In the Kalevala: Three Rivers around Pohjola

The beauty of other cultures and languages is the discovery of different ways of thinking.  New frames. I've been reading a book of essays, Mythic Discourses: Studies in Uralic Traditions, edited by Frog, Anna-Leena Siikala & Eila Stepanova published by the Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki.  I also had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by Eila Stepanova sponsored by the Finlandia Foundation. This volume provides me with much more context and history as I read and study the Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland, collected from oral tradition, singing minstrels, by Elias Lonnrot. There are several translations of the book, and I have about four of those.  I've been reading the Kalevala for many years. It is a source for me, a place where I learn more about my family's Finnish history, heritage and culture. 

It takes time to see and understand subtleties. In the English language, many American and European people conceive of the afterlife with Christian perspectives. Most are familiar with the story of what happens in spiritual texts in the Christian narrative: heaven or hell.  Heaven is the most sublime place, the heavenly, blissful, sunlit blessed place with God, the creator.  Hell is the worst place, the miserable, painful, fiery, dark place with the devil.  For a time, the Catholic church held a category called purgatory.  But in the Kalevala, with its pre-Christian roots, this understanding is somewhat different  It is not even called the "afterlife" but the Otherworld, Pohjola.  The Finnish word Pohjola literally translates to North land.  

This is a different frame. The binary is less clear. Pohjola is either a womb or a grave or a strange village or country.  It is not heaven, it is not in the sky. It is an island set upon open waters. The concepts of Tuonela or Manala refer to the realm of the dead or the underworld. Rivers must be crossed in order to find Pohjola, and the rivers are the Rivers of Tuonela, Pojohola, and Manala which have dangerous rapids and waves like vertical swords. Not many return, it could be said.  Not any.  

In old tradition, in the time of Kalevala rune-singers, a lament singer must perform at funerals in order to ensure a safe passage for the deceased.  Eila Stepanova provides fascinating information and stories about the women's laments alongside the Kalevala.  Here is a description of the presentations and I have also included a link to both lectures.  

Women’s Laments alongside the Kalevala: Forgotten Symbols of Finland’s Nation-Building

Eila Stepanova discusses Karelian laments in the context of national romanticism in Finland starting from the nineteenth century up to the present day, beginning with Elias Lönnrot, who was also the very first collector of this tradition of women’s poetry. In the context of national romanticism in 1800s, this genre of traditional poetry was important in Finland’s nation-building project but has been forgotten in the shadow of Lönnrot’s Kalevala.

Eila Stepanova is a Finnish folklorist specializing on Karelian and more broadly on North Finnic lament poetry. She received her doctoral degree at the University of Helsinki. She is recognized as the foremost active expert on Karelian laments and as an expert in Karelian culture more generally with a variety of fieldwork experience. Stepanova is currently executive director of the Society of Karelian Culture (Karjalan Sivistysseura).

The Viking Age in Finland

The Viking Age is a period of history that has fascinated people for generations, and interest in it has only grown in recent years with the popularity of programs like The Vikings. Popular knowledge of the Viking Age has tended to focus on Scandinavians and their westward expansion across the North Atlantic. In this talk, I will introduce the Viking Age as a period of mobility and cultural contacts that also extended to the east along inland routes. In these regions, speakers of the language that would eventually become the Finnish, Karelian, and Vepsian languages were also active participants. I focus on territories where Finnic languages were spoken or where they would be spoken later. Today, we tend to imagine where languages are spoken on a map more or less along the lines of where they were spoken in the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the Viking Age, however, the situation was very different. Most people don’t realize it, but the Viking Age was pivotal in the histories of Finnish and Karelian languages and cultures, ultimately leading them to be dominant in the areas where they were familiar in recent centuries.

Frog is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. He specializes in early Finnic and Scandinavian contacts and cultural reconstruction. He received his PhD from University College London in 2010 and an Associate Professorship from the University of Helsinki in 2013. From 2011–2014, he was co-coordinator of the Viikinkiaika Suomessa – Viking Age in Finland project, which produced the books Fibula, Fabula, Fact: The Viking Age in Finland (edited by Joonas Ahola and Frog with Clive Tolley, 2014) and The Viking Age in Åland: Insights into Identity and Remnants of Culture (edited by Joonas Ahola, Frog, and Jenni Lucenius, 2014). 

The direct link the lectures is here: https://youtu.be/7E5oQeYQdUY.  Eila Stepanova is first.  Frog is second. 

