FACA

Finnish American Cultural Activities

Happenings

Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara – Väinämöinen goes Instagram

Year 2020 meant a huge shift in education, as the teachers and students had to rapidly learn to utilize a new learning environment, digital space. This shift has brought not only challenges but also new opportunities, in terms of better utilizing technologies, contents and platforms that have already been part of our digitalized lifestyles. Furthermore, online learning dissolves geographic boundaries, giving the students better possibilities of taking part in celebrations and everyday life of cultures far away. This talk introduces projects through which the students at the University of Washington have been able to digitally explore and share Finnish language and culture and become parts of online communities. It further discusses the opportunities and limits of online learning and asks, if korvapuusti can be enjoyed digitally.

Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara is a visiting lecturer of Finnish language and culture at the University of Washington, sent by the Finnish National Agency for Education. Her background is in linguistics, but she teaches a variety of classes ranging from first year Finnish language studies to advanced level courses on the national epic Kalevala, and Finnish popular culture. Härmävaara is passionate about teaching, and she is always on the lookout for new methods, materials, and technologies that help the students better experience Finnish language and culture.

Join us on Zoom April 16 at 7pm CST
Meeting ID: 873 560 9519Passcode: Salmiakki

St. Urho’s Day Panel Discussion

St. Urho’s Day (March 16) is a holiday of merriment and fun for the Finnish American community, and one that is unique to our diaspora as it has no analogue in Finland.

Over the years, it’s become a popular festivity far beyond the Iron Range where it first began. Every town celebrates it a little differently and has their own specific traditions and lore surrounding its inception. But who really started it, and where? What’s the right way to celebrate? Why grasshoppers?

FACA has convened a panel to discuss the hotly contested origin and history of St. Urho’s Day in Minnesota. We’ll be joined by James (Jimmy) Johnson of Virginia, MN, who is the Honorary Consul of Finland for northern Minnesota, as well as special guests from Finland (MN!), Menagha and other areas where the holiday has had significant cultural influence.

Join us on Zoom and break out your green and purple clothes, look menacingly at a grasshopper, grab a drink and share your stories of how you celebrate this most Finnesotan of holidays!

Mr. Frog – The Kalevala, Mythology, Magic and Ritual

In 1891, Domenico Comparetti described the Kalevala in terms of “the shamanism of the ancient Finns”, a description that resonates with popular imagination today, yet it turns out to be problematic in several ways.

First, the Kalevala is developed from vast quantities of oral poetry and other traditions, but it is a literary creation by Elias Lönnrot for a learned, nineteenth-century Lutheran audience. The possible gap between the Kalevala and historical traditions needs to be considered. Second, the majority of Lönnrot’s sources for mythology were collected from Karelians outside of the borders of Finland, and it is necessary to ask, as several nineteenth-century scholars did, whether the Kalevala is really a “Finnish” epic, a Karelian epic or both. Third, it is necessary to consider critically what is meant by “shamanism”. In this lecture, I lead you through ways of looking at Lönnrot’s Kalevala and its relationships to oral traditions. From there, we will consider the mythology behind the poetry and how it relates to magic and ritual, and most of all to ritual specialists who were historically authorities in these traditions. We will look at how these traditions varied in different regions, including traces of evidence that there may have been interesting differences between the traditions documented in different parts of Karelian and the mythology that disappeared earlier from western Finland. These considerations will bring us to questions of the history of these traditions and what makes it different from what is often called “shamanism” among the Sámi and other cultures of Northern Eurasia. Rather than only focusing on traditional poetry as “texts”, we will look at how these traditions are linked to practices and people, and especially to authorities in society, and how people talked about different sorts of authorities in ritual practices, including some we might describe as “shamans”.

Frog is currently an Academy of Finland Research Fellow based at the University of Helsinki with the project Mythology, Verbal Art and Authority in Social Impact (2016–2021). He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota, completed his PhD at University College London in 2010, and a Docentship (Associate Professorship) at the University of Helsinki in 2013. He is a specialist in both Finno-Karelian and Old Norse (Scandinavian) mythologies and poetries.

To hear Mr Frog’s presentation, “The Kalevala, Mythology, Magic and Ritual – or: Were There Finnish Shamans?”, join our Zoom Meeting Saturday January 16 at 11am CST.

Meeting ID: 873 560 9519

Passcode: Salmiakki