page_title: Finnish mythology
section_title: The origins and the structure of the world
hierarchical_section_title: Finnish mythology / The origins and the structure of the world
caption_attribution_description: Maailman rakenne suomalaisessa mytologiassa. Perustuu E.N Setälän kirjaan sammon salaisuus (1932). Lisätty pyörre ja maailmanvuori. Structure of universe in Finnish mythology. My own drawing based on book of E.N Setälä (1932). Added the whirld and mountain.
context_page_description: Finnish mythology is a commonly applied description of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many features shared with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies, but also shares some similarities 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, lest his kind be unfavorable to the hunting. The bear was seen as the embodiment of the forefathers, and for this reason it was called by many circumlocutions: mesikämmen, otso, kontio, metsän kultaomena but not a god.
context_section_description: 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 different stories. 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 go to the outside of the world to the land of dead, Tuonela.
  Earth was believed to be flat. At the edges of Earth was Lintukoto, "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.
  Birds also had other significance. Birds brought a human's soul to the body at the moment of birth, and took it away at the moment of death. In some areas, it was necessary to have a wooden bird-figure nearby to prevent the soul from escaping during sleep. This Sielulintu, "the soul-bird", protected the soul from being lost in the paths of dreams.
  Waterfowl are very common in tales, and also in stone paintings and carvings, indicating their great significance in the beliefs of ancient Finns.
caption: Structure of the world, according to Finnish mythology.
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