Here is a link to the pdf version of Mythic Discourses: Studies in Uralic Tradition.  If you are interested, I encourage you to buy the book. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/5cd85324-37ee-4644-98d7-15b0c7d6ffa7/9789522227638_mythic_discourses.pdf

The Stairway of Surprise

Deep in our culture run archetypal stories. The Kalevala, Nordic Tales, creation stories, and fairy tales are stories of quest and strife, and heroism and love. These archetypal stories are told over and over in many forms. Star-crossed and tragic lovers, once and future kings, and quests emerge again and again in our contemporary literature. Jungian psychology has examined these with great interest because they reveal deep patterns. As a writer, and reader, I am drawn to their power. Ralph Waldo Emerson was inspired by Norse sagas and the Tales of King Arthur. Here is a poem that he wrote about Merlin:

Poetry: the Spirit Boat

Poetry is rooted in old ritual.  I found an interesting blog, Spirit Boat, that explores shamanic tradition in Finland, both ancient and contemporary.  The Finnish word for shaman is noita or teitäjä. Tietää is an infinitive verb that means to know, tell, spell, bode, portend, or forebode. Teitäjä has the word "know" in its root; the word ending indicates one who does this. Similarly, the word oppia means to learn. Opettaja means teacher. In Finland, scholars have documented a very long tradition of shamanic practice. The title of the blog comes from Finnish cave drawings that depict figures in a vessel crossing to the spirit world. Leppä, or Harold Alden, points to the use of (oral tradition) poetry, cave drawings, carvings, and other arts as integral to shamanic practice.  The photograph here is a female Finno-Ugric shaman, date unknown. 

In English the word rune refers to "a mark or letter of mysterious or magic significance, or the small stones or pieces of bone used as divinatory symbols." The Finnish word runo translates as poem. In plural, it's runoja. In Finnish, a poet is a runoilija. In the photo to the right, rune-singers are performing the Kalevala stories, the oral storytelling tradition of Finland, a collection of creation stories, mystic adventures, wedding and folk poems, and incantations. These three performers are from Suistamo in the early 20th century. Playing the kantele is one of the most well-known singer of Kalevala songs, Iivana Shemeikka. Iivana Onoila and Konstantin Kuokka hold hands and sing astride the bench. 

The first written account of this practice of sitting on a bench in this way, hand in hand, was in 1778. Apparently, it was common to have two singers perform, one taking over when the other paused.  In "Body, Performance, and Agency in Kalevala Rune-Singing," Anna-Leena Siikala explores at length the performance style.  It makes me think of two people in a boat. This is intimate, and it's quite different than the practice of poetry performance nowadays.  I wonder if it might have a root with the Mongolian Tuvan throat-singers (mostly men) and Inuit throat-singers (mostly women). The Inuits I have seen perform in pairs, holding hands similar to the photographs of old Kalevala singers.  

This photograph shows another female poet from the past, a traditional rune singer Kaisa Vilhuinen. She lived in the Swedish part of 'Finnskogen' and died in 1941.  About the Kalevala, Anna-Leena Siikala writes:

The notion of intertextuality of Kalevala epic and incantations refers to the fact that these genres represent a larger field connected to the mythic knowledge of the other world performed by singers and seers. The concept of field has its advantages in incorporating communicative acts in the socially organized world.

The Kalevala combines genres. The Kalevala that we have today was transcribed by Elias Lönnröt in the late 1800s.  He did not collect all of the poems in the oral tradition. Some were lost. Different singers and different regions had variations. What he was able to gather became an epic. One can learn about the adventures of the magic singer Vainimoinen or about beer or ways to charm a bear (sometimes called "Honeypaws") or how to prepare for a wedding.  Siikala writes that the runoja (poems) pointed to the wider fields of knowledge: nature, farming, cultural ways and spiritual stories.

The Finnish culture bears resemblance to many Native cultures in the Americas.  One strong similarity is the way that both cultures considered many things--wind, stones--to be live beings. Each has a strong connection with the natural world.  Luonta is the Finnish noun that means nature. There is an interesting phrase in Finnish: Minä liikun luonnassa or Lounnassa liikuminen:  I like moving (or to move) in Nature. The words express the Finnish affinity for Nature and being outside.  Another strong element of the culture is the sauna (pronounced sow-na) -- it always was the first building erected on land.  The very first saunas were smoke saunas, but now it is mostly wood-fired or electric heat.  Water, stones, fire.  It is a place of cleansing, relaxation, and meditation. 

Sometimes, the old Finnish shamans would recite poems until they entered a trance state (called falling into a crack).  The metaphor of falling into a crack evokes a descent or being "between," and it describes well the process of writing poems. I consider poetry to be a spirit boat, in that poetry is a vessel or an object that holds the spirit. It seeks a mutuality of spirit, of one spirit speaking to another. Nowadays, poems are not necessarily written to be part of a religious ritual. At least mine are not.  However, writing poetry has become my spiritual practice. I honor its power of incantation and metaphor (metamorphosis).  

