Lightbringers of the North
Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland
Perttu Häkkinen & Vesa Iitti
Inner Traditions 2022
Pb, 440pp, £25, ISBN 9781644114636
A history of Finland’s esoteric traditions is long overdue; for centuries, Finns have had a reputation as powerful magicians and sorcerers, perhaps owing to their conflation with the nomadic and shamanic Sámi.
While Scandinavian pre-Christian magical practices are well-documented, thanks to the Prose and Poetic Eddas and to runic inscriptions (largely unknown in Finland), the same cannot be said for their Finnish equivalents. In part due to the impenetrability of the Finnish language – neither Germanic, Romance nor Slavic – Finland’s subaltern status as a colonial possession of
