death. The word "hengetön" (lit. "one without henki") can be used as a synonym for dead in the Finnish language even now.

Luonto (translated as "nature") was a guardian spirit or protector. Luonto has also been referred to as the haltija of a person. A strong willed, artistic or otherwise talented person was believed to have a strong haltija who granted them good luck and skills to complete their tasks well. A weak luonto could be strengthened by various spells and rituals. Luonto could leave a person's body without the person dying, but its lengthened absence would cause problems, such as alcoholism and other addictions. Unlike henki, luonto was not received prior to birth but instead either at the time of getting the first teeth or being given a name. A newborn child was thus considered to be particularly vulnerable.

Itse was a spirit received at the time of birth or a few days after. It was believed to define one's personality and receiving itse made one a person. In modern day Finnish the word "itse" means "self", but in old days itse was different from one's self, "minuus". Like luonto, itse could leave one's body without the person dying but long absence would cause illnesses and misery. Depressions, for instance, was seen as a result of having lost one's itse. If a person was diagnosed to be "itsetön" or "luonnoton" (without one's itse or without one's luonto), a shaman or a sage could try locating the missing part of the soul and bring it back. Although itse and luonto were usually lost after a traumatising event, it was possible to purposefully separate one's itse from their body. This was requiered if a missing part of the soul needed to be found. Itse could also leave the body to appear as an "etiäinen" (a sort of false arrival apparition). At the time of a person's death their itse joined the other deceased of the family or, in some cases, stayed amongst the living as a ghost.


In some traditions, it was a habit to pause at a half-way point while transporting the dead body, from the dwelling to the graveyard. Here, a karsikko-marking was made on a big pine tree. The marking was for people to remember the person; and in the event that the spirit were to awaken and try to make its way back home from the graveyard, it would see its own karsikko-marking, then realize that it is dead and instead try to find the path to the spirit realm. A forest with karsikko-marked trees was a kind of supernatural barrier between dwellings of the living and the burial grounds.

After a person died there was a transitional period of thirty to forty days while their soul searched Tuonela, the land of dead, and tried to find their place there. During this period, the soul could visit its living relatives either as a ghost or in the form of an animal.

The soul visited relatives especially if it was unhappy. To please an unhappy soul, one would show respect by not speaking ill of the deceased or by having a sacrifice in the spirit's name.

After this transitional period, the soul moved permanently in to Tuonela. However, the soul could still come back if it were unhappy, or if it were asked to return by its relatives who needed help.

Some souls were not able to settle down or were not welcomed in Tuonela, and they continued haunting, i.e. bastard children who were killed and buried outside a cemetery usually ended up as permanent haunters of some place, typically screaming in terror, until someone digs up their bodies, blesses them, and buries them in a graveyard.

Ancestor veneration[edit]

People were afraid of ghosts, but spirits of ancestors could also help his/her living relatives, and they were asked to help. A shaman could be sent to Tuonela to ask for knowledge of spirits or even to take a spirit to the world of living as luonto. A Spirit of the dead had to be honoured by giving him/her sacrifices. Places where sacrifices were given to ancestors were called Hiisi ( = sacred forest, also a kind of open air temple, often included the Offering-stone, uhrikivi, collective monument for the dead of the family). Christianity held hiisi to be evil creatures and places. The old sacred places were often desecrated by being used as the building sites for the churches of the new religion, and the old sacred trees were hacked down.

Lemminkäisen äiti by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. A depiction of the underworld, Tuonela, from a myth found in the Kalevala.


Main article: Tuonela

The Finns believed in a place of afterlife called Tuonela, or sometimes Manala. In most traditions it was situated underground or at the bottom of a lake, though sometimes it was said to exist on the other side of a dark river. Tuonela was ruled over by the god Tuoni, and his wife, the goddess Tuonetar.

Tuonela was a dark and lifeless place, where the dead were in a state of eternal sleep. Shamans were sometimes able to reach the spirits of their dead ancestors by traveling to Tuonela in a state of trance created by rituals. He had to make his way over the Tuonela river by tricking the ferryman. While in Tuonela, the shaman had to be careful not to get caught: the living were not welcome there. Shamans who were caught could end up decaying in the stomach of a giant pikefish with no hope of returning to normal life. If the shaman died during the trance ritual, it was believed that he had been caught by the guards at Tuonela.

An illustration of the hero Väinämöinen from Finnish mythology.