In performance, good poems hold the audience's attention. Many times, I've made final decisions about revision right before or onstage.  No other setting makes me more aware of the lines, individual words, and phrasings. My pencil slashes the paper, deleting every extraneous note, so the final result is precise and condensed. I believe the plays evolve into their best form through performance as well.  Often I perform poetry with Kathy McTavish on the cello, a much more powerful sound than the kantele. Occasionally I have performed poetry in dialogue with poet Ellie Schoenfeld.  One begins and then we take turns, selecting a response to the other's poem. It is a practice that is improvisional, demands deep listening in the moment, and I think it's similar to rune-singers. But we don't hold hands--or we haven't, yet. 

Origin of Birds: Circles Within Circles

A new net-art installation will be at the Prøve Gallery in Duluth. The opening is on April 11 at 7 pm with live music by the Cosmic Pit Orchestra.  "The Origin of Birds" is created by Kathy McTavish: it features her new film generator, text, and music. For more information: http://originofbirds.blueboatfilms.com/  and and http://www.provegallery.com/
 
Circles:

In the creation stories, both the bird and its egg arrived before the earth was made. According to an ancient Greek story, the god χάος (Chaos) was the first to emerge at the creation of the universe. Soon after her came Gaia (Earth), Tartaros (the Underworld) and Eros (Love). In many versions, Chaos then gave birth to the Birds. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God created birds of on the fifth day of creation.  

Immersion

The new performance work that I do with cellist Kathy McTavish falls between genres (see samples http://www.cellodreams.com/music02.html).  It isn't song lyric and it isn't linear.  It isn't narrative but it does rely on narrative structures, some related to myth.    The cello, freestyle, improvisional, experimental sound, pulls you into the subconscious.   I begin with submersion.   

Roberto Bolano's novel, The Savage Detectives, begins with the narrator's statement that he joined the school of 'visceral realists.'   Next paragraph, he says he isn't sure what that means.  Nevertheless, he's in it and the novel unfolds from there.    I too search for the word that can define this writing.       

The sources of my work are diverse--first, Finnish folk literature.  The Kalevala was an oral tradition:  a creation story told (in rhapsodic meter) while playing the folk instrument, the kantela.   The epic is pre-Christian and contains many things, the creation story of the universe, charms, magic spells, stories of the magic singer, North Farm, weddings, feasts.   In the beginning, the Kalevala portrays the world as all water, without shore.  

Second, dream is a source.   The work I've been doing isn't exactly surreal.  It's isn't exactly magical realism.  I've found a new term:  irreal.   Irreal describes the work of Franz Kafka.   It puts you in another world and speaks to you of life.  It isn't a term that is used very much, but it does help describe the other world of 'undertow,' our new work in progress. 

I do like the words of Rene Magritte, "...If  'dreams' are concerned in this context, they are very different from those we have while sleeping.  It is question of self-willed 'dreams'...which are not intended to make you sleep but wake you up."      Some of the writers I have long admired:  Clarice Lispector (Hour of the Star, Family Ties, Foreign Legion, The Passion According to GH), Jorge Luis Borges (Dream Tigers, Ficciones, Labyrinths), Eduardo Galeano (Memory of Fire), Arguedas (Deep Rivers).   Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.   Ava and Aureole by Carol Maso.   These are stories of longing, mystical and somehow the author dislocates the reader in a most satisfying way.  They are definitely not plot driven, and not even especially character driven, but perhaps soul driven.     

Third, my source is music and art, especially abstract expressionism and conceptual art.   I find that the other art genres can trigger my own work.      The language is musical, with internal rhyme, assonance and consonance.   Other things feed my work:  fear  (what Kathy calls "trembling before God") or existentialist anguish and / or spiritual crisis that comes from life: the loss of loved ones, disaster, precipitous change.   The writing grapples with that.      In revision, I have reached into myths (Leda & the Swan, Orpheus and Euridyce), Biblical story, Tarot, and other art (the visual art of Hyman Bloom) and literature (the writing of mystics).   It is ethereal but completely rooted in the body, and visceral, but in the other world.   A touch sidereal, surreal, magically real, irreal.    For Bolanos, definition is only the beginning.  The writing of Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking) says, "never mind mind...."

Echo & Lightning

ECHO AND LIGHTNING (the expanded version will be published by Wildwood River, 2010) began as a chapbook and audio CD with cello music. The poems are a love story and a story about winged migration. On the audio CD, the poems are set in an experimental, free improv cello sound, a song of ascension, composed by Kathy McTavish.  It became a full length poetry manuscript.   Now the book has two more sections that give the overall manuscript a shape of a wave.  The mid-section is from another collection I wrote, Undertow, and the third section gathers several poems from an earlier chapbook and audio CD, Fearful Journey.

