Different quotes and anecdotes that I find good, cool, or important.
Kah, pyhä veli, meillä on sama usko kuin teillä. Kokko lenti pohjosesta, pani munan Väinämöisen polven päälle ja loi siitä maailman. Niinhän tekin uskotte.
"Oh, holy brother, we have the same faith as you [Finns] do. Kokko flew from the north, laid an egg on Väinämöinen's knee and created the world out of that. That is also what you [Finns] believe."
— A few old men in Vuokkiniemi, White Karelia, to Jakob Fellman, 1829.
Pyhä Ukko ilman isä // Holy Ukko, father of the sky
Jumalan käskyläinen // God's subordinate
Sadetta sinä meillen suo // Bring us rain
Ettei kuivuis kukka kaunis // So a beautiful flower wouldn't dry up
Vilja vihelä vaipuis // Verdant crops wilt
— Sipi Antinpoika, standing waist deep in lake water, holding a Vakat festival because of drought, in Hauho (Tavastia) in 1662. Despite the fact that he refers to Ukko as a subordinate of the Christian God, he was still given the death penalty.
In the 1860s, the Estonians of Krasnogorodsk, Russia, were ordered to cease their sacrificial offerings, which they held for earth deities. In 1901, the locals said the crops used to grow better back when they were still allowed to respect the earth gods. Annõ Kiriljevna, whose brother had been a priest of the earth gods, told with tears in her eyes how hard it had been to leave the earth gods, who had brought her so much good, without food and drink. She was comforted by a dream she had had, where the gods had sat in a sacred yard filled with food and drinks, saying: "You thought we would die when you're not giving us anything, but we have plenty here".
In the 1880s, it was written that the people of Kainuu believed in a shamanistic force called lapinmahti "might of Lapland". They also thought that the local vicar, Antti Andelin, possessed this power.
In 1728, a man named Påhl Hindrikinpoika Paskoja was accused of witchcraft in court in Pyhäjärvi, North Ostrobothnia. He told the court that Ilmarinen was a god people used to worship, while Väinämöinen was something which lived in a mountain.