Muinaisusko

Muinaisusko, the old faith, was followed by the Baltic Finnic peoples, the Finns, Estonians, Karelians and others, before they were Christianised. Customs differed from region to region and from period to period.

Jumala was another sky god, whose name later came to mean the Christian God. Ahti ruled the sea and its fish, and Tapio the forest and the hunt. The tietäjä, the one who knows, was a shaman who could enter a trance and travel to Tuonela, the land of the dead beneath the earth, ruled by Tuoni.

Christianisation began around the twelfth century. Churches were often built on the old holy places, and sacred trees were cut down, but folk magic and oral tradition lingered in the countryside long afterwards.