Robert Wilhelm Ekman - Ilmatar - A II 1256 - Finnish National Gallery

In the ''

Kalevala The ''Kalevala'' ( fi, Kalevala, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and r ...

'', the Finnish national epic, Ilmatar () was a virgin spirit and goddess of the

air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

Origins

The name Ilmatar is derived from the Finnish word ''ilma'', meaning "air," and the female suffix ''-tar'', corresponding to English "-ress". Thus, her name means ''Airress''. In the Kalevala she was also occasionally called Luonnotar (), which means "female spirit of nature" (Finnish ''luonto'', "nature").Lönnrot, Elias, compiler. ''The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District: A Prose Translation with Foreword and Appendices''. Translated with foreword and appendices by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. She was impregnated by the sea and wind and thus became the mother of

Väinämöinen Väinämöinen () is a demigod, hero and the central character in Finnish folklore and the main character in the national epic ''Kalevala'' by Elias Lönnrot. Väinämöinen was described as an old and wise man, and he possessed a potent, mag ...

Sibelius’s ''Luonnotar''

Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and 20th-century classical music, early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest com ...

composed the

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

'' Luonnotar'', for soprano and orchestra in 1913. In this work, the mythical origin of the land and sky, recounted in craggy verses from the ''

'', becomes an intense Sibelian metaphor for the inexorable force—even the terror of all creation—including that of the artist. One of the composer's most compelling works, it alternates between two musical ideas. As heard at the outset, these are the shimmering stirrings of ever-growing possibility; and, underpinned with dissonant, static, harp strokes, the even more incantatory, distressed cries of the "nature spirit" (''Luonnotar'') herself, heavy with child.

Homage

* ''

Ilmatar In the ''Kalevala'', the Finnish national epic, Ilmatar () was a virgin spirit and goddess of the air. Origins The name Ilmatar is derived from the Finnish word ''ilma'', meaning "air," and the female suffix ''-tar'', corresponding to English ...

'' is an album by the Finnish band

Värttinä Värttinä (, meaning "spindle") is a Finnish folk music band that started as a project by Sari and Mari Kaasinen in 1983 in the village of Rääkkylä, in Karelia, the southeastern region of Finland. Many transformations have taken place in the ...

, released in 2000. Its theme was inspired by the goddess's origin-story in the ''Kalevala'' and similar Finnish folk-lore and magic. * The

Main Belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

385 Ilmatar is named after the goddess. * In the book ''

The Quantum Thief ''The Quantum Thief'' is the debut science fiction novel by Finnish writer Hannu Rajaniemi and the first novel in a trilogy featuring the character of Jean le Flambeur; the sequels are '' The Fractal Prince'' (2012) and '' The Causal Angel'' (201 ...

'', members of a humanoid race living in the

Oort cloud The Oort cloud (), sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, first described in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, is a theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2 ...

sometimes pray to Kuutar and Ilmatar.
Tales Eldelórne trilogy by Karleigh Bon, book one
introduces Ilmatar as the "womb of their gods, where immortal elves are reborn". 2014-2019 * One of the protagonists of the

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

Strike Witches is a Japanese media mix originally created by Fumikane Shimada via a series of magazine illustration columns. The franchise has since been adapted into several light novel, manga, and anime series and various video games. ...

'', Finnish aviator Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen, shares part of her name with that of the goddess. * Two

passenger liner A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freig ...

s of the now-defunct

Finland Steamship Company Finland Steamship Company ( sv, Finska Ångfartygs Aktiebolag, abbreviated ''FÅA'', fi, Suomen Höyrylaiva Osakeyhtiö, abbreviated ''SHO'') was a Finnish shipping company founded in 1883 by Captain Lars Krogius. In Finnish and Swedish, the ...

were named after the goddess: the of 1929 and the of 1964.

References

{{Kalevala Finnish goddesses Finnish gods Sky and weather goddesses Characters in the Kalevala