Julkaistu Thule Instituutissa, Ks
Julkaistu Thule Instituutissa, ks. cv Kaarina Kailo MYTHIC WOMEN IN THE NORTH – BETWEEN REALITY AND FANTASY1 KAARINA KAILO In the Land of Women (Terra Feminarum) there are no leaders among them and they do not know the Christian God, instead they worship snakes and birds. Adam of Bremen (l044–1075) (Kannisto et al. 1982, 15) Ultimate Thule. Terra Nullius. Femina Borealis. The Land of Hero Drowners. The Man Eating Village. Pohjola. North Cape. The Arctic Circle. The Land of Lux and Lucifer, Louhi and Lovetar, Maderakka, Sarahka, Uksakka, Juksakka. Akka. Rauni. Äkäätär. Rauna neide, The Great Bear, Otava, ILMATAR, KAVE, The Maiden on the Rainbow…. This article will revisit the North, its gendered myths, its conscious and unconscious politics, its political and psychological unconscious. Its collective and repressed Manala, its freezing tundras beyond and over the mystic Tuonela. The beauty of its snowscapes, its soul-sobering silences. The expanses to soothe the wandering gaze, to fix the restless soul. Epics and myths among other cultural narratives are not innocent. They have socio-political and economic dimensions, their tentacles reach far into our souls and the pocket book, they are subtle tools of gendering processes, they are unrecognized technologies of collective socialization, they design and naturalize those constructed “essences” and social relations, those fictions we call “males” and “females,” “Westerners” and “Natives,” the “North,” and the “South.” This article will contrast the dominant myths and motifs regarding “Pohjola” with the geopolitical reality of the North, a region that affects men and women very differently in today’s context of globalization. Pohjola is a pivot of the mythical yet 1.
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