A little over ten years ago, I became more interested in our prehistory and ancient folklore. I wanted to know what we believed in before Christianity came to Finland. In my previous book, I had gotten to know my grandmother’s Karelian roots more deeply and I understood that we had a lot of healers in our family. In addition, the Suistamo people had deep traditions in poetry singing, and of course the Kalevala had always inspired me. Being born in Savo, folk traditions have also always been part of my life in a natural way. I have learned to understand the beliefs passed down from my grandparents and the strong tradition of spell casting and beliefs gathered from the area.
In my writings, I have been widely influenced by the traditions of other regions, but I have tried to limit these to the concept of the north when I talk about Nordic, I mean people from the Nordic countries and who once lived in the territory of Finland and their traditions. The last ten years have also been a period of strong spiritual growth for me, and this is also why I became interested in knowledge and shamanism. I wanted to learn for myself what all these doctrines once contained and compile my own understanding from all this information into the doctrines of the wise.
I wanted to leave a story for posterity, especially my two daughters, from which they would learn about our cultural heritage in the form of an entertaining story. I’m inspired by fantasy worlds with adventures in the style of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. It was also very clear that the protagonist of this story would be a young girl who could be a role model for today’s youth. A strong, independent and intelligent woman who knows how to make the right decisions and has a pure heart, full of light. However, Lumina would not be alone, she would be surrounded by a group of friends. Friendship, love and traveling together became the themes of the book.
Creative multimedia storytelling
I started building the story itself through the story world, which is based on the Finno-Ugric three-layer worldview; Middler, which is in the prehistoric context of our world, the mythical world of Underer below the earth inhabited by earthlings, and Above, the level in the layers of the sky where the ancient deities resided.
When I studied to become Master of Arts, media producer at Metropolia in 2013, I researched how to get an experiential e-book from this world of stories. However, the era of e-books never really hit and at that point I still had the whole story to write, but the perspective of a media producer helped me throughout the project. When creating the story world, I thought about how I could make it one that would also serve other formats than just a book. I dare to say that there are not very many writers in Finland who are able to think in a multimedia way while writing. When I was planning and writing the story, I thought about how certain elements would be in the games, and as a visual person, I also saw the scenes in the book as if they were on the screen of a movie.
Spell poems and sources
Once I had decided that the focus of the story would be to bring out our ancient spell poems and the rituals of knowledge that a shamanic student learns, I began to read dozens, if not hundreds, of sources that I gathered information from and used in my story. I collected all the sources at the end of the book so that my readers could study them more if they really got excited about the topic.
In 2019, I got to work at the National Museum of Finland to do marketing communications. It was also an inspiring time in terms of story development, because I got to know more deeply the history of Finland and the artifacts we have. Historical objects carry wonderful stories in themselves, and my story got stronger as I placed objects in the story that were related to our antiquity and knowledge.
Nature and values
I spent my childhood living near the forest and the beach, so nature has always been a mystical place for me, where my imagination takes flight. Animals have also been present and we have learned to respect especially bigger animals, such as bears and moose. I remember how vivid my mind could imagine much more in nature than was actually there. One of my favorite places was a big boulder that was covered in moss. I made my house under it and it became an almost sacred place where I used to play. Nature was a magical place for me and part of my family had lived in these forests for centuries.
I wanted to conjure up such a fantasy world for my readers and tell them through literary means how I can imagine the mystical forests of Finland and what all the history and beliefs it hides inside. Guided by intuition, I also wrote big climate issues into the story. At the beginning of the book, fire foxes, or aurora borealis, plunge to the ground and burn half of Keski. I had already written this in a story ages ago, long before the climate crisis and devastating forest fires were everyday media content. That’s why it was shocking when I realized what I had written. I believe that through the story I will also be able to bring this important message to the readers and we will learn to better protect nature.
You can find many different levels in the story and as a writer I can say that for the most part the story is written very intuitively. Next time, I will tell you more about how my own life and journey are linked to this story, which has flowed from somewhere far away in the cosmos, like the spells of magicians, to this day and between the covers of this book.
Lumina has been published in Finnish in spring 2024.
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