Nowhere are the inconsistencies of human theory and practice more curiously and forcibly shown than in the custom in vogue among the clans of Finland who are not believers in a future life, but, notwithstanding, perform such funereal ceremonies as the burying in the graves of the dead, knives, hatchets, spears, bows, and arrows, kettles, food, clothing, sledges and snow-shoes, thus bearing witness to their practical recognition of some form of life beyond the grave.  The ancient Finns occasionally craved advice and assistance from the dead.  Thus, as described in The Kalevala, when the hero of Wainola needed three words of master-magic wherewith to finish the boat in which he was to sail to win the mystic maiden of Sariola, he first looked in the brain of the white squirrel, then in the mouth of the white-swan when dying, but all in vain; then he journeyed to the kingdom of Tuoni, and failing there, he “struggled over the points of needles, over the blades of swords, over the edges of hatchets” to the grave of the ancient wisdom-bard, Antero Wipunen, where he “found the lost-words of the Master.”  In this legend of The Kalevala, exceedingly interesting, instructive, and curious, are found, apparently, the remote vestiges of ancient Masonry.

It would seem that the earliest beliefs of the Finns regarding the dead centred in this:  that their spirits remained in their graves until after the complete disintegration of their bodies, over which Kalma, the god of the tombs, with his black and evil daughter, presided.  After their spirits had been fully purified, they were then admitted to the Kingdom of Manala in the under world.  Those journeying to Tuonela were required to voyage over nine seas, and over one river, the Finnish Styx, black, deep, and violent, and filled with hungry whirlpools, and angry waterfalls.

Like Helheim of Scandinavian mythology, Manala, or Tuonela, was considered as corresponding to the upper world.  The Sun and the Moon visited there; fen and forest gave a home to the wolf, the bear, the elk, the serpent, and the songbird; the salmon, the whiting, the perch, and the pike were sheltered in the “coal-black waters of Manala.”  From the seed-grains of the death-land fields and forests, the Tuoni-worm (the serpent) had taken its teeth.  Tuoui, or Mana, the god of the under world, is represented as a hard-hearted, and frightful, old personage with three iron-pointed fingers on each hand, and wearing a hat drawn down to his shoulders.  As in the original conception of Hades, Tuoni was thought to be the leader of the dead to their subterranean home, as well as their counsellor, guardian, and ruler.  In the capacity of ruler he was assisted by his wife, a hideous, horrible, old witch with “crooked, copper-fingers iron-pointed,” with deformed head and distorted features, and uniformly spoken of in irony in the Kalevala as “hyva emanta,” the good hostess; she feasted her guests on lizards, worms, toads, and writhing serpents.  Tuouen Poika, “The God of the Red Cheeks,” so called because of his bloodthirstiness and constant cruelties, is the son and accomplice of this merciless and hideous pair.