Staffan the Stable Boy

It's Christmas night. The dark winter sky is hovering above a snow-covered landscape. Nature is lifeless and quiet; only the stars seem to breathe. It is Christmas peace, and a bright star is reminiscent of the one who shone above the manger of Christ. On this holy night, one would think that humans too would find peace. Suddenly however, the sound of feet drifts across the courtyard. A torch moves across to the stables, and after a while riders in wild gallop is seen leaving the farms, following the road to the nearest neighbor. Shouting and and screaming interrupt the silence of the night.

Such nightly rides bore some resemblance to the dreaded åsgårdsreien (Eng. the wild hunt)- only worse. With their shrieks and bawls, the riders made as much havoc as they could, knocking down the doors, banging on the timber walls. At each door they got a sip of the mighty Christmas beer, and as the night unfolded, the more intense the riding became. Not seldom did a rider fall off his horse, making the animal run home unaccompanied. 

Yet these rides were not solidly an excuse to kicking down the neighbour's door for a taste of the Christmas beer. There were also had a earnest idea involved; for it was said that one should go out to the crack of dawn with the horses and let them drink of the wells. There were some springs in particular which had a reputation for their clean water, and it was important to be there first; it was "holy water," and whoever drank first, drank wine; the horses would thrive of such water. As a result, there was a violent race race to come first, people rode like crazy. Coming in second was simply not an option, stories tell even of lives being lost. This nocturnal race called for the "'Staffan's race," and songs about him have been sung in Scandinavia since the Middle Ages. Staffan was a stableboy, watering his horses… These lines of text are among our oldest musical treasures. But who was he really - this Steffan?

The biblical Staffan - Stephen – we already encounter in the Acts of the Apostles; shortly after Jesus' death, the number of disciples is increasing continuously. The original twelve apostles need help in the practical work of a fast-growing congregation and appoint seven men to help. One of them is Stephen - the stable boy of King Herrod. Stephen does not content himself with serving food without preaching; Stephen start doing wonders on his own which, eventually, resulting in him being being stoned to death by an angry crowd, as the first Christian martyr. Consequently, Stephen quickly became a revered saint and the deacons appointed Stefanus as their patron saint. His increasing popularity led to the legends surrounding his life story, legends that were both colorful and imaginative – and completely devoid of reality.

The rooster miracle depicted on an altar front from the 1100s. Originating from Broddetorp's church in Västergötland, the altar piece is exhibited at the Historical Museum in Stockholm.

One of the legends tells about how Stephen on the night of Christmas Eve sees the Star of Bethlehem. He understands that it is a sign that the King of Judah, the Savior, has been born. Stephen tells of his discovery of Herod. The king refuses to believe his words, unless the fried rooster lying on his breakfast table rises, flaps his wings and crows. Of course, this is exactly what happens. The king is horrified at how powerful this newborn king must be who can already do such wonders. He decides to kill the child who threatens his kingdom. Stefanus himself is captured and stoned to death outside the city walls. “The rooster miracle”, as the event was called, became the prelude to the Massacre of the Innocents; by Herod’s orders, all boys two years of age and younger in Bethlehem and its vicinity, should be killed. In the Middle Ages there was a widely held belief that the child murders in Bethlehem were the first and perhaps most cruel of the martyrs.

In medieval Scandinavia, the legend of Stefanus, or Staffan as he is called here, takes on a quite different approach in which the horses play an important role. It's Christmas night and Staffan has ridden out to a well to water Herod's horses. But a horse refuses to drink from the water. It has seen the reflection of the star in the water and rears frightened into the night sky. 

Staffan stable boy and the star depicted on the ceiling of Dädesjö church in Småland.

Images of Staffan with his horses or in conjunction with the rooster miracle became popular in the early medieval Scandinavian art. The motif is often found on baptismal fonts as part of the story of Jesus' birth. The fact that it became so popular may have to do with the long and protracted Christianization process that characterized especially the ancient Sweden. Around the year 1100, the majority of the Swedish population was still pagan. It took nearly 300 years for Christianity to gain a foothold. The long missionary period caused Bible stories to emerge at the same time as a later developed cult of saints. The legend of Stephen and Herod must have been quite remodeled when it came to the Nordic countries, for then to be transformed by local traditions. In the Old Norse cult, the horse was put in the center and Christmas was a time when you should take special care of your horses. Making pagan customs Christian became a way for the new religion to establish itself. The legend of Stefan and Herod is a typical example of this initiation.

