Tuonela

A woman lying awake in a Karelian farmhouse hears a thin ringing start up in one ear. She knows exactly what it is, and it is not the wind in the chimney. Somebody on the other side is calling for the boat, and the boat is coming for the house.

That is Tuonela calling, and the word does more work than any single English one. It names the country of the dead, the home of Tuoni who keeps them, and it also names the filled grave of a particular person and the whole village burying ground. Manala sits beside it as a near synonym, from the space under the earth, and so does tuonilmainen, the other air. A Finn could say the word and mean the mythic north, or mean the six feet of cold soil behind the church. Both meanings were live at once, which tells you something about how near the place was thought to be.

The geography shifts depending on who is singing. Sometimes Tuonela lies in the sky, more often at the northern end of the world, and always it is cut off from the living by a deep precipice. At the bottom of that drop runs the black river, unlit by sun or moon, and it is not a quiet stretch of water. There is a whirling cataract in it and a stream of fire, and standing upright in the current are spears and swords and needles. The dead can be seen going past in bloodied clothes. Whatever the dead were thought to be owed, easy passage was not it.

Crossing was the whole problem. Some accounts let the dead wade. Some give them a bridge made of thread. Most put them in a boat steered by the daughter of Tuoni, and that is the version the ringing ear belongs to, because a ringing in the ears meant relatives over there were hailing the ferry on your behalf. Beyond the far bank the ground rises into Tuonela mountain, which is smooth as an eggshell and cannot be climbed by anyone who arrives empty-handed. So the living prepared. Fingernails were clipped on a Saturday night, cut in two and slipped into the neck-hole of the dead person’s shirt, because the clippings gave purchase on that slick hill. They had to be cut in pieces first. Left whole, the Evil One could build a boat from them and row the newcomer somewhere far worse.

The rest of the provisioning was just as practical. The dead needed clothes, food and work tools, and footwear above all, so they were dressed in woollen socks for the walk. A woman who died unmarried was given the kerchief a married woman wore, so that she could marry over there. In Karelian, Ingrian and Veps cemeteries the graves were roofed with small log huts, each with a window set at the end facing home, partly to let light in and partly so the dead could keep an eye on the family’s behaviour. A second hole was cut at the other end for the breathing soul to slip out, visit its old house, and fly north in the shape of a bird. On commemoration days food was carried out and left on the graves, and the birds that came and ate it were not thought of as birds.

Two people went to Tuonela alive and both stories survive in full in the Kalevala. Väinämöinen went for three missing words of boat-magic, walked a week through brambles, a week through hazels and a week through junipers, then stood on the near bank and shouted for the ferry. Tuoni’s daughter, a small woman washing linen at the water, asked him four times what had killed him, and caught him lying four times, because iron would have left blood on his coat and water would have left it dripping and fire would have crisped his beard. She rowed him over once he told the truth. Then the hostess Tuonetar brought him a golden tankard of beer with black frogspawn and young adders swimming in it, he declined, and she put him to sleep anyway. While he slept, Tuoni’s son with the iron fingers strung a thousand copper nets across the river, lengthwise and crosswise, so that nothing could leave. Väinämöinen woke, understood, changed his shape, and went out through the meshes as a black snake on the water. He did not get the words.

Lemminkäinen did worse. Louhi of Pohjola sent him to shoot the swan that swims on the black river, one bow and one arrow, and at the water a blind herdsman in a wet hat was already waiting for him. The reed came out of the river and went through him before he understood he had been hit. Tuoni’s son chopped the body into five unequal pieces and threw them into the current. It was his mother who got him back. She had Ilmarinen forge a rake with a copper shaft, teeth a hundred fathoms long and a handle of five hundred, and she waded in up to her belt and dragged the riverbed until she brought up his tunic, then his shoes and stockings, then the body with half the head and one hand still missing.

That is the shape of the place. It gives nothing and it lets nothing go, and the only people who come back out of it do so by fraud, by shape-change or by being fished out by somebody who loves them. Whatever oldest knowledge is down there, and the songs insist there is a hundred words’ worth, Tuonela keeps.

The songs that carry all this were collected across Karelia by Elias Lönnrot in the 1820s and 1830s and shaped into the Kalevala, published in 1835 and enlarged in 1849, so the epic is a nineteenth-century arrangement of much older oral material rather than an inherited book. The underworld itself is older than the arrangement and shows up independently in funeral laments, lullabies and healing charms. Some of the scenery, though, is imported. The fire-rock with hissing serpents for pillows, where the Kalevala parks liars and people who cheat their neighbours, reads as a Christian hell dropped into a place that otherwise never punished anyone for anything, and the more lurid features of the river owe a good deal to Baltic, Slavic and Byzantine traffic and to medieval visionary literature. In 1893 Jean Sibelius took the swan off that river and wrote it for cor anglais, and for most of the world outside Finland the Swan of Tuonela is now the only thing on the water.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Tuonela in Finnish mythology?

Tuonela is the Finnish land of the dead, the household of Tuoni, reached across a black river at the foot of a precipice. The same word also means an individual filled grave and the village graveyard. Manala, from the space under the earth, is used as a near synonym.

How do the dead get to Tuonela?

Most are ferried across the river of Tuonela in a boat steered by the daughter of Tuoni, though some accounts have the dead wade the water or cross a bridge made of thread. A ringing in a living person’s ears was taken to mean relatives in Tuonela were calling for that boat. Beyond the crossing lies Tuonela mountain, smooth as an eggshell, which is why fingernail clippings were tucked into a dead person’s shirt to give them grip.

Who rules Tuonela?

Tuoni rules it with his wife Tuonetar, who plays hostess to anyone who arrives. Their daughter works the ferry on the river and their son sets the nets and handles the violence. In the Kalevala it is Tuoni’s son who cuts Lemminkäinen into five pieces and throws them into the current.

Why did Väinämöinen go to Tuonela?

He went for three words of boat-magic he could not find anywhere among the living. He talked his way across the river with a lie, refused a tankard of beer full of frogspawn and adders, was put to sleep by Tuonetar, and escaped through a thousand copper nets by turning himself into a snake. He came home without the words.

What is the Swan of Tuonela?

The Swan of Tuonela is the bird that swims on the black death-river in the Kalevala, and killing it was the third task Louhi of Pohjola set Lemminkäinen in exchange for her daughter. Lemminkäinen was shot at the riverbank before he ever drew on it. Jean Sibelius set the scene for cor anglais and orchestra in 1893, which is how most listeners outside Finland first meet the place.

Related Entries

Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen, Ilmarinen, Louhi, Ukko, Tapio, Surma, Hiisi, Lempo, Antero Vipunen, Hel, Hades, Duat, Xibalba, Mictlan