Tree Myths & Magic

So excited about today's conversation, Nina. I've been I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. Cool. Exciting. Welcome. Thank you. Where are you calling in from today? I am in the western coast of Finland. I live on an island about an hour away from mainland. Wow. And I'm so curious. Before we dive into the the art of tree worship, what is your relationship been to nature growing up? And how how have you kind of become one of the, you know, primary researchers on on tree worship in Finland? It's quite interesting. I suppose it has to do with a lot of my family. And then just the way I grew up, I'm originally from northern Finland and I grew up in this little village. And it was very forestry. And I have lots of memories of just being outside the woods. Both of my grandfathers, they were in the forest industry. Other one was a not a biologist, but he measured the well-being of the forest in the 60s and in the 70s. Then my other grandfather, he was a forest ranger in southern Lapland. So I don't know, maybe it comes from there. And in terms of the spiritual relationship and the mythology around it, were you raised with that or was this something that you became curious about as an adult and started researching? More as an adult. But I have always been quite curious about like folk tales and folklore that we have, not just in Finland, but in general history growing up. And I think here in Finland, it's a little you can get the reputation of being a little strange if you are into, you know, spirituality. So I think a lot of people are a bit indecisive when they want to discuss about such things. I think that's pretty universal. Even in a culture that obviously has such a steep, rich tradition in being in relationship with trees. What is your what do you do for a living? I am an illustrator, mainly. I work as an illustrator. Lately, I have been verging to write and illustrate my own books more than illustrating for other people. A lot of I've been doing lots of coloring books recently and writing my own books that are a lot of them about Finnish folk tales. So why are you drawn to Finnish folk tales? It's not just Finnish folk tales, but I think it's I like the mythology here because it's very strange. It's very peculiar and it's very animistic. And we don't have like like in Greek mythology, they have all these stories about adventures and heroes. And, you know, soap opera with the gods and goddesses. We don't have that. We have some stories about our deities and how they were worshipped. But mainly we have stories about people leaving sacrifices for stones and trees, worshipping nature spirits. That's a lot more common in the mythology here. So it's interesting and very mysterious. Yeah, I think a lot of listeners who are obviously gardeners and houseplant parents, their curiosity is piqued because I'm definitely more interested in mythology behind tree deities than, you know, Zeus or something. No shade to Zeus. So we need a little history lesson, right? Because the majority of the listeners are from the States. We have a large amount of listeners in Australia and Canada. Finland is this, you know, kind of insular area that has this very specific history. Can you give us a bit of a history lesson as it comes to this folklore, this tree folklore, the tree worship, and kind of just talk us through how trees are such a part of Finland's culture? Right. So just when it comes to nature and biosphere here, 70 percent of Finland is forest. It's a very forestry country, one of the most forestry countries in Europe. And then even if you are, for example, in Helsinki, in very urban areas, you drive away from the center, like two hours you get into forestry areas. So you can really escape that. So I think because it's such a heavily forested country, our history, when we go back, people were very reliant on the forest. A lot of the way people were living their lives, it was about the forest because you were hunting, you were fishing. And then when we had, you know, agriculture arriving here thousands of years ago, a lot of that happened through burn clearing. So people burned the forest to make farmland themselves. But still, you know, it's like the combination of farming and hunting and, you know, living together with the forest. But then there's also, you know, agriculture going on. So it's like it's like a combination of the two with a lot of countries in Europe, you know, pretty much like some cases, most of the trees were cut for farmland. So that never really happened here. Good for our environment, but also it creates some really interesting mythology. So when we talk about sort of Finnish pre-Christian times and beliefs, it's all animism. And here in Finland, we have a concept called väki, which is we use when we discuss about Finnish animism. It's this concept of that the world is made of energy. Everything is surrounded by energy. We call this energy väki. And I think in English, it might be called life force, like energy that is in existent in humans, but also in trees and, you know, all around us, like, and it's transferable. Yeah, like Native Americans call it the great spirit. And in China, it's called qi. So here we have väki. And then we also have väki that is related with different phenomenons in nature. Stones have their own väki, the fire. Then the trees