Pohjola

Names:	Hiisi Hiitola Hyhmälä Kalman kartano Kollola Koppola Lapinmaa Lappi Lietola Mana Manala Mänelä Palehtola Pimentola Pohja Pohjanmaa Pohjola Pojala Sysmä Tapiola: Pohjola and Tapiola got mixed with each other at one point Tuomala Tuoni Tuonela Turja Turjala Turjanmaa Vuotola
Ruler:	Louhi

Pohjola, Hiitola, Tuonela, Tuoni, Mana or Manala all refer to the realm of the dead, the Underworld.

Pohjola, the northern underworld

In the oldest, shamanistic Proto-Uralic views, the realm of the dead was something distant in the extreme north, a dark and scary place. In these cultures, the dead and corpses were feared and avoided, so there was a wish to send them to an Underworld far, far away. The path to Pohjola is full of dangers, and has to be accessed through waterways. This is also the origin of Tuonen (musta) joki ("(The Black) River of Tuoni") which one has to cross to reach the Underworld. One or multiple of the daughters of Tuoni may work as a ferrywoman over the river, or lecture someone who has ended up in the Underworld in an improper way. The river is also called Pohjolan joki, Manalan alusvesi, Manalan alanne, Inari and Sarajoki, and the latter must have had a reason why the name "Sariola" was formed for Pohjola ("Saariala" etc originally referring to an entirely different location).

With the adaption of agriculture came a change in thinking. As people were no longer nomadic, they tended to bury their dead somewhere closeby and ancestors became revered, venerated spirits. This brought in new perpectives of the Underworld as well, and attached imagery of actual physical locations to Pohjola.

Is Pohjola an actual location on the map?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: As view of the Underworld changed, imagery of raids to other tribes came to be associated with Pohjola, where its riches could be robbed from. However, Pohjola is originally the realm of the dead and not any real location, nor is Pohjola's ruler Louhi based on some real matriarch but she is the Queen of the Underworld, a deity. Because Pohjola is in the extreme north, and the people north of Finns are Sámi, many features of Sámi got associated with Pohjola. For example, runosongs refer to Pohjola as Lappi (Lapland), Rutja (Finnmark) and Turja (Kola Peninsula), all within the Sámi homeland Sápmi. It's also been thought that there are many powerful Sámi shamans on the way to Pohjola, and Lemminkäinen's mother warned her son of travelling there for he "doesn't know the language of Kola".

Because of bad nationalistic research on Finnish mythology, there are many theories of where a rich Kingdom of Pohjola once actually supposedly resided. This is all false, of course. But theories include Pohjola being in Gotland, South Ostrobothnia, Northern Dvina, "Bjarmaland" and Kantalahti, "Kvenland", the northern coast of Lake Ladoga, etc; hell, even a theory of Pohjola being Constantinople exists. I dismiss this all as nothing but misguided attempts to "prove" that the figures in Finnish mythology are historical and not divine. This is something that many Christian researchers practice(d?) to prove that Finns were not ~filthy pagans~ but the good kind of enlightened pagans who believed in one sky god only (big brain pre-Christian proto-monotheism) and any other divine-resembling figures were actually just real people from history, old tribe chiefs and such.

When it comes to the imagery of Pohjola in Finnish runosongs specifically, they were born somewhere around the Viking Age and possibly then pull from the ideas of the lakes Päijänne and Saimaa and the people north of them, who were Sámic-speaking hunter-gatherers at the time.

There is but one Pohjola-real location connection that I find even remotely interesting. Not true, but interesting. Runosongs call the waters of Pohjola miesten syöjä selkä "open water of cannibals", and according to Ganander, such a "village of cannibals" (miesten syöjäin kylä) is resided in the north somewhere around Kemi to Kainuu. The Eastern Orthodox missionary Lazarus of Murom (14th century) wrote that the coasts of lake Olonets were inhabitated by "Lapps and Chudes" (= Sámi and Vepsians), and there were cannibals living near the lake too. Not sure if the cannibals were a separate third group or if he accused Sámi and Vepsians of cannibalism (sure did complain about being hit and chased away by them). In either case, Risto Pulkkinen pointed this all out because in the approximate area between Kainuu and Olonets, there are a lot of "Louhi"-related place names. It's all just very interesting, though mostly for fun, not realism.

