Nordic/Scandinavian lore

[Betula]

I thought I might start a thread on some Nordic/Scandinavian lore; I tried to search the forum but couldn’t find anything about it (I search Neck/Nixie and Huldra) so if there’s already a thread out there I apologize.

 

There are many figures in Scandinavian folklore that are still very much alive today. I’ll just go with two I remember distinctly from my own child-hood (and not the faeries, think it’s pretty similar to British tradition).

 

Näcken – Neck/Nixie

 

Is a naked male who lives in rivers and streams, he’s really a water spirit. He’s a genius violin player. He can teach you to play but it’s not for free, as I recall it you pay in blood, 3 drops, vodka or snuff tobacco. The danger with learning to play from him is that you can become so enchanted by your own music that you can’t stop playing, and the people dancing to your music, can’t stop dancing either. They’ll dance to death. Another story about this creature is that he lures people, especially young women by his beautiful music and then drowns them.

 

 

Skogsrået – Huldra

 

My personal favorite. She’s a beautiful woman, very seductive, you meet her in the forest, she lures men to follow her deeper and deeper into the forest, disappearing behind a tree every time they think they’ve come close to her, until they are completely lost. That’s when she turns around, and shows her back which is a hollow old tree trunk with a fox’s tail. A man who sleeps with Skogsrået becomes taciturn; he lost his soul to her. According to certain interpretations she’s the daughter of Lilith.

 

This is really general information, you find pretty much the same stuff on Wikipedia, I just like that most of it’s actually stuff that I’ve been told orally when I was a child, so the lore is still alive. I looked on Wiki to find the English translations for the Swedish names of these beings.

 

Feel free to add other Nordic/Scandinavian lore, there’s plenty and I’m not an expert.

[seacow]

We call the Näcken "Näkki" over here, and she's a woman who lives in lakes and lures people in with her song, so basicaly she's a siren. We do have another water spirit who's male and named Vetehinen. There are a lot of contradictory stories about him, I was taught he can be called out to to bring better luck with fishing, but there are stories where he works like our Näkki, and lures people in the water to drown them. My grandmother taught me a spell to call for him and ask for good luck in fishing/everything while on a lake, river, what have you.

 

My favorite spirits are the wedded couple Tapio and Mielikki, the rulers of the forests. There are a lot of stories on them, can't remember any at the moment though (13 hours work day) and spells that include them. I actually found one on wikipedia, that resembles one I was taught, asking Mielikki to guide you in the forest. Mielikki is an excellent healer, her husband a master huntsman.

 

The main God in the old Finnish faith was Ukko Ylijumala, the god of weather, the sky and of thunder. His name Ukko resemples our word for thunder, Ukkonen, a lot.

 

We also have the Hiisi, sort of guardian spirits/trolls. There are also places called Hiisi, these places are considered sacred. There places pretty close to where I live called Hiidenkirnu, Giant's kettle. Beautiful spots. I remember going to one as a kid, they're like little wells carved into the stone, filled with water. I probably should actually go visit one again and collect some of the water...

 

And speaking of collecting water, there is a place near where my friend lives where they still have a naturally occuring spring that used to used in old sacrificial rites, and to perform other magical feats at. In the same area they have the remnants of sacrificial stones with a basin carved in them, where people to used to put sacrifices in. It is belived the water collected from these basins has healing properties. When I went there last summer I collected money form both the spring and luckily, the stone basin had some rain water in it too. And I do have to say the water from both places made me feel rejuvenated as hell.

 

I feel like I've been rambling on about nothing, so I'm going to stop here. When I regain my my strenght and sanity I'll come back and see what I've done and try and remember more. Anyone feel free to ask me questions, contrary to what this babblingmight make it look like, I do quite a bit about at least Finnish mythology, and some Swedish too :D

 

But now I do have to sleep or I'll permanently loose my mind.

[Betula]

Not familiar with all the creatures you describe, but thrilled to learn, I grew up pretty close to the Finnish border in Sweden, so I've been in the north of Finland quite a few times. These old Gods you're speaking of are they Sami deities or Finnish deities, if you get what I mean? I know that the Swedish Näcken and Skogsrået are similar in Norway at least but I generally suck at Sami lore even though I grew up in Sami country... Something I want to learn more about and do come back and share more Finnish lore after your nap! I'm thrilled to hear about this stuff, feels like it should be part of my cultral bagage already since I really was 1,30 minutes from the border all my through my childhood and plenty of people in the north of Sweden are Finnish or of Finnish descent, I'm sure you know of the odd Finnish spoken in the north of Sweden as a language of it's own, Tornedalsfinska in Swedish.