have their own väki. And the different tree species have their own väki. So, for example, the roven tree has its own väki and magical properties. Then trees as like collective concept has their own väki. So back in the days when people were practicing magic and shamanism, they will work with the väki, the certain elements, whatever they try to achieve the tree worshipping culture. But then a lot of the väki here, it was divided into the five elements, fire, earth, water and air, and then æter, the energy. So väki of the trees would be part of the väki of the earth. So all kinds of beings of the forest were also related with the väki of the trees. If you were to define Finnish tree mythology and folklore in like one sentence, how would you define it? Very encompassing and also like very much connected with the well-being of people, tree mythology. So, for example, there were multiple different types of spirit trees that we had. So like the first one would be eläktipuu. It has many names. So basically when the family moved to a new area and they wanted to build a house there, they would choose one tree from the property, or they would communicate with all the trees in the yard, and then they would ask the trees in the yard which one of their children would be, would they be willing to give to the family to be their spirit tree. So the spirit tree would be in this case like a pet tree. So the family would look after this young tree and then they would take care of it and it would be connected with the well-being of the family, the farm and the property. So the abundance of the family was connected with the happiness of that tree, the spirit tree, they were quote-unquote raising. So there were multiple types of spirit trees. That's one example. Then if there was like maybe an animal that lived in the tree, they would also look after that animal. It could be a snake, a squirrel or a hedgehog or a fox. They could build a nest for a fox to the fox underneath the spirit tree. Then there were also spirit trees that were like literally for the spirit or a fairy, an elf that lived in that specific tree. And this would be like an invisible spirit. It would live inside the tree or in the roots of the tree. And with these kind of trees, people would usually go to them for advice or if they had something going on in their lives, a heartbreak or an argument, they would go to this kind of spirit tree or a fairy tree to ask for advice, to meditate, looking for guidance in life. Yeah, how would you ask a tree for advice? Are you walking up to it and talking to it? Or is it that you're hugging it and you're telepathically communicating with your mind? What's that process or, I guess, practice? It can be all of those. It can be just talking to the tree, hugging the tree or having telepathic communication with the tree. And then there were also holy trees. And these would be the most sacred trees, but not like these kind of spirit trees. The holy tree was a magical tree. It was connected with some kind of divinity or maybe it had magical properties. Maybe the berries were used in folk magic or flowers were used in magic or healing. And then we have, I think it's called a favor tree or a servant tree. And this tree, you would go for it. And you would ask if you need a bark or a branch or wood to carve something or make something. So you'd ask favor from this tree if you could take something from the tree. Oh, there's a very famous book in the States called The Giving Tree. Have you ever heard of it? No, I haven't. The whole book, it was my favorite book as a kid, but the whole book is a child going to a tree asking, or really the tree, the child going to a tree having problems and the tree offering its leaf, its limb, its trunk. It's very beautiful. So was this an organized religion? Were there group meetings around these trees or maybe a temple or something like, was there organized meetings and structure or this was more like a home folklore that you were raised and you understood that, you know, your house had a spirit tree and if you had a problem, you should go to the tree and talk with it. Like how, how was this folklore passed along across an entire country so that it was common practice in the pre-Christian times? I think in the beginning, it was more tribal animistic because, you know, everyone has the same quote-unquote faith. And in Finland, we had the sacred rose that we had where people went to worship the deities. So these were like little clearings in the forest. And usually there was an altar with some kind of wood carving of a deity. Sadly, most of these, all of these were destroyed by the church by the 19th century, which makes me pretty sad. But I think when I study Lithuanian-Latvian myths or their sort of deity worship, you know, I think in Finland it has been somewhat similar that we had these wooden idols in the sacred groves where people went to worship their deities or their spirits, woodland spirits. But they went solo. There wasn't Sunday morning worship in the clearing at the sacred grove. We don't know that if they went alone or if they went in groups, possibly both, but it kind of depends what was the deity that you worshipped. Sometimes, you know, family has worshipped a certain god or goddess or multiple different deities and maybe they have gatherings in the sacred groves. Some of our