Tuonela, the underground underworld

As cemeteries became locations for ancestor worship, the idea of the Underworld as something which is underground became more common. In this stage, Louhi got certain epithets of earth-related goddesses associated with her, as must have seemed logical for an undergroud afterlife. The layered structure of Finnish cosmology is not to be dismissed: Pohjola or Tuonela was then accessed through waters but was underground (maybe bodies of water and the reflections on them were a path to the Underworld?) and in the center of Pohjola was the world mountain to which the world pillar is attached to, where it stands all the way through earth to the sky, where it holds up the dome of the sky.

With earth came new association, like the worms of Tuonela. Similarly, the afterlife gained the names Mana and Manala, possibly related to maan ala "underground". Tuoni and Tuonela, on the other hand, refer to "the other side" (tuonpuoleinen).

We also see sometimes, especially in the Karelian and Ingrian area, ideas of the king of this underworld named Tuoni. This doesn't really have backing in Finnish runosongs. Tuoni appears when a hero tries to propose to one of the his daughters of the Underworld. This is countary to traditional Finnish culture, where the mother has the power over a child's marriage, not the father. It's not surprising then that in most tales, the one in charge of the sitation is a figure such as Hiitolan emäntä, who's been equated with Louhi.

Hiitola, the fiery underworld

Well, that's not entirely accurate. The name "Hiitola" is also used in reference to the gloomy underground afterlife. But! Nevermind that. Let me explain.

While burning of the dead had been practised at certain points in Finnish history, the fire really properly made its way into the Finnish underworld through Christianity. As Christians imagine Hell as a fiery place (oh btw Hell doesn't even have any basis in the Bible but ANYWAYS), these thought had an effect on the Finnish underworld. The word hiisi, which meant a sacred location, got demonized and Hell got called Hiitola, and the demon ruling Hell is then Hiisi.

These fiery concepts of the Underworld are some of the most difficult parts of runosongs to parse together. Possibly from this, we have "Lempo" (a meteorite) meaning a flying demon, and Lemmetär as a fiery daughter of Tuoni.

Even in modern Finnish, hitto is seen as a nicer, more child-friendly version of helvetti "Hell", kind of like the English word "heck". Personally I'm of the opinion though, that we need to reclaim these words as the non-negative ones they originally were.

Wait, it's all gloomy and bad?

I know all these descriptions make Tuonela sound pretty darn miserable, but that's not exactly true. For example, children were often set down to sleep in Tuonela in nursery rhymes, where the daughters and sons of Tuoni took very good care of them. Therefore, there was peace and tranquility attached to Tuonela as well. Even after death, the ancestors were present in the lives of the family and could be "reborn" if a family descendant was given the same name as them. Thus, this too is a cycle, not something linear with a beginning and an end.

Evil people and murderers are said to end up in the rapid or whirpool in the very north, often called Turjan koski "rapid of Kola" or Rutjan koski "rapid of Finnmark". Due to later Christian influence, this rapid is also sometimes referred to as the river Jordan or a "holy whirlpool".

Etymology

Pohjola, variants	From pohja "north; bottom".
Tuonela, variants	From tuo puoli "the other side".
Manala, variants	From maan ala "underground", or possibly related to South Sámi muonese "spirit, omen".
Hiitola, variants	From hiisi "holy site".
Hyhmälä	From hyhmä "slush".
Lappi, variants	From Lapland.
Turja, variants	From Kola Peninsula.
Pimentola	From pimeä "dark".
Vuotola, Lietola	Uncertain, theories include origin in luode "northwest" or luoto "islet".
-la, -lä	Denotes a place.