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12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Esoteric Publishers, C... · 6 replies · +2 points

It is definitely easy to see from the Finnish perspective, but honestly the meaninglessness of the concept of 'Europe' should be even more obvious for anyone looking at the religious environment of the ancient Mediterranean world, but people somehow manage not to see it.

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Esoteric Publishers, C... · 8 replies · +3 points

Actually, this Finn tends to agree with Apuleius. I think that the whole idea of Europe is intimately connected with the dominion of Chrisitianity (notice how the line demarcating the division of Europe and Asia roughly coincides with the borders of where Chrisitianity was dominant. Even geographically the notion that Europe is a separate continent is pretty questionable) and that ancient Pagans wouldn't have recognized any such separation from Asia and North Africa. My own pre-Christian Finnish ancestors practiced a religion that arguably had more in common with that of North Asian peoples than it did with say 'European' peoples such as the Greeks or Romans (which makes sense since the people, like Finns, who speak Uralic languages ultimately originated somewhere in Siberia/North Asia).

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Esoteric Publishers, C... · 1 reply · +7 points

Even though my approach, I suppose, is reconstructionist, I often have the same criticism of the way that reconstructionist methodologies are used by Pagans. I have never viewed 'Finnish Paganism' as some separate, pure thing that ever existed but rather something that existed within an interrelated spectrum of cultures and groups across Eurasia. Even the very idea of 'Finnish-ness' is arguably a construct formed over the last thousand years, but especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. If you go back far enough 'Finnish' is indistinguishable from, say, 'Estonian' (both linguistically and culturally). Ethnicity, as you say, can be a difficult concept to superimpose over ancient Paganism because those ethnicities are often formed much later.

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Guest Post: Patrick Mc... · 0 replies · +1 points

Christianity and Islam certainly have a concept of Hell, but Judaism must have missed your memo that they are supposed to believe in it too since Judaism doens't have any such belief.

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Unleash the Hounds! (L... · 0 replies · +5 points

Hell, I regularly hear the word 'Jew' used as in insult, in fact I just heard someone do that yesterday (and they were apparently unaware of my Jewish background since they did it right in front of me).

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Pagan Community Reacts... · 0 replies · +6 points

So, basically, your religious privilege is being threatened and you are now lashing out at those who are only asking for the same rights as guaranteed by our constitution to EVERYONE (as in, not just the ones you happen to like or manage to bring yourself to tolerate).

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - The Pagan Terminology ... · 0 replies · +1 points

That's a great book, not just all of the texts that wouldn't otherwise be available in English (and also in the original languages, that excites my inner linguistics geek), but all of the introductory material is great. I actually have my whole collection of books on a bibliography on my blog ( http://kauko-niskala.blogspot.com/2011/01/bibliog... ). That lists pretty much every book I own on the subject. A lot of them were out of print and/or hard to get. Another great anthology of folkloric material, in this case restricted to Finnish/ Karelian material is Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic. Unfortunately, it was published in the 70s and is out of print now. I paid a ridiculous amount to get a copy. It has a diverse selection of folk poetry, including material that Lönnrot used in forming the Kalevala, both in English and the original Finnish. There is also some good introductory material and notes on the individual poems at the end.

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - The Pagan Terminology ... · 2 replies · +2 points

Correct, suomenuskolainen would refer to someone who practices suomenusko (the -lainen ending usually added to roots to denote a person belonging to the group indicated by the root, amerikkalainen, for example = American). I'll admit I've been generally using 'Finnish Paganism' in place of suomenusko, just for recognition, but I've thought about mixing in suomenusko occasionally to get people used to seeing it. One issue for me is that suomenusko, unlike various forms of Heathenry, Theodism etc which are established in the English speaking world, is pretty much limited to Finland right now, with rare examples of people of Finnish ancestry, like me, outside Finland who are exploring it. It also suffers from a general lack of English language scholarly resources about pre-Christian Finnish religion(s). I have what is probably among the best selection of books relating to the subject in English and they add up to less than two shelves on my book case.

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - The Pagan Terminology ... · 4 replies · +5 points

I tend to stick with Pagan because for what I do there don't feel like there are any good alternatives. I could call myself 'Suomenuskolainen' but that would just be awkward to an English speaking audience and I shudder to think at how the pronunciation would be mutilated :)

12 years ago @ The Wild Hunt - Unleash the Hounds! (L... · 0 replies · +2 points

In a technical sense, if there were such a thing as indigenous 'European' religions it would be the religious beliefs of the first humans to inhabit what we now call Europe. Groups like the Indo-Europeans and Finno-Ugric people didn't arrive until much later, and both of them likely came from what we would now call Asia. Genetic testing among Finno-Ugric peoples strongly indicate a Siberian/North Asian origin and of course the place of origin of Indo-European peoples has long been a subject of debate. The religions of all the peoples throughout the Eurasian continent and north Africa (and beyond) have historically been so intertwined and influenced each other so much that any reconstructionist claiming to limit there focus on some concept of a single 'ethnicity' to the exclusion of any 'foreign' influence, as you point out, owes more of their ideology to modern racist psuedo-science than to the actual religious lives of ancient peoples.

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