Finno-Ugric religion

Pre-Christian belief systems of the Finno-Ugric peoples, who lived in northern Scandinavia, Siberia, the Baltic region, and central Europe.

Surviving Finno-Ugric groups include the Sami (Lapps), Finns, Estonians, and Magyars. The geographic and cultural diversity of these peoples led to the evolution of varying religious beliefs. The most common Finno-Ugric creation myth is the earth-diver myth, in which the Devil is forced to dive into the sea and gather sand, from which God forms the earth. Another myth tells of the creation of the world from a cosmic egg. The chief deities usually included a sky god and an earth mother. While the major gods were remote, there were guardian spirits at hand to regulate daily life; they resided in households, natural sites such as lakes and forests, and natural phenomena such as wind or fire. Ancestor worship was practiced. Religious functionaries included shamans, sacrificing priests, guardians of the sanctuary, professional weeping women, and performers of wedding ceremonies. Cult centres ranged from home sanctuaries to sacred groves and sacrificial stones.

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Introduction

      pre-Christian and pre-Islāmic religious beliefs and practices of the Finno-Ugric peoples, who inhabit regions of northern Scandinavia, Siberia, the Baltic area, and central Europe. In modern times the religion of many of these peoples has been an admixture of agrarian and nomadic primitive beliefs and of Christianity and Islām.

Geographic and cultural background

The Finno-Ugric peoples

      The area inhabited by the Finno-Ugric peoples is extensive: from Norway to the region of the Ob River in Siberia and southward into the Carpathian Basin in central Europe and Ukraine. The history of their geographic dispersion is based almost entirely on linguistic criteria, since historical knowledge is recent and archaeological finds are scanty and interpreted variously.

      The Finno-Ugric languages and the Samoyed languages (Samoyedic languages) together form the Uralic (Uralic languages) family of languages, which began to split up about 5000–4000 BC. The original Uralic people are thought to have lived in the region between the Ural Mountains and the middle reaches of the Volga River. Their descendants in the north are the Nenets, who live on the shores of the Arctic Ocean between the Taymyr and the Kanin peninsulas. In the south the original speakers of the parent Finno-Ugric language probably began to disperse by 3000 BC, when the Ugrians formed their own group. One branch moved northeast, behind the Ural Mountains: the Khanty (Khanty and Mansi), living east of the Ob River, and the Mansi, living west of the Ob River. The other branch spread southward and made contact with the Bulgar Turks and the Khazars; in 895 this branch (the Magyars (Hungarian) [Hungarians]), together with certain Turkish tribes, conquered what is now Hungary. In this way, the largest, but at the same time linguistically the most isolated, Finno-Ugric nation came into existence. Other Magyars live in the countries of Romania and Slovakia.

      The Permian branch of the Finno-Ugric populations living in central Russia split from the other groups between 2500 and 2000 BC; the linguistic differentiation is not very great between the present-day Permians, who are divided into Udmurts (living between the Kama and Vyatka rivers) and Komi (also called Zyryan, living in the region between the upper reaches of the Western Dvina River, Kama, and Pechora)—the differentiation only occurred a little over 1,000 years ago. An intermediary group between the two branches are the Permyaks, whose language is sometimes considered a dialect of Komi.

      Farther to the south, the differentiation of the Volga Finns into separate groups probably began about 1200 BC. The Volga Finns consist today of the Mordvins (Mordvin) (including the Moksha in the southeast and the Erzya in the northwest), living in a rather large region near the middle reaches of the Volga River, and the Cheremis (the Mari), living in the vicinity of the confluence of the Volga and the Kama.

      When the Baltic Finns came to the regions bordering the Baltic Sea is not certain. The latest possible date would be c. 1500 BC (the evidence being the Baltic loan words in proto-Finnic), when the “proto-Finns” still maintained contact with the Mordvins and the Sami. A much earlier date is possible, however, as there must have been many and repeated migrations by the Finno-Ugric populations westward from the Ural Mountains toward the Baltic regions. Initially, settlement was sparse, as is always the case with hunting cultures, but language differentiation sped up with the change to sedentary agriculture. The Sami have been the slowest of the Finno-Ugric peoples to relinquish the hunting and nomadic culture—which has withdrawn slowly toward the north—and they themselves have moved from the direction of Lakes Ladoga and Onega (northeast of St. Petersburg) to the northern parts of Fennoscandia and the Kola Peninsula (far northern Russia).

