Ritual site of the cultivating man. The ancestral cult is primarily a religion of settlers and budding cultivating communities. Cultivated land and its produce belonged to the person who cleared the land, and the deceased were deemed to own their farmlands even after death, to take care of their growth and success in the same way as they took care of their kin. Hiisi woods and sacrificial stones, in common with Karelian village burial sites, were places where it was possible to contact the family ancestors. A share of the produce of the land belonged to the deceased and to the supernatural owners, guardian spirits, of the land.
The offerings have consisted of (1) primogenic offering, or the first yield of all products from field and cattle, even a fish catch; the first drops of colostrum milk after a calving, the first drops after a cow comes into milk in spring, first new grain from all cereals, the first of foods prepared at certain times of the year, the first fish from seasonal fishing, e.g. drag netting.
Ancestors were commemorated (2) through cyclic rites or on certain calendar dates, particularly in the autumn at the turn of the year, when the crop was harvested. The turn of the year or kekri (All Saints’
Day) has been called the time for sharing, as then everyone, both the family ancestors and supernatural guardians of the earth were given their share of the year’s yield. Memorial services for the deceased were held in the autumn (map 7) and the head or bones of the Michaelmas ram or a share of Michael-mas cabbage, a rite food, might have been taken to the foot of the tree (map 4).
Offerings have been made to sacrificial stones or trees (3) in cultivation or productive livelihood rites, through which the house has secured good fortune for crops and cattle, or (4) success in some intended work (initiative/initial offering). Ancestors and guardian spirits were given their share evidently each time some important work in terms of livelihood or the future was begun, such as clearing a new swidden, plowing, sowing or building a house. Supernatural guardians of natural sites were perhaps remembered above all when man occupied new farming or residential land for himself.
The ancestral cult also included (5) life stage rites which were performed when a child was born into the kinship group or at the death of a family member. The foot of the sacrificial tree also received the first drops of mother’s milk, expectant mothers sought help for labor pains by the trees, and newborn babies were taken there as if to show them off, to receive the approval of the ancestors. In the ancestral wood
and later at the foot of the sacrificial tree, perhaps the correct name was sought for the child, that of an ancestor reincarnated in him.
Various (6) appeasement offerings were given to ancestors in crisis rites, or when misfortune, sickness or adversity befell the household. Within the ancestral cult, man's ill-fortune and illness were deemed to have arisen because the ancestors and supernatural guardians were displeased with the treatment they had received. The angry ancestor or guardian had to be placated, to which end various appeasement offerings were left at sacrificial trees and stones. In the Savo sorcerer tradition, help was also sought for sickness from sacrificial trees.
Thus, offerings have been made to rite trees and stones at the turning points of the calendar year and at the beginning of working seasons. They have been the places where the supernatural owners of the place or the family ancestors have been informed of events in the household: births of children, weddings and funerals. The supranormal guardians of the homestead, as well as the ancestors, had to be told of matters concerning members of the household, such as the arrival of a new daughter-in-law. When rites were neglected, the ancestors and guardian spirits became angry, took the good fortune of the house and caused sickness or accidents. In eastern Finland and Karelia, ancestors have taken care of the house, but also of its inhabitants’ morals and the correct order of life, in the same way as house haltias in western Finnish folk narrative (maps 66-68). Sacrificial trees were maintained mostly by the old, the old mistress of the house; sometimes the trees were known by the name of those who brought the offerings.
Women represented fertility, caring for the dead and life stage rites were women’s culture, and they also
‘possessed’ ancestors’ souls and were able to commune with them.
Ancient cup stones. In Finland, cup stones have been deemed to be associated with early ancestral rites. It is thought that a dedicated cup was hewn for leaving offerings for each ancestor (J. Hautala). M.
Haavio believes that the cups were made for the soul that had taken the form of a bird; the idea of soul birds has been widespread among various peoples.(6 On the other hand, in Finland as in Scandinavia, cup stones (Swed. älvkvarn) have also been used in healing rites, with water from the cups being col-lected for e.g. eye and skin diseases. A. Äyräpää suggests that cup stones symbolized ’the stone of pain’
or ’mountain of pain’, to which diseases have been cursed in Finnish healing incantations. Many other theories have also been postulated, e.g. cup stones have been thought to be a remnant from ancient sun worship.
