New Directions Series
Alternative Conceptions of Body and Gender in 19th-century Finnish Magic Narratives
Communications 202
Laura Stark is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä.
Scholars in archaeology, folklore studies and the history of religions have suggested that concepts and mentalities existing in Scandinavia and Finland during the Iron Age and Medieval period show large-scale similarities, even if specific expressions of these mentalities differed from culture to culture. In the interior of Finland, verbal and ritual traditions containing many layers of premodern mentality survived until the 20th century, which can be explained in part by the fact that some regions of the Finnish-Karelian culture area were not influenced by Christianity until the 14th-16th centuries. The longevity of the older worldview means that folklorists have been able to contribute to discussions regarding the mental world of the pre-Christian and Medieval Scandinavian eras.
Professor Nummi’s lecture focuses on “The Swan,” a key poem in Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s (1804-1877) first collection of poetry, Dikter I (1830). The lecture situates the poem in its specific cultural context— the birth of the Finnish nation. Runeberg was Finland’s first promising poet and his “Dikter I” the first important collection of lyrical poetry after 1809. In that year, Finland passed from Sweden to the Russian Empire and the tsar declared the new autonomous grand duchy “a nation among nations.” The analysis of the poem focuses on themes of transition in literary ideas, and on the role of the poet in founding a poetic tradition. 
Matti Anttonen, Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission for the Embassy of Finland in Washington