      After separating from early proto-Finnic about 3,000 years ago, the Sami language became divided into a number of very different dialects. The oldest population settlements of the Baltic Finns were to the south of the Gulf of Finland and to the south of Lake Ladoga. The most westerly group, the Livonians (in the north of Courland, now part of Latvia), is disappearing. The Estonians are one of the three most advanced of the Finno-Ugric peoples, the others being the Finns and the Hungarians. Small but interesting cultures are represented by the Greek Orthodox Votes and Izhora Ingrians, both nearly extinct groups living near the head of the Gulf of Finland in an area once called Ingria, the Veps (living near Lake Onega), and the Karelians (living in central Russia, Karelia, and Finland), as well as the Ludes in Olonets, who speak a transition dialect. The population moved into Finland from the south and southeast.

Ecological and intercultural factors

      To attain a proper understanding of the history and phenomenology of the religion of the Finno-Ugric peoples, two basic influences must be borne in mind: the ecological factors and the pressure of alien cultures on the original religious tradition. The result of both factors has been a great variation in the religious atmosphere in different places.

      The Sami, Nenets, Mansi, and Khanty—who all have been associated with a nomadic and hunting culture in Arctic regions—retain a religious life that has many ancient elements. The Finns, Karelians, and Komi have practiced hunting up to the present, but they have been familiar with agriculture for thousands of years. The peoples on the south side of the Gulf of Finland, such as the Estonians, have long practiced agriculture and cattle breeding as well as fishing, but hunting has not been as important to them. The Finno-Ugric peoples of the southeast, like the Udmurts and the Cheremis, have practiced agriculture and cattle breeding only. The agrarian economy of the Hungarians, with its seminomadic features, is the outcome of a complicated history.

      Habitat, climate, and other ecological factors have had an important influence on economy and social organization and on traditional religion. Some of the differences between the various Finno-Ugric peoples, however, can be traced to outside cultural influences. The southeastern Finno-Ugric peoples have been marked by Turko-Tatar influence. In the 8th century the Udmurts and the Cheremis came under Bulgar domination; the conversion of the Bulgars to Islām in 922 and the subsequent Tatar domination in eastern Russia (1236–1552) gave added significance to the Arab–Islāmic tradition. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Volga Finns, the Permians, the Ob Ugrians, and the Nenets finally came under the domination of Moscow; before this, Orthodox missionaries had worked, for example, among the Komi (St. Stephen, 14th century) and the Baltic Finns.

      The influence of Slavic tradition on the Finno-Ugric peoples has been considerable—from the point of view of both folk religion and the more institutionalized Orthodox faith, though some of this influence in many places is late and superficial. There are also Finno-Ugric substrates in the Russian tradition in the north and northwest of Russia. Pre-Christian practices were still alive in the early 20th century, and among the Udmurts, the Ob Ugrians, and the Nenets there were still people who were unbaptized. Roman (Catholic) and Byzantine (Orthodox) traditions met one another in Finland and Estonia, but the Orthodox groups remain established only in the eastern regions. Most of Finland was converted to Christianity by way of Sweden, beginning in the 12th century, and the country remained Roman Catholic until Lutheranism was established in the 16th century. The position of the Hungarians, who formed a pocket surrounded by alien cultures, resulted in an extremely mixed array of contacts at different levels.

      Thus, each of the Finno-Ugric peoples has its own cultural history, habitat, and level of civilization. In considering their religion, all this must be borne in mind. The Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians have the longest literary traditions, while a number of the other peoples are only now developing written literature in their own language. Ancient popular belief, preserved in oral tradition, has for the most part developed more persistently on the periphery, but near centres of culture it has become a minor growth alongside institutional religions.

