Mythologia Fennica (''Finnish Mythology'') is a 1789 book on

Finnish mythology Finnish mythology is a commonly applied description of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many features shared with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies, ...

written in Swedish by

Kristfrid Ganander Cristfried Ganander (21 November 1741 in Haapajärvi – 17 February 1790 in Rantsila) was a Finnish compiler of folk culture, a priest and an 18th-century lexicographer. Ganander's greatest achievement was the compilation of the first fully exten ...

, a Finnish priest. ''Mythologia Fennica'' contains 430 entries in alphabetical order from "AARNI" to "YRJÄNÄ". Entries cover

, folk poetry, spells,

Sámi mythology The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, Rus ...

, and the

Norse gods Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. Norse may also refer to: Culture and religion * Nors ...

. The work influenced

Elias Lönnrot Elias Lönnrot (; 9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a Finnish physician, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. He is best known for creating the Finnish national epic, ''Kalevala'', (1835, enlarged 1849), from short b ...

, compiler of the epic ''

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 ...

''; as a result, Ganander has been later perceived as a kind of "Lönnrot before Lönnrot."

Publication and translation

''Mythologia Fennica'' was intended as an appendix to a Swedish-Finnish dictionary which was left unfinished by Ganander. It was created with the encouragement of and assistance from

Henrik Gabriel Porthan Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1739 in Viitasaari – 1804 in Turku) was a professor and rector at the Royal Academy of Turku. He was a scholar sometimes known as ''The Father of Finnish History''. Biography He was born at Viitasaari in Tavastland, ...

, the father of Finnish historical research. It was completed in 1789 but only published 4 years later, following Porthan's review. A German translation was made by the Estonian poet

Kristjan Jaak Peterson Kristian Jaak Peterson (, Riga – , Riga) also known as Christian Jacob Petersohn, was an Estonian poet, commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and the founder of modern Estonian poetry. He died of tuberculosis aged 21. ...

in 1821. The book has been reprinted numerous times, especially towards the end of the 20th century.

References

Facsimiles, translations, and editions

*
e-text via ''www.gutenberg.org''
* ranslation *{{citation, first =Kristfrid , last = Ganander , authorlink =Cristfried Ganander , title = Mythologia Fennica, editor-first = Juha , editor-last = Pentikäinen , editor-link=Juha Pentikäinen , publisher = laukkala Recallmed, year = 1995 , isbn = 9519221727 , language = Finnish ranslation Finnish non-fiction books Finnish mythology 1789 non-fiction books 1789 in Sweden Mythology books