#revontulet

"Revontulet" Based on Finnish folklore, "revontulet" literally means "fox fires" but it is the name still used for the northern lights in Finland, because of an old belief that auroras were caused by a fox flicking up the snow with its tail into the sky.

Generally it was considered to be an arctic fox, but being that there aren't many left in Finland except from the far north, and most Finns live in the south, I have seen more red foxes in modern depictions of this story. I painted this after a memorable aurora hunt at Apukka.

(Acrylics on canvas)

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A favourite word? What a fun question!

I think currently my favourite one is "lumisade" in finnish, meaning a snowfall. It sounds as soft as snow is. It reminds me of the gentle sway of those large snowflakes in the air while the background they fall against is purely white, the thin tree branches are full of snow and the already fallen one is untouched on the ground. And it's snowed so prettily today that it has given me an immense amount of joy and peace every time I look out the window.

Another favourite words could be "revontulet". I just now learned that The Aurora Borealis, which is its scientific name, translates to "Pohjoinen Aamurusko" in finnish, and that translated to english is "Northern Dawn".

But in addition to the scientific name translating very beautifully to finnish, "revontulet" also has another meaning. In Finnish folklore there were fire foxes in the North, and when their fur or tail brushed against nature's surface it created sparks that formed the Aurora Borealis into the sky. Also, a fox is "kettu" in finnish, but in Eastern dialects it's also known as "repo" (I had completely forgotten about this). The word "revontulet" is a compound word consisting of "revon" and "tulet" and it basically translates to "the fox's fires".

When I realized this I started to see revontulet differently, even more beautifully than they are now. It's very interesting how some finnish words have meanings like that that I haven't thought about before. I'd love to get into finnish folklore more too, I might have to read some books about it!