Tuonela – The Land Of The Dead In Beliefs Of Ancient Finnish People

A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com - In the Finnish version of Hades, Tuonela was the land of death.

It was an underground home or city for all the dead, not only the good or the bad ones. In lifeless and dark Tuonela that appears several times in the Kalevala and Finnish folk poems, everybody slept forever. However, a brave shaman still was able to travel to this land of darkness. Using his power of trance, he often did it to ask the forefathers for guidance he needed among the living on earth.

At the River of Tuonela by Pekka Halonen (1865–1933). Credit: Public Domain 

Sometimes, a shaman could quickly contact Tuonela because he had a serious reason, but he managed to trick the guards into entering the Land of the Dead.

Shaman's Encounter With Tuonela

In Tuonela's rules, the great underworld god Tuoni and his wife Tuonetar, the realm's hostess but not any lovely lady.

Their frightful children are three daughters (Lowyatar) and a son (Tuoen Poika) known as the god of the Red Cheeks, who is responsible for chopping Lemminkainen's

Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian folklore and mythology, tells that Vainamoinen  (Väinämöinen) arrives in the Land of the Dead, and Tuonetar is happy to offer him a golden goblet of beer, but when he looks closer, he can see it is a black poison made of frog spawn, young poisonous snakes, lizards, adders, and worms. It is the beer of oblivion.

If people drink it, they forget they ever existed and cannot return to the land of the living. Vainamoinen (), who makes this ill-fated trip, can finally escape to the land of the living by turning into a snake.

Only Tuonetar and Tuoni's children are allowed to leave Tuonela without any trouble. Tuonetar is a horrible figure with three fingers on each hand and a hat drawn to her shoulders. She was called "the good hostess" for providing her guests with all manner of disgusting fare to eat, including worms, toads, lizards, and snakes.

Tuonetar and Tuoni have a trio of well-known daughters and a son.

One of the daughters warns Väinämöinen against crossing the river of death, but eventually gives in to his arguing and ferries him over to her father's side of the river. Tuoni tries to trap Väinämöinen but fails.

The second daughter, Lowyatar, is blind. After impregnation from the east-wind gave birth to the spirits of the nine most dreaded diseases (colic, pleurisy, fever, ulcer, plague, consumption, gout, cancer, and sterility. The third daughter is the mother and jailer of diseases, devils, and evil spirits imprisoned in a dungeon beneath a rock of the Tuoni River. She grinds the stone like a millstone on these diseases until they escape and torture humans. Interestingly enough, while the three daughters don't have names, the rock above the dungeon does have Kipu-Kivi or Kipuvuori.

Yet another child is their son Tuoen Poika, believed to be responsible for chopping Lemikainen's (Lemminkäinen) body into pieces and throwing it into the river of death.

In the beliefs of the ancient Finns, this family rules the gloomy world of the dead, wandering in Hell as shadowy ghosts.

The fate of the good and the bad is the same, tradition says. Tradition also has it that occasionally, living people could go to Hell for information or spells. However, the journey was difficult and tiring. It required weeks of arduous wandering in a desert and, finally, the crossing of the river with the help of a ferryman (similar to Charon in Greek mythology).

As we know, the deceased entered Hades with the help of Charon, the ferryman and a psychopomp of Hades whose duty was to carry dead souls across the rivers Acheron and Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.

We mentioned earlier that a shaman usually had a more straightforward possibility because he could use some tricks to contact the kingdom of the dead. It required weeks of hiking across the wilderness and eventually crossing the river with the help of a raft.

The vast underground of Tuonela is guarded by a river patrolled by Surma, a terrible beast similar to Cerberus from Greek mythology, which symbolizes sudden, brutal death. Surma appears in the epic poem Kalevala. According to the creature's description, it is a pair of massive jaws, with rows of huge fangs, attached to a greedy, infinite throat. Surma makes sure that no one escapes from Tuonela, the world of the dead.

This concept of Hell is in many aspects very similar to many other beliefs preserved by different ancient cultures.

Today, in Finnish Christianity, it is often interpreted as the place of the dead before the Last Judgement.

Updated on January 28, 2024

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

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