old festivals that we still celebrate today, like for example, summer solstice, that's a big holiday in Finland. There's old traditions how you decorate your home with, you know, tree branches. And I remember my grandmother back in the days around summer solstice, she always had like bowls filled with birch branches in the kitchen table. When I moved to my first home and after that, I've always tried to do that myself. Every spring I have willow twigs around the house. Then when the summer comes, I have birch branches and all kinds of flowers around me. But then that tradition, it can go back thousands of years when people have celebrated summer solstice. Right, because the calendar was different, right? The calendar was much more tethered to the seasons and the quote-unquote kind of turning of the wheel of, you know, there's no January 1st. Your year starts, you know, the lunar new year and then you have your solstices and your equinoxes and your... That's how your calendar was tethered to nature, right? So I would assume trees and nature were much larger parts of those celebrations. Yeah, the old festivals, they followed the seasonal cycles and also the agriculture and, you know, the way plants came to life. Like now we have February when we are filming this. In Finnish, February is Helmiku and it means the pearl month, month of pearls. And the name comes because in the snow, the snow glistens like pearls. So it's quite fascinating when I, when we study like Finnish language, all the months, the name of the months, they are related to nature or like seasonal cycles. It's really fascinating. Like, can you share something like a few words and how they're broken down? Well, then we have March, which is maalisku in Finnish. Ma means earth. So it literally means we begin to see earth or dirt coming up. Then we have toukku is May. Toukku refers to sowing and plowing plants coming up. Eloku is August. Eloku comes from harvest, month of the harvest. December, jouluku, now it means Christmas month. Back in the days, it was talvikku, which meant the winter month. That was before Christianity came to Finland. Right, so you weren't celebrating Christmas. No, Christmas is a new thing. It came only like 200 years ago. Before that, kekkari was the biggest celebration, that old harvest festival in the end of October. So you've mentioned briefly in some of your descriptions, like giving offerings or borrowing or speaking, like in this old pre-Christian, is it a religion? Would we call it or a folklore of tree worship? What are the different practices that would tether people to nature? What are common, you know, so you mentioned there were the sacred groves that people would go and worship their deities in and be surrounded by nature. What are other practices that people might do or that it was known that people did back then? Well, one that I think is very lovely is that when a new child was born, a tree was planted somewhere in the yard. I think we should bring that back. That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. And also when a person died, there was this tradition, it's called karsikkopuu, which basically meant that, you know, if there was a tree that grew very close to the grave where the person was buried, you would cut down the lower branches of the tree because it was believed that a person might come back as a ghost and haunt people. But when they would try to come out from the grave, they could not reach the branches. So you wouldn't have the lower branches of the tree. So you're preventing the person from coming back and grabbing onto the tree and kind of reincarnating. Okay. That's people believed in ghosts quite a bit. And then with those trees, it was pretty common to carve a cross. So it was a bit like a mixture between Christianity and, you know, old pagan faith. And then maybe the name of the person when they had died. It's interesting how the trees are connected with birth and death. You had mentioned very briefly, like, offerings. So what is that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly relationship with trees where people might be bringing offerings, asking, taking? Like, what is that kind of circular relationship? A lot of times family had a sacrificial tree in their property. They could also have a sacrificial stone. Bit of a similar function, but let's talk about the tree. So sacrificial tree, it was sort of connecting the human world to the world of the spirits. Underneath that tree, you would leave some food, usually food sacrifices. It could be eggs, turnips, herbs, bread, milk, ale. And this would usually be done maybe once in a month. Definitely when something good happened, when a child was born, when people got married. Also when there were big festivals, summer solstice, spring equinox. So that was one of those traditions as well. So you would bring offerings for, in good times, as like a thank you for watching over me and protecting me. I'm curious about this. I just bought a house, so I'm curious about the spirit tree for the house. And this concept that you're asking the trees, and then you're almost adopting a tree to raise it and take care of it. Is the thought that if you take care of this little tree, that the rest of the trees will make sure that they're protecting you? And so it's like an offering you're giving all of the trees? Or is it more