Emerging Supranormal Wilderness. Encountering Sites of Folk Belief in Finnish Belief Narratives and in the Field

Abstract

<p> <span>Finnish belief narratives from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contain a </span><span>wealth of descriptions of supernatural or rather supranormal encounters and interactions </span><span>taking place at specified, often identifiable places. Such encounters are typically set in </span><span>areas regarded by contemporaries as wilderness, an environment which in folk belief is </span><span>typically viewed as unpredictable and unruly. The belief narratives can be seen to express </span><span>the agency of such unruly environments. The narratives express a worldview in which the </span><span>wilderness is seen as an agent, which can emerge into different types of interaction with </span><span>people at specific wilderness sites. This study looks at eighty sites mentioned as places </span><span>of supranormal wilderness encounters in belief narratives. Ways in which the agency of </span><span>a place is described in the narratives are compared with first-hand experiences from vis-</span><span>iting the sites in person. Field visits to the same sites today show that a person’s cultural </span><span>conditioning clearly affects how the place is experienced, but also that places known for </span><span>supranormal interaction can give rise to experiences similar to the ones expressed in the </span><span>narratives.</span> <br></p>