The Storyteller. Art by Nataša Ilinčić, from A Compendium of Witches.

Rana

“If you were to view this landscape you’d likely think that we don't have houses, churches or cemeteries. But you see, my house is not just my torvkåta, it's every inch of the moorland on which our reindeer rest their hooves, the very lichen that nourishes them when the heavy snows cover everything.”

I love it so much, that the clans speak in their mothertongue sometimes, it gives so much more life to their identity, also DEEPLY appreciated, that the actors casted for the role actually have their characters heritage, examples;

•Hindrik - german actor (Florian Bartholomäi)

•Conte Claudio de Nosferas (and I think,actually all of the Nosferas Clan?) - italian (Francesco de Vito) , THICC italian accent [*chef's kiss]

•The Dracas and the Noaidi -beautifully norwegian

•both Ivy and Seymour of Lycana - Irish actors [or so I suppose because of their names] (Aisling Sharkey and Finnian Duff Lennon)

Noaidi | Runebomme | 2021

Australian Raw/Folk Black Metal

The person in the Hattula grave, at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, was shown through testing to likely have had Klinefelter, but was buried with mixed "gendered" grave goods including a sword, aswell as feminine clothing. Similar graves have been found, but haven't been given the same attention as this one was in 2021. Regardless, the person in this Hattula grave was clearly allowed to live a certain way, which could be telling that there maybe was no rigidly defined or enforced gender roles or binary etc as had spread around most of Europe by this time in part thanks to the Roman Empire (I cri everitiem about what they did to the Celts & the Celtic women, specifically 🥲).

It is known that the Sami indigenous peoples had & still do have gender diversity, and some modern activists are speaking of this and how their ancestors' idea of gender was often quite fluid, aswell as sharing the extremely few fragmental remnants of oral stories on homosexuality and gender diversity... Even beyond their shamans (Noaidi) it is said they had more fluid ideas of gender diversity; modern day activists are speaking of this, aswell.

Due to lots of interaction, influence, cultural diffusion, and general syncretism between Finns & Sami, I don't think it's far-fetched to surmise that the pagan Finns also had gender diversity that just wasn't recorded due to us not having any form of writing. Studies also indicate a major migration from Siberia to Finland thousands of years ago.. And with our knowledge that many Siberian tribes have had & have gender diversity, i think that opens up the world of possibility even more that pagan Finland easily could've had gender diversity, just like the Sami. For Finland in general, tietäjät (knower) were shamans or other magical users, healers etc who are, scarcely, noted for also having some kind of blending of gender, but I honestly have not found much at all.

The transition in Finland from indigenous faith to Christianity is also VERY poorly recorded in comparison to, say, when the Americas were colonized... And this was also long before the Gutenberg press. We don't even have proper descriptions of most of the Finnic pagan deities, nor cultural descriptions beyond a few sentences — in general, writings about Finland during early Christian years are very rare, and usually are tied to papal matters.

Indigenous Sami are noted for having fluid gender concepts similar to trans & non-binary, and our cultures often intersected back in the day. Whilst the Finns as we know them today were all mostly converted to Christianity by the 1300s, the Sami retained their old ways for much longer. Finnic paganism scantily remained extant in secrecy until the early 1900s, when it mostly died out.