about the one tree that you're building a relationship with? It's usually one or two, three trees in the property. But it is believed that when you pick that one tree, it sort of means all the trees around you. It's like a collective tree spirits are looking after you and your family. That's beautiful. And with a tree spirit, is it a spirit like a fairy that lives within the tree and embodies the tree? Or is it that the tree itself as a tree is a spirit, like in Totoro? There's been both. Kind of depends. A lot of times here in Finland, in the mythology, the tree spirits are very feminine. They're like triads in Greek myths, girly creatures that live inside trees. But there are also stories that tree spirits are more invisible. It's more animistic approach. Usually they do look like humans in the stories. Then some deities are very much associated with trees here. God or goddess in Finnish mythology usually has some kind of tree association. So for example, Pukku, who is our sky god, thunder god, he's associated with pines. Pine is a very phallistic tree. So that sort of explains that connotation. Then Akkahu is the earth goddess. She's associated with roven trees. I read... So different goddesses and deities are associated with different trees? Yes. So you might go worship a deity through the tree that you're going to go give an offering to? Yes, absolutely. And she's associated with roven trees. And rovens are interesting. Depends on the roven, but they have these kind of branches. They spread to multiple directions. So I think that might be the reason why it's the tree of the earth goddess. Then we have Mierik, who is the goddess of hunting. And she's a forest goddess. Then we have a god of forest, Tapio. Tapio is associated with spruces. He's the god of spruce trees. And back in the days, it's like in pre-Christian times when the hunters went to hunt, they sacrificed the first hare or whatever they hunted to Tapio. And they usually buried the first one underneath the spruce tree. So they would sacrifice their first catch to the tree as an offering, and probably in wishing of having a beneficial hunting expedition. Yeah. Wow, that's so interesting. And Mierik is really interesting, the forest goddess. There are lots of folk songs about her, how the hunters, when they went into the woods, they would have to please the forest goddess. They would call her different names and flatter her. So she would give them good luck when they were hunting the animals. Wow. What do you think are some of the most interesting lore behind a couple of the trees? In your book, you have, I don't know, like 15 different trees and kind of their stories. To you, what are the more interesting lore? What are the fun folk stories to tell around the campfire about these trees? I do like the story that Mierik, the forest goddess, in them when summer turns into autumn, she's the one who colors all the leaves into orange and red and golden. She's associated in this time period of end of the summer, beginning of autumn. Then her husband, Tapio, he's associated with winter, and it's during this time of the year, January, February. He is in the woodlands and he creates these snowstorms, but he also cleanses the forest from all the bad spirits. I think that's a really nice story. So why does she color the leaves orange? Why does she turn fall? I think it has more to do with her sort of being also a seasonal goddess, but she's in the charge of the forest during the beginning of the summer to the end of the summer. So she's the one who makes all the trees bloom in the spring, and then the leaves change in their colors. So she's in the... That's interesting. The goddess of summer is married to the god of winter. Talk about yin and yang, like polar opposites. Yeah, they're both forest deities. The name Tapio, that's like an old name for Finnish man, not so popular these days, but back in the days, one of the more common ones. And Mielikki was also a name for a girl back in the days. Is there a resurgence of interest about folklore now? Do you find that people are naming their children, these names again, and people are craving that connection? We've seen some of that, at least in the last maybe 10 years, 15 years. There's been a lot more interest, I would say, towards our old folk customs and folklore. I do wonder if climate change has something to do with that, if people are interested to sort of return back to their roots. I don't know, maybe just like connecting with environment a bit more. Yeah, I think on a global scale, it's a wake up call. And people are realizing how disconnected we are. And there's a desire to reconnect just so that we can save the world for our kids, you know, for the future generations, I think. I was in traveling last September. I was in southern Lapland in a little city. And I was in the park having my lunch. And there's a woman who was jogging. She was maybe in her 60s. She stopped and she hugged one of the trees in the park. And I looked at her like four minutes. And then she continued hugging. I have to say, I have never seen a person hugging a tree. Like, I hug trees, but I haven't seen other people hugging trees. So I was a bit stunned by that. It was also very cute. Yeah, there's a practice that originated in Japan that's becoming popular in the United States called forest bathing, where people