amazing book

[Bereta_Eder]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/26/finnish-grammar-diego-marani-review

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11465331-new-finnish-grammar

in it the shaman/lutheran priest alleges that russians are certain about going to paradise. that's why they fight without fear of death.
that odysseus and achilles were orthodox even before their time

finland is brute while orthodox russia is refined and complicated.

finnish paganistic rites are a prelude to lutheriansm and are direct whereas the cunning of oddyseus, his way of influencing things stems from a more intricate complicated culture, sort of like navigating through a golden icon


anyway great book

I never seen a country painted with such bleak colors though such as findland in war. an image of complete depression and hopelesness that basically clings to its ancient paganistic/animalistic myths.

mesmerizing but dark

[Bereta_Eder]

"We come to light in one and only land and only to that land we belong. The cosmopolitan that jumps from one identity to the other like an acrobat from rope to rope, sooner or later will make a mistake in his grasp, and then he will find himself flat on the floor, pinned himself too by the memory of a dusty road with 3 or 4 little homes.
Even he, who claims that he has not a country, when the time of death approaches, he hears that sudden call of the land where it all started, where he knows that they are waiting for him.
There, and only there, everything remains unspoiled, every scent, every color, every sound in its familiar place.
And with it, every pain dissapears.
Because when the start and the end meet, it's like nothing has happened. Everything was a dream within a dream and maybe man is made to live in it
".


*respect*

[OneFootInTheGrave]

[Meticulous Man]

I haven't read Marani's book but from what you've written, it seems he might be somewhat exaggerating the importance of the shamanistic aspect in contemporary Finnish culture.

In prehistoric Viking times, the Finns were reputed to have amongst them powerful magicians who could raise a storm with their spells that would sink the approaching enemy ships. I also recall reading about bags of wind being sold to passing ships. Also in the Middle Ages Finns had the reputation of having good healers, while the most powerful were reputed to be found amongst the Sámi (or "Lapps").

Many words of the modern Finnsh language, such as sauna, perkele and sisu stem from pagan times even if one doesn't often come to think about it.

However, at least ever since the colonization of Finland by the Swedes around the 12th and 13th centuries, Christianity has been hegemonic and the old traditions condemned as Devil worship and bad ways. The tradition of singing poems related to the pre-Christian mythology had all but died out when Elias Lönnrot, in the spirit of National Romanticism, traveled to rural Karelia in the 1830s in order to collect poetry for the coming Finnish national epic Kalevala. The resulting work of literature mostly deals with the lives and deeds of pre-Christian-era shamans and heroes, the most important of them being Väinämöinen.

Lately, the Finnish Lutheran Church has been experiencing a loss in membership but this is not perceived as a return to pagan values but as a result of increasing secularization or as a protest to some Church policies, such as those regarding gay marriage.

Then we of course have the psychology of Carl Jung and the post-60s counterculture that one can adhere to with varying degrees of irony, if not otherwise.

No one is a prophet in their own land: here is a captivating essay by Jung from the 1930s where he sees the Germany of that period as being in a state of Ergriffenheit by the ancient god Wotan.

A couple of shamanistic concepts that could be fruitful even from today's POV:

-synty, literally "birth" - knowing a thing's synty or the tale of how it came to be gives you power over it

-luote, literally approx. "thing one is trusted with": part of a magic spell, a poem, a knowledge of something; consider the knowledge you get from close relatives or friends, reading poetry, listening to songs, from the street etc.

[Bereta_Eder]

The writer bases a LOT in ancient finnish myth
But also in the language. The shaman/lutheran priest is like a melting pot of everything finnish but also the country comes through with the descriptions of scenery etc

[Bereta_Eder]

No one is a prophet in their own land: here is a captivating essay by Jung from the 1930s where he sees the Germany of that period as being in a state of Ergriffenheit by the ancient god Wotan.

Interesting. A belief that in nazi germany the "divine" lived inside them
Sort of the contemporary american "manifest destiny"


a great book about nazism and the german character is this

http://www.cup.gr/%CE%9D%CE%91%CE%96%CE%99%CE%A3%CE%9C%CE%9F%CE%A3-%CE%9A%CE%91%CE%99-%CE%93%CE%95%CE%A1%CE%9C%CE%91%CE%9D%CE%99%CE%9A%CE%9F%CE%A3-%CE%A7%CE%91%CE%A1%CE%91%CE%9A%CE%A4%CE%97%CE%A1%CE%91%CE%A3_p-280050.aspx?LangId=1

in german its "Der Zusammenbruch der Zivilisation" (I don't know in english.)

Basically that the "ideal" of a greater nation than other nations and its justapostiction with reality was nazism's main driving force (again identical with american)

lots of bad things started from national romanticism although it always was I think an integral part of initial nation building narrative