Pagan Tree Worship in Finland

This slidshow is about pagan tree worship in Finland in old times, but today there are also neopagans who follow in the footsteps of our ancestors and who revive these traditions in different ways, adopting them (consciously or unconsciously) to the humanistic and (lets face it) christian values that rule the thinking of our modern Western society.

This video is about tree worship in Finland, but basicly the worship of trees have also existed in other Nordic counties like Sweden, and in fact all over the world.

I chose to focus on Finland, since I have more information about how treeworship worked in Finland and since the Finns belong to a different language groop than the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes. Antropologists have found out more about tree worship among the Finns through comparing words and customs with related (Finno-Ugrian) tribes that live in Russia and other Baltic countries. The model for a sacred grove is in fact adopted from groves that still exists among some of our distant relatives in Russia. The rites that have to do with the killing of a bear are, as far as I know, also somting that can't be found in among Swedes, but mostly among arctic people around the world.

In the video I speak of trees in general, but the species of tree also seems to have been important to some extent. In Finland, whit our relatively cold climate, the most common sacred trees were spruce, pine and birch, but rowan seems to have played an important part too.

The pictures in the slideshow are illustrations to the facts not always exactly picturing what the text is about.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• pagan
• heathen
• worship
• tree
• trees
• sacred
• grove
• neopagan
• Suomi
• Finland
• puu
• pakanallinen
• pitämyspyy
• druids
• magic
• magick
• uskonto
• religion
• vårdträd
• träddyrkan
• hednisk
• woodland

[THordasson]

This was a joy to watch. We had precicely the same tradisions here in Norway some few centuries ago, and indeed all of northern pagan Europe worshiped trees in the old days.

But the beautiful background music, who is it?

[Treewich]

Glad you liked it. Yes, tree worship seems to have been a pretty much universal phenomenon. I just read a book about shamans among peoples in Russia and there were some pictures of sacrifical trees on shaman's drums.

The music is from an album called Wizard Women of the North. Actually, I believe this particular song is by a Norwegian artist :)

[TheLastMexicatl]

Damn Christians, I hope they all burn in the Hell they're so fond of preaching about, the name of which the STOLE from Norse religion.

[5ubv3rt3d]

so if you believe it... that would be God the creator... not Jesus, the supposed son of God. I worship trees - they're real.

[toscanaccioEU]

Excellent, indeed, thank you!

If you are Finn, you may like to know that I have on facebook a little photo album dedicated to Olavi Lanu’s Carelian birches.

And probably you would like the religious views I declare on the info page.

Greetings from Siena, Tuscany,

Marco Bucciarelli

[piechildofyore]

Why is it that the two top comments are so negative? I came here for theological discussions as I'm a Christian who is interested in studying pagan faiths. This is not the kind of attention you guys want.

[Rocketpojet]

I come from far more south than Finland, although am a follower of Finnish Paganism, as weel as count Finland as my homeland.

[maybealover]

time, holy time, is endless but is full of beginnings

[killerkandi133]

i hate christianity



[AmanitaPersicina]

@Treewich Sorry I forgot to say that they put the "offerings" up high in trees, they have a tree with a "mummy" in it, it looks like a human wrapped up its creepy.

[AmanitaPersicina]

@Treewich Some of my neighbors put dead animals, mushrooms, plastic babies, carved faces (Egyptian, Sigil, pentacle, and other animal faces), and other random stuff.

They do this in a grove of trees, its fairly thick and full of bones. In the center of the grove is a circle with some sort of stone altar. I was just curious what type of people believe in this because they killed my cats, can you please help. They wear black robes, some have yellow on the inside, some are all black.

[1NX9]

@eestimaalane

Thank you eestimaalane. Its appreciated. I will research more. Ancient Estonian religion is fascinating! 

[eestimaalane]

@1NX9 thara believers are beliving to tharapita, the holy ancient estonian god. but the people who belive maausk -they belive that everywhere are spirits. they´re one with nature or do i have to say that they were, cause other nations destroyed this ancient estonian religion and pushed christianism to our greatgrandparents. you can visit the webpage like maavald.ee. there are talking about these things.