The State of Nature existed for the early inhabitants of the land between the Gulf of Finland and the Bothnian Sea, and along the shore of the Lake Ladoga, freshwater lakes, moss bogs, creeks, and rivers all the way north to the White Sea. Some individual people were in tune with their inner intuitive spiritual being, living among the precious resources of the natural environment and the starlit night skies. We cannot even begin to imagine the interactions that a human spirit— the mind and soul— go through when its life is entirely dependent on the provisions that the natural environment provides. People that lived their lives surrounded by the natural living environment, interacting with the life that was so rich everywhere during the spring, summer, and autumn season that is what shaped their spirits and personalities.
God-given life presented with the natural environment; they were the recipients of that life, and they were conscious of it. June is the beginning of summer in the southern parts of the Nordic countries. It was also hard work at times; shelters were constructed for health reasons and protection. Food had to be gathered, fished, and hunted for provision. Wild berries had to forage for nutritional needs, and water was manually carried for households. Clothing and footwear were repaired, and new items were made. Until the time when the migrating birdlife starts to return south, year after year, return south for the warm summer daylight.
Pioneers most experienced, well prepared, only the brave among them would dare to stay through the Nordic winters, which could be under snow and ice for six months (some environment, interacting with the life that was so rich everywhere during the spring, summer, and autumn season that is what shaped their spirits and personalities. God-given life presented with the natural environment; they were the recipients of that life, and they were conscious of it. June is the beginning of summer in the southern parts of the Nordic countries. It was also hard work at times; shelters were constructed for health reasons and protection. Food had to be gathered, fished, and hunted for provision.
Wild berries had to foraged for nutritional needs, and water was manually carried for households. Clothing and footwear were repaired, and new items were made. Until the time when the migrating bird life starts to return south, year after year, return south for the warm summer daylight. Pioneers most experienced, well prepared, only the brave among them would dare to stay through the Nordic winters, which could be under snow and ice for six months (some regional variations), November to May. During the cold dark winters, wild game animals are tracked and hunted, moose and deer. Fire is essential to stay healthy and alive in the Nordic cold winters. During the Nordic winter, the environment is often dead still and quiet, not a sound heard. A winter environment covered with snow insulating and trapping any sounds from the pine trees. Blue haze appears around mid-morning with no sunrise during the day, and the darkness returns at mid-afternoon. Six hours of grey blue haze daylight is a sign of the Nordic midwinter solstice. The season changes, and the daylight hours go closer to midnight, the winter snow and ice soon melt away as the migrating birds arrive from their South Europe and African winter escape. The green vegetation starts to thrive, and soon the wild berries start to flower, giving birth to wild strawberries, bilberries, lingon-berries, thorn-buck berries, and cloud-berries.
The environment is full of the sounds of singing bird calls and songs. Game animals such as reindeer, whitetail deer, brown bear, and the moose, they mate and give birth to their young; food is abundant during the three short months of the Nordic summer season. The life of the natural environment speaks with narrative to a rational, intelligent human mind. It is the Creation, the works of God. Who could have measured the depth, the length, and the width of human understanding some 4500 years ago? From season to season, the people of the far north walked, boated, climbed, skied, journeyed, foraged, trapped, fished, and hunted. There was an abundant food supply of water and firewood. During the summer nights, they listened to the echo of the calls made by the water birds at a distance, endless daylight lasting all through the nighttime hours. Through belief, faith, myth, and imagination, the nomad people’s minds began to join dots and to draw charcoal sketches of the fuller expansive imaginary world beyond their experience. A world where all the clouds of the sky glide from, and a world where all the rivers and lakes flow.
An imaginary world filled with a countless number of lakes filled with the vigorous life, a world where all the migrating birds fly to and fly from, feeding and nesting amongst the reeds, green swamps, meadows filled with wildflowers, and rolling hills with virgin forests, with the dark soil trails of the majestic moose.
THE PEOPLE OF SUOMI
The story of the Ingria people, groups, and Cultures. “The recent studies have rejected the old theories that the Baltic Finns had come to the shores of the region in waves of migrations in the early part of the first century, from East to the south-east. The results of the research had revealed that the North-European people were of Finn stock (Kanta Suomalainen). Not to be confused with the Finn-Ukraine stock (kantasuomlais-Ugrilaista), as they also moved to the north as the Indo-European people groups began to settle there. They also have a relatively recent history, integrated with the Indo-European Nations. Similarly, the Baltic Finn tribes and their Nationality are a representation of the local indigenous people of the Baltic Sea, in the same way as the Sami people represent the Indigenous people who found their habitation environment in the south and the far north. The Baltic Sea Finns, the Ingria land people (Inkeriläiset), also have roots that go far back in history. (Saressalo, 2000) Lassi Saressalo:
Victor Leinonen. A Claim For A True Worldview (Kindle Locations 590-592).
(Saressalo, 2000) Lassi Saressalo:
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