The story is rooted in the body and in the landscape of the north. Sources that inspired this work are the Kalevala (the epic poem of Finland) and Finnish poets, Greek mythology (Leda and the Swan) and the Gnostic book, Thunder, Perfect Mind. The poems examine stories about intersections with the divine--maybe 'an act of God' is comprised of creation and annihilation in equal parts—and with change. Often, falling in love is like this, both mystical and unsettling. Rapture occurs when we immerse into something new that takes us outside the self. An intense experience is bound to break the ties that bind you to your old life. The deep stories in our history and culture speak of this experience. We don't expect those intersections; we don't expect loss or know how to frame death and rebirth and change.

In my view, the rituals of poetry help us mediate the world, or bring us back into alignment with the natural world.

"Wind turns the body
and ground falls away

geese unafraid of silence
or empty sky
must go must go must go…"

Ellie Schoenfeld, author of THE DARK HONEY, writes:

"And so begins one of the poems in Packa’s newest collection. These poems are the story of following one’s own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. They bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, and resurrected. In these poems this occurs with the ease and necessity of taking one breath, letting it go and then receiving another. These are ecstatic poems. They are at once ethereal and profoundly grounded in the body. This has always been one of Packa’s greatest strengths and every piece in this collection is an awe-inspiring testament to that gift. These poems can help us find our way to the places we most need to go, to where “…music you haven’t heard/didn’t know you needed/opens deep.”

After publishing this book, I found the writing of Leppä (Harold Alden) that explores contemporary Finnish shamanism and sacred arts.  He presented this diagram by V.V. Napolskikh (1992). (Vladimir Vladimirovich Napolskikh is a Russian ethnographer, ethnologist, ethnohistorian, Finno-Ugrist and linguist. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at Udmurt State University that presents a world view of the Proto-Uralic cultures:

The sections of Echo and Lightning are oddly similar. Section I of the book with began with the wild swans, and it created a story of bird migration that was a metaphor for human experience.  I'd been fascinated with the story of Leda and the Swan, and I created three versions of what happened, told from her perspective.  Other poems seemed to arrive through my hand on the page, all exploring the image of flight and the divine.   After assembling these poems as an arc, I felt it to be a wave.  And in the design of a cresting, was the trough, or descent.  This became Section II. It was "immersion."  Perhaps it echoed my experience of near drowning as a child, but I also was at work exploring the undertow or underworld and its mythic stories.  I had not done this research, but I think the artist work accessed a symbolic language that was in my Finnish lineage and in the sacred stories of many cultures. Alden summarizes: 

Some significant features of the Proto-Uralic “world picture” above include the following:

• A Three-level universe:  The Proto-Uralic peoples conceived of an upper or sky world, middle or earth world, and an underworld associated with water, ocean, and the north.

• The World Tree:  Linking the three levels is a world tree.

• Water Bird Messengers:  Also linking the worlds are the water bird messengers that travel to and from the upper world, including swans, geese and ducks. 

• The Island and River of the Dead:  The lower world contained the “Island of the Dead” where souls go after death, and the “Subterranean River of the Lower World”, which is the prototype of the River of Tuonela in the later Finnish tradition.  This is the place of death and renewal.

• The “Old Woman of the South” is standing at the top right of the graphic.  Siikala says, “A significant feature in the mythologies of the Uralic peoples has been the role of the female as ruler over life, death, and the directions which symbolise them, south and north.”  

Section III of the book brought myself and the reader back to earth.  Still, my exploration of intersections with the divine continued in the poems about Lot's Wife and Mary Magdalene. It seemed to be that after encounters with the spiritual, a profound disorganization occurred.  I wrote an incantation to the muse.  I wrote poems that invoked the spirit of birds for protection. I wrote about the constant flow of rivers.  

Writing this book was important for me. At the time, I was going through the breakup of a long term relationship, and that also triggered grief over the loss of my mother. It was if something in myself had died.  I had deeply immersed myself in art and writing was the only way that I was able to get through my days. 

During this time, I made a trip to Finland to reconnect with many relatives.  I took a train from Helsinki to Kokkola, and as I gazed out the window, I saw two swans flying north. My mother's cousin Mikko Himanka in Kokkola presented me with a genealogical record of our family ancestry, with my name and my son's name inside.  He opened old family photos albums, and turning the pages with a distant curiosity, I came face to face with my mother's image as a young woman, smiling, and wearing a taffeta dress that I remember as a child. I gasped.  I had found something, not her exactly, and it led me deeper.   


Leppä (Harold Alden). "Shamanism and Sacred Arts in Finland Part 2." Spirit Boat Web log. http://spiritboat.blogspot.ca/2014/06/shamanism-and-sacred-arts-in-finland.html