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Mother of a tribal Häme Warrior – Kuutamo Hyväneuvo

Mari Isoaho

We have no information about the individual Häme people before the fourteenth century. Even their names must be reconstructed from the later medieval sources, which reveal a variety of old Finnish pagan names in usage. The lack of information concerns especially women, as elsewhere in early written records. Together with archeological findings and the sparse literary references, there is still one source, however, which aids in reconstructing the daily life and hints at the pre-Christian worldview of the Häme people. This is the evidence of folklore, which was enthusiastically documented in the nineteenth century during the Finnish national movement, and the results of which were collected by Elias Lönnrot into the book of epic poetry entitled the Kalevala. The Kalevala preserved many of the pagan mythological motifs and beliefs long into the Christian era, such as mythical weddings of the bear, offerings to ancient gods and ancestors, and spells and charms, like the incantation to stop blood from bleeding, used also by the heroine of the vignette examined below, Kuutamo Hyväneuvo (Moonlight Good-Advice).

She represents the silent group whose voice is totally missing from the medieval source material, a mother who misses her son who has disappeared in battle. She belongs to a Finnic tribe that in the Swedish and Latin sources is called Tavast, and in the Novgorodian sources is called Yem, and finally in the Vladimirian and Kievan sources is referred to as Yam. In the Finnish language their land is called Häme, and their people are the hämäläiset. It was first mentioned around the same time on both the Swedish runestone of Söderby (Tafeistaland) and in the Russian chronicles (Novgorod First Chronicle and the Primary Chronicle of Kiev – Povest vremennykh let’) in their annals of the year 6550 (1042), as a target of Viking-type plunder expeditions. During that time they already inhabited an area in southwestern Finland, their core area being situated around Lake Vanajavesi.

The Häme-people are one of three Finnic tribes who are recorded as living in the area of the present-day Finland in the late Iron Age and early Middle Ages, the other two being the so-called Proper-Finns (Sum in the Russian chronicles), inhabiting the southwestern coastal area, and the Karelians, inhabiting the area north of Lake Ladoga. According to the linguistic evidence, all these groups trace their origins to a so-called proto-Finnic past. However, it is relatively complicated to unite the linguistic theories with archeological facts, which verify that the inland area of Finland has a long and continuous history of habitation from the Stone Age onward. It is an open question as to exactly what kind of relationship these Finnic tribes had to the nomadic hunter-gatherer population of Northern Fennoscandia referred to in the medieval sources as Lapps (or Saami population), which also share common linguistic roots.

In the area of present-day Finland both archeological and linguistic evidence shows that there have always been people and cultural influences flowing from both east and west. Even today great genetic differences can be seen in the DNA of the present day Finns between those living in the western and eastern parts of Finland. The people of Häme, although living in a sparsely populated woodland area, were thus by no means isolated, but had a wide net of contacts with their neighboring areas. It was a natural crossing point between East and West, and its archeological finds from the Iron Age point to influence coming from the East, from the Karelians, and from the West; that is, the Proper-Finns. In the north they were in contact with the Lapps and Norwegians; in the west and south and in the coastal area they were in contact not only with the Swedes, but also with the Danes and German merchants.

Little is known about the history and lifestyle of the old Finnic tribes. The people of Häme had large hunting and fishing areas, and they moved easily using the vast lake and river systems of Finland. One peculiarity of the inhabitants of both Häme and Karelia were the Iron Age hill forts, which were erected in the vicinity of their villages in order to guard their most important trade and hunting routes. Some of those hill forts were in use well into the medieval era, as is testified to by the description of the Novgorod attack on Häme in 1311.

