Vie vaiva mennessasi!
Time to purge an obsession. While writing the Kalevala* lecture last week I got caught watching YouTube clips from the Finnish folk group Varttina. Here I am again, rather transfixed. So, what better way to spend the minutes nearing midnight than sharing some folklove with my e-peeps. Or something. One of my favourites is Aijo, sadly I can't emed this particular video, but the link is here. Go on, click it. You know you want to.
It's about an old, insane man who gets bitten by an adder and then has to chant a spell in order to counteract the poison and to chase the snake away. Even though you won't be able to understand the language, you'll tell the chant when you come to it...
*The Kalevala is the Finnish national epic, an edited collection of folk poems fro the border regions between Finland and Russia. Varttina's lyrics use the same meter and are sometimes in part taken from the Kalevala itself or other traditional poems.The band's been going for twenty years, so there's a bit of a range of looks and fashions in the videos from along their career if you want to delve a bit further into the archives.