The problem of the concept of a Finno-Ugric religion

      Since it is not possible to find a single formula to cover Finno-Ugric cultures and religions and since the relationship between the peoples is often distant both geographically and historically, it may well be asked whether there is any utility in attempting, by means of comparative methods, to discover some common or basic substratum in Finno-Ugric religion. Many earlier scholars attempted this enthusiastically, but today there is general agreement that a hypothetical reconstruction representing the “original religion” of a single language family is virtually impossible. That ancient tradition may have been preserved in different regions, although fragmented and adapted to new conditions, is, of course, possible, and indeed seemingly trustworthy discoveries have been made that substantiate this view. One must, however, be extremely circumspect in projecting hypotheses applying to the entire linguistic group. Genetic-historical considerations are of great importance when dealing with those areas of the language family where a cultural connection has subsisted long and late.

      The search for a common historical tradition is not, however, the most rewarding aspect of the study of Finno-Ugric religions. The religio-phenomenological approach is equally interesting and significant. In the course of conducting nonhistorical studies of similarities and differences in Finno-Ugric religious material, scholars have uncovered a spectrum of basic religious forms running from Arctic hunting and fishing cultures to southern cattle breeding and agriculture.

Mythology

Creation (creation myth), cosmography, and cosmology

      The most widespread account of the creation among the Finno-Ugric peoples is the earth-diver myth. In the north it is known in an area extending from eastern Finland to the Ob River, and in the south it is found, for example, among the Mordvins (Mordvin). This myth, which is well known in North America and Siberia, is fairly constant in form among the Finno-Ugric peoples. In the Mordvin variant, God sits on a rock in the middle of the primeval sea and spits into the water; the saliva begins to grow and God strikes it with a staff, whereupon the devil comes out of it (sometimes in the form of a goose). God orders the Devil to dive into the sea for earth from the bottom; at the third attempt, he succeeds but tries to hide some of the earth in his mouth. While God scatters sand, the earth begins to grow and the Devil's deceit is unmasked, and the earth found in his cheek becomes mountains and hills. The eastern Finnish myth contains an interesting detail; God stands on the top of a golden statue and orders his reflection on the water to rise, and this becomes the Devil.

      Etiological (explanatory and expanding) continuations of the basic myth are common; the Devil demands for himself a piece of earth the size of the end of a stick, and from the hole that results vermin emerge—mice, fleas, mosquitoes, flies, and other such living things. Indo-Iranian influence has been seen in the dualism of the myth—setting God against the Devil—since religious dualism is most significant in Indo-Iranian religion. A water bird may be older than the Devil; it also occurs, however, without the dualistic emphasis. Thus, in an account by the Yenisey Khanty, the great shaman (a medicine man with psychic abilities) Doh glides above the primeval sea among the water birds, asks the red-throated loon to dive for earth from the bottom of the sea, and with the earth makes an island. A rarer, but apparently ancient, myth is found among the Mansi: the god of the skies lets earth come down from heaven and places it on the surface of the great primeval sea.

      The world made from an egg is a myth best known in equatorial regions, though the most northerly points of its distribution are in Finland and Estonia. A water bird or an eagle makes its nest on the knee of the creator (Väinämöinen), who is floating in the water; it lays an egg, which rolls into the water, and pieces of it become the earth, the sky, the moon, and the stars. Myths concerning the creation of man are found in the north among the Mansi and in the south among the Volga Finns. The common element among all such myths is that man, on the brink of achieving perfection, had his hairy covering transferred to the dog by the Devil, whose spit blighted man and made him subject to disease and death. In Finland the variant of yet another anthropogonic (origin of man) myth has been found: a hummock rises from the sea, a tree stump thereon splits open, and the first human couple steps forth.

      Finno-Ugric cosmographic (world-describing) concepts include the following well-known mythological themes: a stream or sea encircling the round world; a canopy of the heavens, the central point of which is the North Star (a kind of nail on which the sky rotates); a world pole supporting the sky; a world mountain and a world tree rising in the middle of the earth; animals carrying the earth; and the nub of the earth and the nub of the sea (an abyss that swallows ships). From these and from other materials more or less coherent cosmographies have been formed in different places; the central components are the sky, the earth, and the underworld. Among the Ob Ugrians and the Nenets is found a myth of the seven- or nine-storied heaven.

