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Tales From The Forest Lands

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  • You can read a synopsis and a sample from this book in the following sections...

Hardback:

Paperback:

eBook:

978-1-913500-88-7

978-1-913500-10-8

978-1-913500-71-9

Story:

The World's Creation And The Birth Of Wainamoinen

Anime Sketch

synopsis

This volume, Tales from the Forest Lands is part of a set of collections covering the Scandinavian story-telling tradition.

This volume of tales from the north concentrates on Finland. Many of these stories have their roots in the folklore of Finnish paganism, and they have many features shared with fellow Finnic Estonian mythology and other Uralic fables.

Finnish folklore also shares some similarities with neighbouring Baltic, Slavic and to a lesser extent, Norse mythologies.
Much of Finnish mythology survived within an oral tradition of mythical poem-singing and folklore well into the 19th century.

One of my favourite aspects of Finnish mythology is the wonderful sense of darkness at its heart.

These stories come from collectors such as Andrew Lang and his Coloured Fairy Books, the elusive R. Eivind’s Finnish Legends for English Children and Zacharias Topelius and The Birch and the Star, and Other Stories. Most derive from legendary cycles such as the Song of the Kalevala and earlier collections such as the Lapplandische Märchen.

These tales were originally told by firelight as a way of preserving histories and educating both adult and child. These tales form part of our shared heritage, witches, warts, fantastic beasts, and all. They can be dark and violent. They can be sweet and loving. They are we and we are they in so many ways. I’ve loved reading and re-reading these stories. I hope you do too

A Sample...

The Planting Of The Trees

Wainamoinen lived for many years upon the island on which he had first landed from the sea, pondering how he should plant the trees and make the mighty forests grow. At length he thought of Sampsa, the first-born son of the plains, and he sent for him to do the sowing. So Sampsa came and scattered abroad the seeds of all the trees and plants that are now on the earth; firs and pine-trees on the hills, alders, lindens, and willows in the lowlands, and bushes and hawthorn in the secluded nooks.

Soon all the trees had grown up and become great forests, and the hawthorns were covered with berries. Only the acorn lay quiet in the ground and refused to sprout. Wainamoinen watched seven days and nights to see if it would begin to grow, but it lay perfectly still. Just then he saw ocean maidens on the shore, cutting grass and raking it into heaps. And as he watched them there came a great giant out of the sea and pressed the heaps into such tight bundles that the grass caught fire and burnt to ashes. Then the giant took an acorn and planted it in the ashes, and almost instantly it began to sprout, and a tree shot up and grew and grew until it became a mighty oak, whose top was far above the clouds, and whose branches shut out the light of the Sun and the Moon and the stars.

When Wainamoinen saw how the oak had shut off all the light from the earth, he was as deeply perplexed how to get rid of it, as he had been before to make it grow. So he prayed to his mother Ilmatar to grant him power to overthrow this mighty tree, so that the sun might shine once more on the plains of Kalevala.

No sooner had he asked Ilmatar for help than there stepped out of the sea a tiny man no bigger than one's finger, dressed in cap, gloves, and clothes of copper, and carrying a small copper hatchet in his belt. Wainamoinen asked him who he was, and the tiny man replied, “I am a mighty ocean-hero, and am come to cut down the oak-tree.' But Wainamoinen began to laugh at the idea of so little a man being able to cut down so huge a tree...

If you want to read the full story (and many others), then buy this book now on Amazon...

© Copyright Clive Gilson 2011-2025
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