| Name: | Kihavaiconen  (old ortography)Kihawanskoinen  (old ortography)Kiho Vauhkonen  Kihovaakkonen Kihovauhkonen Kilovauhkonen  Pietar Pietarinpoika Vaahkone Vihovauhkonen (Antti K. Vauhkonen listed the versions: Kihovauhko, Kihovauhka, Kihovaohkonen, Kihovaukonen, Kihovaukkonen, Kihovaahko, Kihovaahkonen, Kihovouhkonen, Kihovuahkone, Kihavauhkonen, Kihavaikonen, Kiovauhkonen, Vihovauhkonen, Vitovauhkonen, Viuhvauhkonen, Vauhkonen and Vaukkonen, but I cannot check where these are from.) |
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Kihovauhkonen is a figure in folklore who does not appear in runosongs. He is a rare figure in Finnish tradition who is connected to the end of the world, predicting signs of it, though his predictions are very much in line with general Medieval European legends of such.
The oldest written mention of him is from Kainuu in 1663 when he was called a giant, a son of Kaleva. In 1747, Eric Juvelius wrote that he taught tar making to people in Central Ostrobothnia:
Si narrationibus vulgi est babenda sides, primus, qvi picem e' radicibus pinorum desiillavit in Ostrobotnia, suit qvidam KIHAVAICONEN, qvi propria destitutus sede, per provinciam, & praesertim paraecias Lochteo, Pyhaejoki & Calajoki, vagabatur, incolas arte bas instruens. Primus vero, qvi ligna truncorum decorsicatorum ista, qvae hodie usu venit, longitudine, igni commisit, perbibetur suisse in pago Töysae ecclssiae Lappoënsis rusticus pauperculus, cui non suppetebant vires, adeo minutim sonscindendi ligna , ac usus postulabat, qvi tamen ex ustione sua aequale cum aliss lucrum reportabat. Qvi vero struem ipsam lignorum in sovea nunc usitato modo adornare incepit suit ante go, sere annos in eadem Ecclesia & pago Courtane, rusticus, Mursuia nomine.
If we are to believe in the popular narratives, the first person who extracted pitch from the roots of pine trees in Ostrobothnia was a certain KIHAVAICONEN, who, having lost his own home, wandered through the province, and especially the regions of Lohtaja, Pyhäjoki and Kalajoki, instructing the inhabitants in the art. The first person who set fire to the length of the wood of the trunks he had cut, as is now the case today, was a poor peasant in the village of Töysä, a church in Lapponia, who did not have the strength to split the wood so finely as demanded by the use, but who nevertheless earned a profit equal to that of others from his burning. The first person who began to decorate the pile of wood in the now usual way in the same church and village of Kuortane, a peasant named Mursuia, was the first person to do so, about six years ago.
Notice how Töysä in South Ostrobothnia is called "Lapland" here. "Lapland" is truly a concept that can mean whatever depending on the context. If Juvelius's account is true, Kihovauhkonen would've lived in the 13th century.
Just like his brothers Soini and Hiisi, Kihovauhkonen was said by Ganander to have made meadows and burned swiddens. He has, especially in North Savo, credited as the giant who caused the formations of different natural sites, such as big holes in rocks. He was not, however, described to have tried to destroy churches like his brother Hiisi (though he did call church men "dogs"). In South Savo, he is said to have lived on an island in Joroinen, which would make his appearances in Ostrobothnia as happening within hunting and/or fishing trips. There are also a lot of stories of him around Tervo, North Savo. His "original home" has also sometimes thought to have been west of Savo.
In Ostrobothnian Pyhäjärvi, Kihovauhkonen was remembered as a remarkable man who predicted that there would be a lot of houses on the Tikkalanniemi peninsula, enough for a squirrel to go around the peninsula by jumping from roof to roof, even though in his time there was only one house. He also predicted that an iron horse will travel over the straights, and with the invention of motor vehicles, the locals considered these both predictions to have come true. Too bad Kihovauhkonen also predicted that when those things come true, a great war will come.
North Savonian Kiho Vauhkonen is much more of a trickster figure with the sleight of hand. He was able to walk up a wall backwards, eat an entire cow's thigh and six breads and potatoes on top in one sitting, and dive into water and disappear. In the markets, when buying a horse, he paid more than the asking price but after a while, the money he gave turned into empty slips of paper.
In South Savo, it was said that Vihovauhkonen lived near the Karelian town of Sortavala (which was not a town yet) as a hermit, having come from Russian and wearing a monk's habit. People wondered if he had escaped from Russia for religious reasons, and Vihovauhkonen was just a coverup name. Nobody visited him but he sometimes went to speak to others, stopping nice people he encountered to tell them prophecies. He predicted the building of the town of Sortavala and where its borders would be, the building of the Kisämäki church, outside the town would go a railroad with an iron horse, people would fly in buzzing machines, and a war so great would break out that a log would float in blood in the Läsälampi pond near the church). All other predictions have come true except for the one about war.
In reality, his prediction of "flying machines" was written down only after airplanes had been invented. A lot of words have been put into his mouth then, in a period no doubt later than the earliest mentions of him. This could portray how traumatic the quick modernization and collapse of traditional structures was for the ordinary people, as technological advancements were seen as signs of the apocalypse. These prophices are not a part of the "og" Finnish mythology, but were inspired by foreign works such as the Bible and the Sibylline prophecies.
Regardless of that, Kihovauhkonen's name and reputation as a tietäjä hint at a figure who went into trances like a shaman and who knows, maybe prophecies were a part of that. Despite being called a son of Kaleva, interestingly, in North Karelian folktales it is said that Vitovauhkonen or Vihovauhkonen was either intersex or "neither male nor female". He (they? Finnish has no gender pronouns after all) has a long staff he also uses while making prophecies, as well as an axe. In Central Finland, it's been said that he was from Ostrobothnia, blind and "ugly and pock-scarred". Making prophecies appears in some 90% of recorded folktales of him, so his position as a tietäjä is very central. On the other hand, a trickster like personality, tricking people and giggling about it, also appears often.
| Kihovauhkonen, variants | According to J.R. Aspelin, it means "a man who raves in a trance". Folk etymology has interpreted it as "raving nonsense". |
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