Possibly the most natural explanation for Bronze and Iron Age cup stones is that they were ritual sites of an ancient cultivating community (hoe cultivators). Gifts for supernatural guardians of the earth and ancestors were brought to them, but at the same time they were stakeposts of the person who had cleared the land. Static ritual stones established exploitation rights to the land and to what was grown in it. In early Iron Age farming communities, the dead were buried near the house and its fields, to continue their own work and to protect the rights of future generations. Cup stones may have been sacrificial altars of family burial sites and hiisi woods situated within the homestead, but they have evidently also been hewn near remote field or swidden clearings to mark ownership, which has been confirmed by the super-natural guardians of the land and which they would guard against outsiders.
Sacrificial trees of the swidden community. The background of preserved Savonian rite trees is both the lyyli and hiisi traditions, maybe also other layers, such as the tree of life belief system (cf. maps 49, 94-95). Lyylitys trees have been ritual sites of the cattle keeper and swidden cultivator, at which (1) the supernatural guardian of the earth or the specific location was given a share of the cattle grazing over its land, or where human beings built their house on the site and cleared their swidden. Trees in particular
portray the forces of natural growth which cultivating man has needed. An attempt to access the life force may be at least partially behind personal trees that are also found among sacrificial trees.
Sacred trees of houses have also been (2) ancestral trees, final vestiges of the Iron Age or earlier hiisi woods, even though they were no longer situated near burial sites in the Christian era. In house com-pounds, on the sides of home fields, they still protected the house and the labor of past generations.
There is no great difference between the souls of ancestors and supernatural guardians (haltia). Ac-cording to Finnish tradition, a supernatural guardian of the land may have originally been a deceased person buried on the site. In western Finland, the haltia of the house was the first inhabitant of the place, builder of the house or clearer of the land, who made the first fire on the site (maps 62-63).
Sacred trees were protected by similar taboos as those protecting Karelian village burial sites. The mistress and master of a Savonian house had a connection of destiny with the tree of their own ances-tors, their own ‘family tree’. Christianity could not totally destroy the belief that the deceased of the house, or at least some of them, would return after death to the places where they lived, perhaps being reborn into their family, and that the living must take care of their dead.
The family’s own burial grounds and farmland ritual sites have also been socially significant. Like hiisi woods, the ancestral field clearings and symbolically the whole homestead was sacred to outsiders, or separated, closed or forbidden. The ritual sites gave man a right of ownership to farming and the results of his work, and gradually to using the land more extensively. The land belonged to the dead of the kin-ship group, the ancestors, and they still safeguarded their kin's rights. The ancestral cult reinforced the rights of the early swidden and cultivating farmer in his environment, the ecosystem of the incipient culti-vators. By destroying sacred trees and hiisi woods, the church changed the ideas of other-worldly au-thorities, which within the ancestral cult and sorcerer beliefs secured social order, and upset the eco-nomic foundations of Iron Age communities.
Agapitov - Melnikov 1992. Äyräpää 1942. Haavio 1949b; 1950b; 1951; 1961; 1967b. Harva 1948, 299-.
Hautala 1960a. Heikel A. O. 1878. Honko 1961; 1963b. Huurre 1971. Kivikoski 1961,253-. Konkka A.
1980. Koski 1967-1970. Krohn J. 1894. Krohn K. 1914, 127-. Melnikov - Maslov 1992. Niemimaa 1938.
Nikander 1916. Sarmela 1970b; 1971; 1984a, 213-. Tallgren A. M. 1917; 1918; 1933. Tegengren 1922.
Viidalepp 1940. Viires 1975. Waronen 1898. Zelenin 1933..
1. Sarmela 1970b. 1971. Huurre 1971. 2. Tallgren A. M. 1933. Koski 1967-1970 I. 3. Haavio 1959a. 4.
Koski 1967-1970 II, 240-. 5. Hautala 1960a. Haavio 1950b. 6. Äyräpää 1942.
4. ANIMAL SACRIFICES
Animal sacrifices of cattle farmers. Map 4 shows the preservation of calendric animal sacrifices in Finland, Karelia and Ingria. There have been two types of annual animal sacrifice: (1) kinship or ex-tended family rites. In Finland, a ram or lamb, previously consecrated for sacrificial purposes, was slaughtered as a kinship sacrifice. In addition, (2) community sacrifices or sacrificial village celebrations are known in Karelia and Ingria, and they have been preserved the longest in the Orthodox regions in association with Prasnikas (cf. map 22).