      The cosmogonic (concerning the origin of the world) and cosmographic myths have had important ritual functions and have provided the basis for cosmology (the ordering of the world). When, in incantations and prayers, numerous natural, cultural, and social phenomena derive from these basic myths, it is not a matter of giving an explanation but of finding the connection with the decisive primeval events that gave the world its lasting order. A pillar representing the world pole has been worshiped by the Sami and the Ob Ugrians, especially as a symbol of the world order.

High gods (High God)

      The semantic elements “sky” and “god of the sky” are found to be so close in the terminology of certain of the Finno-Ugric peoples (for example, Cheremis Jumo, Finnish Jumala, Udmurt Inmar, Komi Jen, Nenets Num) that the association cannot be a recent phenomenon. The tradition of the god of the sky is many-layered, and the influence of monotheism, especially of Christianity and Islām (Islāmic world), is widely exhibited. This influence was evidently preceded by that of ancient southern high cultures. Thus the Cheremis Jumo has a real court with servants in his heaven, and these servants act as intermediaries between humans and the god of the sky. This indicates a Turko-Tatar influence, which can also be seen in the Udmurt Inmar; Christian elements, however, are also found (Inmar's mother is related to the Virgin Mary). “Great,” the most common epithet for Inmar and Jumo, reminds one of Allāh. The Mordvin god of the sky (Škaj, “creator” or “birth giver,” among the Moksha people, and also Ńišké-pas, “the great inseminating god”) is the chief of the gods, all-knowing and all-seeing, who is not approached for trivial things. He appears, however, very concretely in a festival connected with the beginning of the spring plowing. In this festival an old man represents the god of the sky and from an attic or a tree answers questions put to him by people who pray about health, the grain harvest, the weather, and other matters. The gods of the sky of the Arctic Finno-Ugric peoples (Nenets Num; Khanty Num-Turom and Sängke; Mansi Num-Tarom; Sami Tiermes, Horagalles, and Radien) are the high gods of hunting and nomadic cultures, who sometimes appear in myths as creator gods and culture heroes (often as dei otiosi, or “inactive gods,” without a cult) and sometimes as venerated gods of the economy (as the promoters of fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding), especially as weather gods. Originally the Finno-Ugric peoples probably had no concept of a hierarchic family of gods with a supreme god at its head; the attribute found in many places, “lofty” or “high,” merely means “being above”—that is to say, a god appearing in the sky.

      The concept of a begetting sky is stressed in southern agricultural cultures, in which an increasing importance of the Earth Mother may be observed; it is no longer a mere local field spirit but rather has the role of a great birth giver. “The god of the sky is our father, and the Earth Mother is our mother,” say the Mordvins. The Earth Mother's function is not limited to field sacrifices, but also includes child giving; she is the begetter par excellence.

System of spirits

      The high gods are usually encountered in connection with a rite; they are distant, invisible, and do not make surprise visits. With the guardian spirits (guardian spirit), however, matters are different. They are first and foremost supranormal beings that appear in definite visions, auditory experiences, and other such occurrences. They appear especially when a social norm involving a guardian-spirit sanction is broken. The guardian spirits—along with the spirits of the dead—are significant as regulating factors in daily behaviour and normally are solitary local spirits, believed to “govern” and “own” a particular area: a cultural locality (e.g., household spirits), a natural region (e.g., guardian spirits of forest or water), or a natural element or phenomenon (e.g., fire spirits or wind spirits). There are also special guardians (of man or of treasure) and various demonic beings that—though similar to the guardian spirits—are not worshiped.