With Gustaf Vasa and the Reformation, the Catholic saint traditions connected to Stephen was abolished. Staffan the stable boy however, did not lose his popularity. During the 18th century, it was common to go horseback racing, in relation with the Staffan cult, and long into the 20th century he remained a part of the Christmas plays and carols, performed on his memorial day, the 26th of December.

Nowadays, the songs about Steffan stable boy has been as become a cherished part of the Lucia-celebration, as a companion of the female saint. "Staffansvisan", "Sankt Staffan" or "Staffan was a stable boy" is a well known and traditionally bound Swedish Lucia song, which is usually performed by the star boys in a so called Lucia proseccion.

Sources:

• Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson. 'Staffan var en stalledräng.' URL: https://historiska.se/upptack-historien/artikel/staffan-var-en-stalledrang/ 
• Kristofer Visted (2016). Jul i gamle dager. Norsk Folkeminnelag/ Scandinavian Academic Press/Spartacus. 

The Kalevala

Mastered by desire impulsive,
By a mighty inward urging,
I am ready now for singing,
Ready to begin the chanting
Of our nation's ancient folk-song
Handed down from by-gone ages.
In my mouth the words are melting,
From my lips the tones are gliding,
From my tongue they wish to hasten;
When my willing teeth are parted,
When my ready mouth is opened,
Songs of ancient wit and wisdom
Hasten from me not unwilling.

Ilmatar, maiden of air, painted by Finnish artist

Robert Wilhelm Ekman (1860)

Written by Finnish physician and philologist Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), the epic poem Kalevala has a great influence on Finnish art and society. Carried out through several stages, the work was first published in 1835.

The poem is partly a heroic tale, partly an epic about the world's creation and the origin of Finnish culture, as well as a depiction of customs and way of life in ancient times. The old sage Väinämöinen is present in most parts of Kalevala, playing a variety of roles. He is the son of the Ilmatar, maiden of air – his magic birth is depicted in the first of Kalevala's 50 songs, and he then assists in the creation of the world. 

Väinämöinen is a warrior and a cultural hero, a wizard who can perform miracles with his songs. He is also a shaman who can travel to the underworld and back. He is an unsuccessful lover- the young maiden Aino even drowns herself, rather than be married to Väinämöinen. However, she returned to taunt the grieving Väinämöinen as a salmon.

The poem contains several myths of origin; first, the creation of the world, but also stories about how fire, beer, iron, the kantele (a Finnish plucked string instrument) and diseases are introduced to mankind. There are also myths about how the sun and moon are set free from captivity in the mountains of Pohjola. Several sections portray the relationship between Kalevala and Pohjola - the northern lands representing "the others," characterized by cold and sorcery, ruled by a Louhi, a wicked queen. In the course of action, Väinämöinen is at first friends with Louhi; but after he and Lemminkäinen rob the magic mill Sampo from its dwellings in Pohjola, enmity naturally arises. Within the ethnographic sections, there are distinctive depictions of weddings and bear hunting and reproductions of magic formulas. 

The title Kalevala in fact constitutes a place name, which is rarely found in folk poetry – directly translated, it means "The Land of Kaleva". Kaleva was a mysterious giant barely mentioned in the songs, yet whom Lönnrot nonetheless looked upon as a real person; a chief whom had once led his people to the Finnish mainland, like Moses had led Israelites to the Promised Land. 

Aino Myth, Triptych, painted by Finish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1891), showing his failed marriage proposal and Aino's suicide

Swedes we are no more, Russians we will not be - let us be Finns

The creation of the Kalevala must be reviewed in the light of Lönnrot’s day and age. Born in 1802 in the south of Finland, his interest in folklore was early established. After Finland became a Russian principality in 1809, the substantially Swedish speaking cultural elite grew isolated from the culture life in Sweden. The solution was to turn to Finnish culture and language, in order to gaining a sense of identity, of pride and belonging - in other words, establishing a Finnish nation. The new ideas were expressed in the motto "Swedes we are no more, Russians we will not be, let us be Finns."

A central element of romantic nationalism, or national romanticism, was the infatuation for an (more or less) imaginative glorious past, conveyed through ancient heroic tales, folk songs and sagas. In Norway, one sought inspiration and national self-esteem from the literary works of Edda and the Norse sagas, which admittedly was written down by Icelanders, but largely centered around Norwegians. Finland had no recorded saga literature, and how conditions had been in Finland before Christianity remained uncertain.

