Karelo-Finnish Väinämöinen and the Old Norse cosmogony

Abstract

In the Karelo-Finnish runes of the Kalevala circle, Väinämöinen embodies the functions of an archaic cultural hero-demiurge. The runes about the creation begin with a motif of the Saami who shoots arrows at the horseman Väinämöinen. The hero falls into the sea, where he has been swimming for many years. A bird lays eggs on his knee, they roll into the sea – the sky, earth, and stars appear from their fragments. The world is created spontaneously from the movement of the first creature who felt the heat from the eggs hatched on his knee. The hero arrives at an unknown shore and weeps. The hero plows the roots of a large oak with a bull Turs (that has a hundred horns and a thousand heads). Certain motifs and vocabulary of this rune suggest the influence of the Scandinavian epic. The parallels between Väinämöinen and the Scandinavian giant Ymir, from whose body the world was created, are most obvious: Meletinsky pointed out that in the runes iron, snakes, and stones turn out to be parts of the body of the runes singer; even Väinämöinen’s knee becomes earth, a green hummock upon which a bird builds a nest. Unmotivated in the rune is the mention of heat under his armpit: in Scandinavian cosmogony, the first human beings will be born from the armpits of the androgynous Ymir. A special linguistic analysis deserves the mention of the bull with a hundred horns, tursa (Tursahalla): cf. Sсand. þurs is a designation for giants, the offspring of Ymir.