      The names of guardian spirits are normally compounds of words, the first element of which indicates the sphere of action and the second being a name such as “man” or “master,” as in Udmurt Korka-murt (“House-man”) or Vu-murt (“Water-man”); “old man” or “old woman,” as in Cheremis Pört-kuguza (“the Old Man of the House”) or Pört-kuwa (“the Old Woman of the House”); or “father” or “mother” as in Mordvin Jurt-at'a or Jurt-ava. The system of social values is revealed by the system of guardian spirits: The house spirit protects the luck of the home; the cattle spirit watches over the cattle during the winter (in the summer the cattle come under the forest spirit); and the barn spirit looks after threshing luck. In representing these values the spirit may appear in a number of roles. Thus, the Ingrian house spirit appears as “owner,” the original owner of the plot on which a house is built; “moralist,” punisher of crimes against norms that may endanger the luck of the house; and “sympathizer,” one who warns in advance of catastrophes threatening house or family. With some peoples—the Mordvins, for example—the guardian-spirit system is very specific and there are a very large number of spirits; with others, such as the Sami, the Nenets, and the Ob Ugrians, there are fewer of them, and Herr der Tiere (“Master of Animals”) game spirits predominate.

Sacred ancestors

      The oldest form of Finno-Ugric religion is thought to be ancestor worship. Some of the main terms (e.g., “grave,” “hades,” and “soul”) go back several millennia. The cult concerned only dead members of the family; other dead beings were experienced as restless haunters, and aggressive expelling rites were used to dispel them. The worship of ancestors must be understood as a family institution in which intercourse between the living and the dead is the internal activity of a social primary group. The dead belong to the family, and they have both rights and duties; they protect the happiness of the family, assist it in its means of livelihood, and receive their share of the produce; they are also considered to be counselors, moralists, and judges. The cult of the dead can be divided in the following manner: (1) rites at the moment of death; (2) funeral (death rite) preparations (washing the corpse, attiring it, and watching by it; making the coffin); (3) the committal; (4) celebrations in memory of a single dead person; (5) annual memorial ceremonies for the dead; (6) offerings and prayers to the dead in connection with earning the means of subsistence; and (7) occasional rites (e.g., when moving to a new place or during illness).

      The most important of the ritual ceremonies for a dead person are those that take place during the transition period, which may last for six weeks and may include addressing the departed euphemistically and in dirges. The departed person remains in the dwelling place, separated from his body; agreements are made with him about the distribution of property; he is given advice about how to live on the other side; he is invited to return for the celebration of his anniversary; and so on. The most important matter is the ensurance of harmony between the newly departed and his relations in the graveyard. Of central importance in the collective worship of the dead is the visit of the departed members to their old home; among the Eastern Finno-Ugric peoples this approximates with the Christian feast of Easter, and among the Western it is in late autumn (e.g., the Finnish Kekri, November 1, an ancient festival to celebrate the seasonal change). Living members of the family also visit the graves on the anniversary days of the departed. Customs among the Sami, the Nenets, and the northern Khanty (Khanty and Mansi) differ somewhat from the above; among the Sami, the departed person is represented by a clothed log and among the Khanty and the Nenets by a doll-effigy that is kept for as long as three years.

      The otherworld is viewed as two-storied and consists of first, a graveyard hades, or underground village of the dead in a holy forest near the village; and second, a distant hades, far in the north behind the burning stream (with an admixture of paradise concepts). Name-giving rites suggest continuity and reincarnation; (reincarnation) a child is given the name of a dead relative, and the child thereby is believed to receive the personality of the deceased relation. If the result is unsuccessful, a name-changing rite can be performed.

Divine heroes

      Hero worship in Finno-Ugric religion does not point to culture heroes who are described in myth and whose actions are located in cosmogonic contexts. In general, culture heroes are not worshiped. The matter is otherwise when dealing with divinized historical figures, the cults of which are found among several of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Mardan of the Yelabuga Udmurt is viewed as the progenitor of 11 villages and the one who led the dwellers therein from the north to their present habitations. There is a sacrificial ceremony in his honour every year. Also, there are signs of the worship of tribal chiefs, for example, in the forest sanctuary worship of the Udmurt (lud) and the Volga Finns (keremet). The best-known of the Cheremis (Mari) princes, called “the old man of the Nemda Mountain,” is a great ancient warrior under whose rule the people were strong and united. According to this myth, he promised to return when war threatened; once he was called for unnecessarily and, after discovering the betrayal, he ordered the annual propitiation sacrifice of a foal. The Ob Ugrians have a large number of “local gods” of whom pictures have been made and who are sometimes associated with ancient mighty men or Christian heroes and saints. A death doll made by a shaman may also have been the origin of a hero cult; the Nenets have been known to cherish and feed such a doll for as long as 50 years.

