Finnish mythology

Finnish mythology commonly refers to the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many shared features with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies, but also with neighbouring Baltic, Slavic and, to a lesser extent, Norse mythologies.

Finnish mythology survived within an oral tradition of mythical poem-singing and folklore well into the 19th century.

Of the animals, the most sacred was the bear, whose real name was never uttered out loud, which was thought to be unfavorable to the hunt. The bear (Finnish: karhu) was seen as the embodiment of the forefathers, and for this reason it was called by many circumlocutions: mesikämmen 'mead-paw', otso 'browed one', kontio 'dweller of the land', metsän kultaomena 'the golden apple of the forest'. It was not strictly seen as a god.

The first historical mention of Finnish folk religion was by the bishop and Lutheran reformer Mikael Agricola (1510–1557) in the preface to his 1551 Finnish translation of the Psalms. Agricola supplied a list of purported deities of the Häme (in Swedish, Tavastia) and Karjala (Karelia). It detailed twelve deities in each region with their supposed functions briefly set out in verse form. (Some commentators state that only eleven deities were listed for Häme, not counting Agricola's mention of Piru, the Devil). Due to the lists, Agricola is considered to be the father of the study of Finnish religious history and mythology. Later scholars and students commonly quoted Agricola's lists as a historical source; only in the late eighteenth century did scholars begin to critically re-examine Agricola's work, finding that most of the figures on his list were not gods, but local guardian spirits, figures from folk mythology or explanatory legends, cultural heroes, Christian saints under alternative names, and, in one case, a harvest-time festival.

Cristfried Ganander's Mythologia Fennica, published in 1789, was the first truly scholarly foray into Finnish mythology.^{[citation needed]} In the 19th century, research into Finnish folklore intensified. Scholars like Elias Lönnrot, J.F. Cajan, M.A. Castrén, and D.E.D. Europaeus travelled around Finland writing down folk poetry sung by runo (poem) singers, many of whom were tietäjät (traditional ritual specialists). The genres they collected included material like the synnyt (lit. 'origin, birth or aetiology'), which give mythical accounts of the origins of many natural phenomena. From this material Lönnrot edited the Kalevala as well as the Kanteletar. The wealth of folk poetry collected in the 19th century often deals with pre-Christian pagan themes, and has allowed scholars to study Finnish mythology in more detail.

The world was believed to have been formed out of a bird's egg or eggs. The species of the bird and the number of eggs varies between traditions. In the Kalevala the bird is a pochard that lays seven eggs (six of gold and one of iron). Examples from other stories include a swallow, a loon, and a mythical giant eagle, kokko. The sky was believed to be the upper cover of the egg; alternately it was seen as a tent, which was supported by a column at the north pole, below the north star.

The movement of the stars was explained to be caused by the sky-dome's rotation around the North Star and itself. A great whirl was caused at the north pole by the rotation of a column of sky. Through this whirl, souls could exit the world to the land of dead, Tuonela.

Earth was believed to be flat. At the edges of Earth was Lintukoto [fi], "the home of the birds", a warm region in which birds lived during the winter. The Milky Way is called Linnunrata, "the path of the birds", because the birds were believed to move along it to Lintukoto and back. In Modern Finnish usage, the word lintukoto means an imaginary, happy, warm, and peaceful paradise-like place.