As was the case with numerous European prehistoric tribes, the Häme people were illiterate until the establishment of Christianity, from around 1100 onwards. This left the literary descriptions of the Häme people to others; to the neighboring Swedes and Novgorodians, as well as a few papal letters. Swedish sources are scarce, consisting only of the above-mentioned runic inscription and some opaque references in the later medieval sources. Papal letters, for their part, describe the concern of the Catholic Church over the newly Christianized area, which was believed to be in danger due to the close proximity of the enemies of the faith. Moreover, the pope expressed opinions and worries similar to those connected with the Christianization of Livonia. Since papal letters are very formal and rhetorical, the reality of the spreading of the Christian faith is not easily reconstructed. We can conclude from the various sources, that the Häme people were amazingly flexible with their dealings with the Swedes. In 1237 Pope Gregory IX invoked a Crusade against Häme – “Tauestia”, against people “qui Tauesti dicuntur nacio” (who are called as the Tauesti) who had brutally cast aside their Christian belief, because of the people living in the vicinity who were enemies of the Cross. Because of the above mentioned bull, and the reference in the much later fourteenth-century Swedish Erik’s Chronicle, Finnish historians have earlier talked about the Swedish Crusades targeted against Finns and the people of Häme. However, it appears that the Christianization of both the Proper-Finns in the coastal area, and the inland people of Häme was a relatively peaceful process, the result of sustained, peaceful contacts.

By far the richest literary material on the Häme people is derived from the Chronicle of Novgorod, which gives an enigmatic picture of a remote country, to which Novgorodians made altogether nine recorded trips in the years between 1042 and 1311. The Chronicle also tells that the people of Häme raided the Lake Ladoga area in 1142, 1149 and 1228. Moving easily along the complicated water routes was essential for the livelihood of the Häme people; they used light boats and reached Lake Ladoga using the waterways such as the Vuoksi River, which led them straight into the heartlands of Karelia, to a fortified city that the Novgorod Chronicle called Korela, later known in Finnish as Käkisalmi (Cockoo strait). During the thirteenth century, independent forays of Häme into the northern Novgorod districts ceased, so that in 1240 and 1256 they were already part of the Swedish fleet. They participated in military campaigns led by the Swedes in 1240, when they took part in the famous battle of the Neva in 1240, where Alexander Nevskii defeated the intruders, and in 1256 Alexander Nevskii again fought with the Swedish army and a Häme contingent in Narva, on the Estonian side of the Gulf of Finland. After these campaigns, there is no more information on independent Häme groups moving in the Novgorodian districts. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Novgorod chronicle treated the Swedish, Finnish, and Häme population under the common term nemtsy.

The story appearing below is placed somewhere in the heartlands of Häme, one year after the battle of the Neva, where the heroine, Kuutamo Hyväneuvo (Moonlight Good-Advice), awaits her only son, Kekro Kaukomieli (Will to fare way), to return home from a long journey. All the persons are fictive, since there are no sources indicating any individuals of the tribe; however, these persons are placed in the historical settings described above.

Notes

1. Not before the fourteenth century is there evidence of individual persons from the surviving sources. On 16 June 1340, Pope Benedictus XII threatened to excommunicate 25 peasants from the Northern Häme area, the parish of Sääksmäki, mentioning by name the stubborn men who had refused to pay their taxes to the Church. One of the most interesting names was Cuningas de Rapalum, whence the Finnish word kuningas is usually translated as king, and Rapola being one of the oldest estates of that village, situating just below the largest hill fort of Finland. In this case, the word kuningas could signify a peasant leader, a respected village elder, who organized works which needed larger efforts and organization, as for example when arranging fishing parties for drawing seine nets, or other joint efforts in hunting, farming or the like. See the pope’s letter in Diplomatarium Fennicum, Signum 467.
2. The rune-stone text is published in Henrik Williams, Vittnar runstenen från Söderby (Gs 13) om Sveriges första ledungståg?: Runfilologi och konsten att läsa som det står. Årsbok. Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps Samfundet i Uppsala. Annales Societatis Litterarum Humaniorum Regiae Upsaliensis 2004, 39–53. Image of the rune-stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gs_13#/media/File:Gs_13,_G%C3%A4vle.jpg Pope Gregory IX mentioned a newly converted land called Tauestia in his letter dated 1237. See Diplomataricum Fennicum, Signum FMU 82.
3. http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0002929707615390/1-s2.0-S0002929707615390-main.pdf?_tid=d0dbed42-c6a1-11e6-b0d5-00000aacb360&acdnat=1482231077_adf9419553229d6236d52eb3dd92a5bc
4. Diplomataricum Fennicum, Signum FMU 80.
5. Diplomataricum Fennicum, Signum FMU 82.