Saraakallio

Saraakallio
ROCK PAINTING OF A SPIRIT BOAT AT SARAAKALLIO NEAR LAUKAA, FINLAND

About Spirit Boat

My father, and my mother’s parents, left Finland in the early 1900's for the U.S. in the great wave of immigration from Europe to North America of the period from the 1860’s to the 1920’s. I spent my early life in a Finnish-American community in the Pacific Northwest and there experienced ‘lived’ Finnish culture and world views.

As I grew up, I had a sense that there was no place for me on this earth, that I did not have a ticket to ride like everyone else. (I have later learned this is not unheard of for children of immigrants.)  Several years ago, I sought out what is called a ‘soul retrieval’ to help me with my quest. It was performed by a shaman who lives and works in northern Ontario. With no knowledge of Finland or its prehistory, she and her spirit guides located my missing soul part—in this case my guardian or 'haltija' in Finnish—in what she identified as a cave with ancient red markings on the walls in what was clearly the country of Finland.

I subsequently visited sites in Finland like those the shaman saw in her healing journey and found markings that appeared much as she described them, red ochre rock paintings on cliffs and in semi-caves along waterways in Finland.  They are considered by many archeologists to be the work of the shamanistic Comb Ceramic archaeological culture of Russia that entered Finland from the Volga-Oka area and was active from about 4200 BC to 2000 BC.  

As a result of my experience in Finland, I looked at my Finnish roots with fresh eyes. As a boy, I had heard stories of my father's mother, who had been a traditional healer in the Savo area of Finland and later in America. Now I read about the animistic tradition that has long endured as a deep cultural current among Baltic Finns, or Suomalaiset. I encountered the runes or folk poems in the Kalevala metre that describe our mythic past as a people, with distinct echoes of shamanism, and the view of nature in all its forms as sacred and alive. 

I also discovered for Baltic Finns the continuity from a shamanic past is limited in comparison with the situation of the other shamanic tradition of Finland, that of the Saami. For example, there is an historically unbroken tradition of Saami shamans that continues today across the Saami homeland of Sápmi, stretching across the northern areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

As a result of my reading and experience I came to share a view that is held by many other observers. That is, ancient shamanic and animistic traditions—such as the proto-Finnic—offer important new dimensions and correctives to accounts of ‘the way things are’ arising from narrowly scientific materialist perspectives. Particularly, they provide promising guides for action to secure the future of the planet by reconnecting us with ancient traditions of harmony with nature.

There is considerable activity in Finland to maintain ancient spiritual traditions on the part of several organizations and many individuals. I thought about a potential role for myself as a Finn living abroad in supporting this work. I chose to begin this blog, Spirit Boat, the name of which derives from two sources.  One is the spirit boat practice of the Coast Salish on whose traditional lands I lived my early life.  I had become acquainted with a version of the practice in my training with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. The second source is what are commonly interpreted as spirit boats, piloted by shamans and carrying spirit persons, appearing in the rock paintings in Finland, that I had seen in my trip there.

I dedicated Spirit Boat to the goal of recovering and exploring insights from the wisdom tradition of Finland and considering their relevance for today.

 

Thank you for visiting Spirit Boat!