The nearest possible source for such knowledge, aside from a few historical documents, were found in the so-called runic poetry. This is a separate Finnish category within folk poetry, named after runo, which once meant “skald” (Eng. "poet"), and later "poetry". The runo poetry consisted of songs, as well as incantations, which were not sung, but recited - "read".

It was the epic runo songs, those that spoke of mythical heroes, that aroused the greatest interest. The content must nonetheless have seemed confusing to the scholarly Finnish elite of Lönnrot's time, with knowledge of epic poems of other countries, such as The Works of Ossian in Scotland, Beowulf in England, as well as the Germans' Nibelungenlied. However, where these epics told of kings and aristocratic knights in a warlike world, the Finnish folk poetry were about peasants, hunters and fishermen in a world of magic and sorcery. 

A Child of Romantisicm - and Enlightenment 

When Lönnrot was 26 years old and still a poor student, he embarked on his first collection journey, making his first notes. Unlike most of the cultural elite, his mother tongue was Finnish, not Swedish, which made it easier for him to instill confidence among the peasants, having them sing and tell their stories. It was not something they did to anyone, as songs and incantations of pagan origin were deemed shameful. When he began medical studies in Helsinki in 1828, Lönnrot was given the opportunity to immerse himself in folk medicine and set out on the first of a total of 11 collecting missions, mostly in Karelia (currently divided among the northwestern Russian Federation and Finland). 

Professor Elias Lönnrot, painted by 

Bernhard Reinhold (1872),

Helsingsfors museum

Much of Lönnrot's life work consisted in public education, to lift especially the peasant population out of poverty, disease, filth and ignorance. Later, as a district physician, superstition and sorcery, which were still important components of folk medicine, annoyed him, while his inner folklorist was fascinated by the same phenomena. As a child of both Romantisicm and the Enlightenment, he had an attraction to the mysterious and enigmatic in popular culture, while simultaneously being a respected scientist. Lönnrot did not believe in the magic power of the spell, yet may have muttered an occasional incantation while treating superstitious and fearful farmers, to make them feel secure.

Lönnrot had many aspirations with the Kalevala. An important part of that project was to give a comprehensive image of the Finnish people, in celebration and in everyday life – at least as Lönnrot imagined it to have been in the old days - and as it could still be in the East Finnish and Keral countryside of his time. In several parts of the work, women’s place in society is evident, where mothers appear to play the most important role in the family in terms of managing and mentoring sons and daughters. Fathers are virtually absent. This aspect reflects actual conditions in the East Finnish and Karelian communities, where the mother played the dominant role in the family; among other things, she was the one deciding whom her daughters were allowed to marry.

On one level, the Kalevala depicts a society characterized by hard work, harsh words and tough love. At the same time, there is a much mystery in the poem; the storyline rarely follows the laws of logic. It is the logic of dreams that prevails, where inanimate objects can speak, and humans can readily transform into animals. His interest for folk medicine is to a large extent also reflected in the Kalevala, as the work contains many incantations, as well as descriptions of healing and prevention of illness. The heroes of Kalevala are not heroes because they capable swordsmen, but because they are skilled in sorcery. When singing in the Kalevala, it usually involves wielding the song as a magic instrument, not to create beautiful music. In the old Finnish agrarian community, knowledge of the old songs and the incantations implied an ability to rule the world. 

The Defense of the Sampo (1896) by Finnish painter Akseli Gellen-Kallela. 

The scene portrayed is taken from the 43rd song of the epic, where the hero Väinämöinen, seen wielding a sword, has stolen the precious artifact Sampo from the evil witch Louhi, and she, having taken the form of a giant bird, is trying to reclaim it. The battle for the Sampo is also given a deeper connotation as a battle for the soul of Finland.

The fact that the Finns were skilled sorcerers was well known to Norwegians in the Viking era, if one is to believe Snorri Sturluson. In the saga of the Saintly Olav, he describes how  King Olav ravaged the Finnish coast, encountering resistance from the locals. When the Norwegian Vikings finally had to flee, the retreat was close to failure, due to a sudden severe storm. Nowadays we would probably say that they had bad luck with the weather, but according to Snorri, it was the Finns who had created the storm, with the help of sorcery.