Main article, see Finnish mythology

The pagan Finns had many myths about their gods and their great heroes. Because they lived in a non-literate society, the stories were taught orally as folklore, and they were not written down. Finnish mythology survived Christianisation by being told as myths. Many of these myths were later written down in the 19th century as the Kalevala, which was created to be a national epic of Finland by Elias Lönnrot.

Sacred animals[edit]

The bear was a sacred animal to the Finnish pagans.

Because of the very nature of life in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Finland, the Finns relied heavily on hunting for survival. As such the animals that they hunted became vital to their survival, and they were treated with respect.

The bear was considered sacred. The pagan Finns believed that it came from the sky and had the ability to reincarnate[citation needed]. A celebration known as Karhunpeijaiset (literally "celebration of the bear") was practised whenever a bear was killed and eaten. The ceremony was designed to convince the bear's soul to reincarnate back into the forest. After the flesh was eaten, the bones were buried, and the skull placed on a venerated pine tree known as kallohonka[citation needed].

Before going hunting, the Finns would pray to the Emuus, or ancestral mothers of various animal species, for help.

From ancient drawings, petroglyphs, it is clear that the elk was a very important animal. It appears much more than bears do, and it is theorised that the bear was such a holy animal that it was forbidden to depict it. Also, the bear's name was almost forbidden to say, so many euphemisms were developed. The most usual Finnish word for bear in modern language, karhu, is just one of the many euphemisms, and it means "rough fur." Among the many names of bear otso is probably the original "real" name, as suggested by the wide spread of the word otso and related words amongst many of the Uralic languages. Many euphemisms for bear are local.

Many water birds were holy for Finns and other Finnic peoples. They were often depicted on petroglyphs. It was believed that if you killed a water bird, you died soon after. The holiest water bird was the swan. With its long neck, it could look to all the levels of the world, including Tuonela, the land of the dead. Birds are found often in Finnic mythology. For example, there are many stories about a bird creating the world. In many traditions it was believed that the world was created by the egg of a bird. In other traditions it was believed that the world was created on mud that bird took in its beak while diving.

In Karelia it was believed that a bird brings the soul to a newborn baby, and that the same bird takes the soul with it when person dies. This soul-carrying bird was called sielulintu, "soul-bird". In some traditions people carried artifacts depicting their sielulintu. Sielulintu was believed to guard their souls while they slept. After the person died, the artifact-bird was inserted to sit on the cross at the person's grave. Such crosses with soul birds still exist in graveyards in Karelia. This is one example how Christian and Pagan beliefs still existed side by side hundreds of years after the Christianisation of the Finnish and Karelian people.


Swan and egg, based on petroglyphs of Karelia

It is believed by some scholars that shamanism played a big part in Finnish paganism, as it did (and still does) in the Siberian paganism to the east of Finland. A Shaman is a wise and respected person in the community, believed to have a special relationship with the spirit world. Shamans go into a trance to commune with spirits and ancestors or to take a journey into the spirit realm. In trances shamans may ask their ancestors or various nature spirits for guidance. They believe that nature has the answers to all questions.

Among the Finns' western neighbours, the Norse of Scandinavia, it was a common belief that the Finns were wizards. In the Norse sagas, inclusion of a Finnish element almost always signifies a supernatural aspect to the story. However, "Finn" in some Norse sagas could also mean the Sami and not the Finns. Finns were also called Kvens.

According to tales, foreign seafarers bought ropes tied in knots from Finns. By opening the knot a bit, a seaman could raise a wind to make his ship go faster. However, opening it too fast would raise a storm. Finnish wizards were known and feared by neighbouring peoples around the Baltic Sea.


Further information: Northern Crusade

Christian missionaries entered Finland in the 11th century. The native pagan religion still persisted, until Christianity was strengthened under Swedish influence in the 12th century. In the 13th century a "crusade" was launched against the last pagans in the country by Birger Jarl. However, old traditions were only slowly rooted out and elements of it long persisted along new faith. Particularly, cult of Ukko remained popular: there are records from the 17th century of peasants holding festives to honour Ukko, and in some places these traditions may have persisted until the 19th century.

Finnish Neopaganism[edit]

Main article: Finnish Neopaganism

In the 20th century, with the rise of the Neopagan movement across the world, Finnish Neopaganism arose as a reconstructed form of the old religion. Unlike those neopagan religions that take an eclectic view of the many pagan faiths, such as Wicca and Neo-druidry, Finnish Neopaganism focuses on reconstructionism to imitate the ancient religion as accurately as possible. It is still mainly practiced within Finland[citation needed], where it accounts only for a relatively small percentage of the population, the majority being members of the state Lutheran Church or professing no religion.

See also[edit]