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Descendants of the Hero of the National Epic?
The central character in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, is a bearded old man called Väinämöinen, who is known as a powerful shaman and rune singer. He was a tragically lonely man whose courting trips to Pohjola, according to the Kalevala, always went wrong. In Kalajoki I started to seriously doubt the truthfulness of the story. After meeting some of the …
Read more »Life-Saving Lichen
Rokua offers plenty of food for the eye. But does it produce anything to fill the stomach? An older gentleman came up to me after seeing me eyeing the flourishing lichen growth. ”I dare say you’ve not seen anything like this anywhere else. You can eat the lichen, too, you know.” What on earth did that mean? I had to find out …
Read more »The Sweat of a Heroic Wise Man
“If liquor, tar and the sauna won’t cure it, the disease will kill you”, an elderly man said at the Ahmas Kalevala heritage village. The old saying describes Finnish folk medicine’s three main cures in a nutshell. My muscles were very sore from wandering on the Rokuanharju Esker, and now these people were going to cure me with the sauna. This …
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