The magic of words

Maybe my heritage has something to do with my obsession with words:

“The [Finnish] magic is not like anything else known by that name in European literature. The magic is entirely the magic of words. These ancient people believed in the existence of words, by the utterance of which anything might be accomplished. Instead of buying wood and hiring carpenters, you might build a house by uttering certain magical words. If you had no horse, and wanted to travel rapidly, you would make a horse for yourself out of bits of bark and old sticks by uttering over them certain magical words. But this was not all. Beings of intellect, men and women, whole armies of men, in fact, might be created in a moment by the utterance of these magical words.”

Lafcadio Hearn, quoted in Tales from a Finnish Tupa. (I can't get onto the publisher website and the authors seem to have none, but this is a helpful review.)

I've ordered this book for myself, and can't wait for it to arrive! I've grown up with Finnish food, Finnish family and the Finnish language, but sadly I wasn't brought up on Finnish folk tales. The ones I have heard I love, because they are the earthy, pagan, magic-y sort.


Buy on fishpond: Tales from a Finnish Tupa