Sacred animals (animal worship)

      In the “hunters' religion” preserved among the northern Finno-Ugric peoples, bear ceremonies are central. The Khanty, Mansi, Nenets, Sami, Finns, and Karelians have all been acquainted with myths and rites connected with the bear. The myths recount that the bear is of heavenly origin and is the son of the god of the sky; it descends from heaven and, when it dies, returns there. There is also a story about a marriage between a bear and a woman from which a tribe of the Skolt Sami (in Finland) is said to be descended. The bear-killing ceremony is divided into two acts—the killing itself and the feast afterward. Killing a bear that was protected by a forest guardian spirit involved a complicated ritual, which ended with bringing the bear home. Women believed that they had to keep at a distance so that the bear would not make them pregnant. The feast to celebrate the killing of the bear lasted two days and was full of marriage symbolism. The bear was addressed euphemistically, and a young man or woman was chosen to be its mate. A large meal made of the meat of the bear was consumed. Finally, the skull of the bear was carried in procession to the branch of a pine tree on the top of a mountain. This was the custom in Karelia. A number of miniature dramas were connected with Ob Ugrian bear rites. Masked participants tell the bear that members of a strange tribe have killed it. There seems to be a historical connection among the bear ceremonies of Ob Ugrians, Karelians, Finns, and Sami. Nowhere else in the wide Arctic sphere have the bear songs and dramas taken such a prominent place as in this hunting ritual.

      The exogamic patrilineal clans (involving marriage outside a particular group) of the Ob Ugrians are often known by animal names—“bear,” “falcon,” “frog,” or “dog.” The animal is regarded as the manifestation of the family guardian spirit and is not allowed to be killed or eaten. Evidence of totemistic (totemism) systems, in which animals are associated with blood-related groups, has been found among the Sami and the Nenets. Some scholars consider the names of relations (animal names) found among other Finno-Ugric peoples, such as the Hungarians and Karelians, as evidence of a lost totemism.

Institutions and practices

Cult authorities

      The male head of the family has long had a central role in leading different home and family cults. In the lud sanctuaries of the Udmurt, for example, worship was performed by members of the family; the head of the family had the responsibility of organizing the cult and the task was hereditary. Women also were able to supervise certain minor home rituals—such as those performed in connection with cattle breeding (offerings to the guardian spirit of the cattle shed and the forest). In hunting and nomadic cultures, the head man (e.g., the oldest of the hunting party or the reindeer chief) supervised the rites. The official authorities of the rites (i.e., the religious specialists) among the Finno-Ugric peoples were of the following types: shamans (shamanism) (among the Nenets and the Sami); seers (divination) (the counterparts of the shaman among southern peoples); sacrificing priests (the leaders of the annual rites, especially in cattle-breeding cultures and agricultural communities); guardians of the sanctuary (the protectors of holy groves, buildings, and other places and the controller of the rites); professional weeping women (the “vocalists,” especially of the cult of the dead but also of weddings, who were the verbal expressers of the content of the ritual); and the masters of ceremonies at weddings. The shaman had many and various tasks in Arctic regions, but further south particular tasks were undertaken by various cult authorities: the seer (healing and counseling) and the weeping woman, or psychopomp (i.e., “conductor of souls”), guiding the soul to the other world. The two last-mentioned are verbal ecstatics; the task of the seer, especially in solving critical problems, was of the utmost importance. The task of the sacrificing priest was more of a routine affair, but among the Volga Finns and the Permians for example, the long and skillful prayers as well as the complex ceremonies performed by the priests required great professional competence.