are just going out and spending time. Have you heard of it? We get Japanese groups here, tourists to forest bathe in Finland. To forest bathe in the sacred forest of Finland. That's so interesting. Yeah, but all of a sudden it's this rise in popularity, which makes total sense to me. What other trees have interesting stories in folklore? I do quite like the birches and, you know, the stories about birch trees. They tend to be very much associated here with summer and purity. It might be the white bark in the birch that causes that. There's this Finno-Ugric tale. I think it comes from the Mari people from Russia, that the birch tree, it's a symbol of the universe. Wow. So if people are inspired by this, as I do feel like there's a yearning, there's a worldwide yearning to reconnect and find magic and reconnect with folklore and, you know, the things our grandmas knew that we didn't learn. What are some easy practices that people could do, you know, in their home? Like my first thought is find your spirit tree on your property wherever you live. But what are some ways that people could start to develop relationships with trees in hopes of finding, you know, the tree spirits that live within them? I think a good way to start is to study folklore about the trees that you are drawn to. If you like certain type of trees or species, learn some stories about them and build your connection that way. And then hugging trees and, I don't know, communicating with your mind. Meditating trees. That's the thing with animism. I don't think animism and science are really that far away from each other. I've been thinking about this for since I was very young. Thing is, you know, we know that trees communicate with one another. We know that trees produce oxygen. We know that trees warn each other. They send signals when someone is about to approach them with a chainsaw or it's an animal coming close to them. We know how trees mate with the seeds and the flowers. So we know that there's a spirit inside trees. Yeah. Are they the way we tell in our folktales? That I don't know. But we do know that trees have spirits inside them. Yeah, that's beautiful. I love the idea, too, of the offering. What's really sticking with me is the hunters who offer the hair first to the tree before. And I'm getting certified as a forest therapy guide right now to lead forest bathing excursions in the United States. And one of the practices at the end is that you share tea that you forage on your walk and you pour your first drink out to the earth and then enjoy your tea. But this idea of an offering, like going outside when I have my coffee in the morning, like going outside and offering a drink of, you know, my first sip of coffee to my spirit tree, you know, before I have my coffee or when something good happens, bringing an offering or maybe decorating it or creating something special with it is just so it's so appealing to me. Yeah. What's your personal practice? Well, I feel like I do develop some connections with the trees depending where I'm living. I just recently moved here now where I'm currently living, but my mother is she's selling our childhood home. So last time when I was there, I literally hugged all the trees in the yard and I said goodbye to them because I think I miss the trees more than I miss the house. I said goodbye to the roving trees and I hugged all the birches and all the pines in the yard. That's beautiful. Yeah. And it's funny, I have this memory from my childhood, the road when I used to bike to school, cycle to school, it was just there were birches growing on both sides of the road. It was really beautiful to cycle to school in the springtime. Then maybe 15 years ago, they cut down all the birches from the other side of the road and they built this very ugly looking children's play center. Nothing against children's play center. That's just an ugly building. I was really, really depressed after that. Then same with the forest, very close to the house where I grew up. I used to play there all the time as a kid. Then 15 years ago, the city council, they cut down a bunch of the trees and turned it into a frisbee golf center. And it's like, it's nice that people play frisbee golf in the forest, but I still miss the trees. Yeah, definitely. That's life. Well, it's important for people to reignite their relationship with trees because then they will fight for them more than they do now. So your book is so sweet. You are so sweet. But your book is really a treasure trove of this folklore and these stories. So where can people find your book and where can people find you? People can find me from my website at fairychamber.org and fairychamber, that's my name online. You can find me under that. The book is available on Amazon and hopefully next month on Barnes & Noble as well. Great. Awesome. And you illustrated it, which is so cool. Yeah. Well, congrats and thank you very much for inspiring me on building a relationship with the trees in my new house. I'm really looking forward to it. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Thank you so much for watching. If you'd like to know more about me, buy my artworks, books, join my mythology and folklore courses, you can visit my website at fairychamber.org and you can also join my free newsletter to receive updates on my new projects at fairychamber.substack.com