In some Icelandic sagas - that is, ancient and often imaginative sagas originating from Scandinavia - there are some striking parallels to Finnish mythology. It often involves journeys to a magical land in the north, where the trolls live. It's about stealing back a treasure, an ornate golden egg, about rescuing a beautiful maiden, about being persecuted and attacked by a winged monster on the way back. And so on. Finnish researchers have explained that the similarities between the ancient sagas and Finnish folklore exist due to legends and fairytales that have come from Scandinavia to the Finnish area during the Iron Age – as a result of trade.

Professor Anna-Leena Siikala, however, advocated that the ancient sagas telling of the mysterious place Trollebotn originate in the stories the Vikings heard on their travels to Finnish areas, and that the stories have thus traveled the opposite way. There may also be another possibility; whether the Scandinavians came to Finland to ravage or trade, they gladly brought young girls home with them, either as wives, concubines or slaves. As a result of these circumstances, a great deal of these girls had children, telling them stories they had brought with them from their childhood home. These stories in turn were passed on by their children, to their children, often mixed with tales their fathers had told about their adventurous journeys. Stories that in turn became ancient sagas, written down in the 13th century.

Folklore - or fakelore?

Later research on the poem has been concerned with the relationship between the collected folklore and Lönnrot's edits, and to what extent Lönnrot believed he reconstructed a comprehensive, authentic epic. One notable feature with the Kalevala is that Lönnrot washed away all traces of Christian influence – names of saints and references to orthodox religious practices – from the texts he made use of. He wanted to create an image of a mythical, religious-religious pagan Finnish culture from the time before Christianity’s accession. Of that reason, the view on Lönnrot's role as the originator has changed since Kalevala first came out. His contemporaries saw him as an editor more than a poet, and at Kalevala as an anthology of folk songs. Today, the epic is regarded as Lönnrot's main work of literary fiction. Although American folklorist Alan Dundes in 1985 described Kalevala as "fakelore", Lönnrot took meticulous care of his notes so that posterity could study them and compare with the final result.

When he was this thorough in documenting the source material, he probably had the fate of James Macpherson (1736-1796) in mind. The Scottish poet in 1760 published a collection of allegedly authentic Gaelic folk songs, translated into English, known as The Works of Ossian. The publication became immensely popular in many countries, but at Lönnrot's time it had become evident that most of the work was a product of Macpherson's own imagination. What might have been genuine folk songs in Ossian's epic poems could not be verified, for Macpherson had no specific sources to show for. On his part, Lönnrot made sure that he did, although he rarely noted the source of a distinct material – however, this was the usual approach in Lönnrot's time. One explanation is that the individual source was unimportant, as the songs from the contemporary view virtually had arisen from the very "depth" of the common folk. Another explanation, as Lönnrot himself mentioned, is that the sources themselves wanted to remain anonymous.

In sum, the Kalevala remains a respectable artistic presentation of the Finnish runo tradition. Several writers have in turn been inspired by Lönnrot’s work, of which the most famous is most likely to be a man named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973). The fascination of the Kalevala, Tolkien shared with his good friend C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), known for his books about Narnia; it hardly coincidental that the white witch whom at some point ruled Narnia - with frost as her weapon - bears some resemblance to Louhi, the ruler of Pohjola.

In 2016, the first known manuscript Tolkien wrote, sometime between 1912 and 1916, was published for the first time. The title is Kullervo, and is Tolkien's own version of the story of Kullervo, as he had come to know it from Kalevala. Also included in the book are notes for a lecture he gave on the Kalevala, describes the encounter with the epic as coming to a new world:

After the country and its manners have become better known to you, and you have got on speaking terms with the natives, you will, I hope, find it jolly to live awhile with this strange people and these new gods, with this race of unhypocritical low-brow scandalous heroes, and sadly unsentimental lovers - some there may be who will think with regret that they have ever to go back from that land at all. 

Väinämöinen's farewell, painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1906) - depicting the scene of the last of the songs, where the old sorcerer leaves his country, leaving it to the new king, Väinämöinen farewell depicting the scene in the last of the songs, where the old sorcerer leaves his land, and leave it to the new king, a virgin son with distinct commonalities with Jesus Christ.

The Kalevala (translations)

• A Guide to Kalevala: https://kalevalaseura.fi/en/about-kalevala/what-happens-in-the-kalevala/  
• The Kalevala, translated by John Martin Crawford [1888]: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/index.htm

Source:

• Elias Lönnrot, Kalevala. Gjendiktet av Mikael Holmberg, med innledning av Mikael Holmberg. Orkana, 2017.