Cult centres

      The home sanctuary of the Udmurt is a kuala, a primitive log cabin near the dwelling house. In a corner at one end of the kuala is a shelf, at the height of a man, on which there are branches of deciduous trees and conifers, and on top of them a voršud (a box with a lid). A weekly offering is made here. Another Udmurt sanctuary is the lud—a fenced-off area in an isolated place in the forest. In the middle is a primitive table for sacrificial gifts. In the lud regular animal sacrifices are offered and occasional crisis rites performed (sacrifices to dispel accidents or disease). The cult group in both kuala and lud is the family; the office of the sacrificing priest of the lud is hereditary, and in the principal house of the family there is a great kuala, which is visited three times a year in addition to the offerings made in the small kuala at home. The small kuala is built on a foundation of earth and ashes brought from the big kuala. The system is exogamous—the woman visiting the kuala of her own father and not that of her husband's father. The Udmurt also have large groves near a spring or a brook in the vicinity of a village, where common sacrifices for the whole village are made. There are, in addition, larger sacrificing groups, which may include dozens of villages and which meet every third year for a festival lasting many weeks. The Volga Finns also have fenced-in keremet groves for the family cult and places of worship common to the whole village. Evidence also exists concerning sacrificial groves among the Baltic Finns and from group villages in Karelia and Ingria. In the thinly populated parts of Finland, the family cult took place either at cup stones (sacrifice stones with shallow cuplike depressions) or at holy trees. Among the nomadic Sami (those involved in reindeer herding and fishing) seita (“sacrificial stone”) places for worship arose near a reindeer migration route or a good fishing place, and for such a place an outstanding stone generally was chosen. The Ob Ugrians had a kind of “mobile temple” for the wooden idols (normally kept in the corner of the house) that were placed on special sledges.

Cult practices

      All the main categories of rites (ritual) are found among the Finno-Ugric peoples: cyclic or calendric rites (concerning the means of livelihood), rites of passage (the transition of the individual from one status to another), and crisis rites (concerning threats of disaster). The character of these rites varies considerably, depending on ecological factors and cultural contacts. Generally, an agrarian culture produces a cult system that is more stable and formal than that produced by a mobile hunting culture (hunting and gathering culture) or a nomadic way of life. In the latter, sacrifice rites tend to be more improvised and the cult group smaller. An example of a formal system is the distinction “upward” and “downward” in worship found among the Udmurts and the Cheremis; sacrifices of white animals are made in deciduous groves to the god of the sky and to certain nature gods, the direction of prayer being to the south; sacrifices of black animals are made to the departed and to the guardian spirits of the earth near conifers, the direction of prayer being to the north.

Conclusion

      Two phenomena may be consistently observed with regard to the religious customs of the Finno-Ugric peoples. These are the ecological adaptation of religion and the stratification of tradition in connection with acculturation. A number of examples of the former have already been given. As far as acculturation is concerned, it may be said that the “syncretism” it produces does not result in any conflict in the religious field, except perhaps for short periods of adjustment. Old and new elements of different origins are molded into an active system, and choice and adaptation take place according to practical religious need. Christianity and Islām have in many places provided a religious superstructure, but they have not been accepted as such; certain elements from them have been adapted to the depth structure of a primitive religion. The best example of this is the preservation of folk religion in Hungary, Finland, and Estonia, where Christianity, supported by a literate culture, is ancient. Popular belief has become intertwined with the religious tradition because it has always had a function that no Christian practice has replaced. Only mass media and urbanization have jeopardized the ancient belief tradition.

Lauri O. Honko

Additional Reading

A comprehensive presentation can be found in Louis Herbert Gray, George Foot More, and J.A. MacCulloch (eds.), The Mythology of All Races, vol. 4, Finno-Ugric, Siberian, by Uno Holmberg (1927, reprinted 1964). More recent surveys with extensive bibliographies include Ivar Paulson, “Die Religionen der finnischen Völker,” in Ivar Paulson, Åke Hultkrantz, and Karl Jettmar (eds.), Die Religionen Nordeurasiens und der amerikanischen Arktis (1962), pp. 145–303; and Lauri Honko, “Religionen der finnisch-ugrischen Völker,” in Jes Peter Asmussen, Jørgen Laessøe, and Carsten Colpe (eds.), Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte, vol. 1, trans. from Danish (1971), pp. 173–224.Lauri O. Honko

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