There is an ancient folk astronomy story about the Milky Way told by the Finno-Urgic peoples from the landscape we now know as Finland and Estonia. The Milky Way is known as the Linunraata: linnun means “birds”, and rata means “track”, referring to the migratory path taken by birds, sometimes in the form of geese, other times arctic loons, and sometimes the flock is lead by a white swan with the head of a woman, towards their wintering grounds in Lintukoto, the home of the birds. These birds are also understood to be “soul carriers”, known as Sielulintu, who bring a human's soul to the body at the moment of birth, and carry the soul away at the moment of death to the otherworld known as Toonela. Sielulintu, or “soul birds”, are also thought of as soul protectors. It is common for Finns to put a carved wooden bird on or near their beds, or those of their children, so the Sielulintu could protect the soul of the sleeper from flying off while in a dream.
Photo Credit: Raimo Lantelankallio on Unsplash
In these stories migrating birds are a frame through which we understand the passage of time. Bird migration often correlates with the approach of winter, and then once more when spring arrives, and so it makes sense to associate birds with the coming of death and with a new birth. The idea that the earth is an egg, suggests humanity is mothered by a bird, that we are housed inside a bird’s egg and created by birds. What a beautiful way to understand our place in the universe: not as masters, controllers, conquerers of the planet, but in the position of being nurtured by and cradled in the feathered wings of a bird. To think Sielulintu birds are present at that vital moment when each human enters and exits the world weaves us back into kinship with the flock.
What to make of this beautiful image of birds as mothers, as bearers of human souls? Is it simply a children’s bedtime story, or is there something more to it? Some might give more weight to the folktale by supporting it with scientific facts. There are, in fact, two constellations that reside in the Milky Way that correlate with this myth: Cygnus the Swan and Aquila the Eagle. Heino Eelsalu, an Estonian astronomer and science historian, calculated that forty-five thousand years ago, the North Pole used to be in the Swan Constellation. At those times, the Swan Constellation was fixed in the sky for the whole night, just as if it were making its nest on the Bird Way.
This handcrafted linocut is inspired by the Linnunraata and it includes a swan, and a snowy landscape inspired by Finland including spruce and fir trees.
But science is only one lense through which we can understand this folktale. We may at first think of ourselves as the agents creating the folktales, however, folktales have just as much power to formulate and shape our experience of nature and our place in the universe. Marie Von Franz, Jungian psychologist known for her psychological interpretations of fairy tales, talks about how there are two different parallel worlds. There is an eternal causal time that exists outside of our human realm (which is the world of fairytale, folktale and mythology), and then there’s human causal time (the world we live in and consider “reality”) and they are like two wheels that intersect. The place where they intersect is the Spiraculum Eternitatis, otherwise known as “the breathing hole into eternity”, and if you stand there, you have a moment where you can briefly experience both and gain some perspective that is outside of your abnormal frame of reference (von Franz 1980). This is the role of myth and folktale: through engaging in the mythical imagination required by the story, we are invited momentarily to suspend all of our presumptions about reality, and instead consider birds in relationship to ourselves. Like a holographic universe where when you look at one thing to gain insight into everything, the Linnunraata invites us to see both the stars above us and the flock of migrating birds that carry us to Lintukoto. Rather than seeing the world mechanistically or causally, we see things more holistically, where everything affects everything else, things co-arise. Folktales like the Linnunraata remind us of our own belonging to the world, folding us back into the feathered wings of a universe that mothers us.
References:
Kuperjanov, Andres “Names in Estonian Folk Astronomy - from ‘Bird’s Way’ to ‘Milky Way’”. Online publication. (https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol22/milkyway.pdf)
Jung, Carl (1977). Adler, Gerhard (Trans.). Mysterium Coniunctionis (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.14). Princeton University Press.
Von Franz, Marie (1980). Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #5). Ontario: Inner City Books.
