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[Hanslanda]

The Bluescar tribe

A loose affiliation of humans who try to stay together without attracting the World's wrath. They all share the same scarification type tattoo on their cheek, and an aversion to overt displays of advancement. They often break into smaller groups and are highly nomadic, seeking to outrun any recognition of their unity and collaboration. They are highly conservative and greatly distrust outsiders.

Makku Makku

A beast of forgotten nature, Makku is an immense, six limbed lizard creature. Similar to a centaur, his upper third is remarkably humanoid, though covered in heavy armored scales. His lower body is that of a lizard below the neck, closely resembling a marine iguana but supersized. He is almost fifty feet long and jovial. Makku acts as a sort of roving trader/trash heap. He is not necessarily interested in the true material value of items, rather he has an alien idea of value closely related to shinyness and portability. He piles great haversacks of items on his lower body. He is incredibly dangerous despite his whimsical and friendly nature. (I'm thinking "on par with fighting an old dragon" here)

The Visages of Before

Ghosts of dead gods, they seek resurrection, vengeance, vindication, or perhaps all three. There are many Visages, and each is uniquely terrifying.

[Hanslanda]

Fair enough. I'm just word-salading but coherently so feel free to use or ignore anything I post.

[Cruxador]

So, this sent me on a little exploration of Finnish culture, and two things were revealed unto me:

1) The Finns REALLY love saunas. Apparently one of the first things the Finnish soldiers erected in the UNMEE was a sauna, a WWII field manual said that 8 hours is all that's needed for a battalion to erect saunas and make use of them, and there are no ranks in saunas.
2) Following on from the love of saunas, I found out why there are so many videos of them jumping into snow butt naked. It's traditional, once you get too hot (Saunas are apparently between 80 and 110 degrees celsius without taking into account the humidity, so I imagine it's pretty frequent) to jump into a river, lake, have a shower, or, during winter, dive into the snow.

Yep, this is probably the most famous thing about Finnish culture. They also beat themselves or each other with brush from the woods. And I've talked to one guy who has done it with barbed wire, which just goes to show some people are crazy even by Finnish standards. But yeah, saunas are great. I recommend non-Finns try it too. It's not nice at first but after being in and out a few times it is.

[Trekkin]

So, this sent me on a little exploration of Finnish culture, and two things were revealed unto me:

1) The Finns REALLY love saunas. Apparently one of the first things the Finnish soldiers erected in the UNMEE was a sauna, a WWII field manual said that 8 hours is all that's needed for a battalion to erect saunas and make use of them, and there are no ranks in saunas.
2) Following on from the love of saunas, I found out why there are so many videos of them jumping into snow butt naked. It's traditional, once you get too hot (Saunas are apparently between 80 and 110 degrees celsius without taking into account the humidity, so I imagine it's pretty frequent) to jump into a river, lake, have a shower, or, during winter, dive into the snow.

I'm surprised you missed perkele; it's usually one of the first things people run into.

At any rate, when you say Iron Age Finland (which, incidentally, runs from about 500 BC - 0 AD), how historical are you aiming for?

[Trekkin]

If you've got any suggestions for other stuff to think about, I'd appreciate it.

You've got the broad strokes. I'd add that, as a good deal of Finnish soil is plow-foulingly stony clay and they consequently used slash-and-burn agriculture, you'd expect the farming communities to drift around as all the soil within reasonable working distance was used up, which in turn informs how and why they track seasons. Some sort of multi-annual forest-burning festival would fit in, if you wanted, and there's just about room to squeeze in D&D-style "balance of nature" druids as wardens of that process.

Depending on how much geography you copy, you may want to consider putting those few proper towns on rivers, because they've got boats and not an abundance of land over which you'd want to regularly take cattle-drawn wagons -- and, of course, fishing's as important here as it is everywhere. That also means I'd expect long-distance travel and communication, such as it is, to totally stop every winter, so if you want to map your cultural areas, putting them in river networks more than a season's travel apart would make a lot of sense.

About the only thing I'd change is the degree to which different cultures are specialized, because northern Scandinavia/Karelia didn't undergo the same seismic cultural shifts as other places during the Neolithic Revolution. They just didn't have the land to go farm-crazy. It's certainly possible for different cultures to be known for different things, but even down to the level of individual hamlets there's going to be people who fish, farm, and hunt. There's also evidence that they had more native iron smelting than you'd think, but that's down to local ore availability anyway.

[scriver]

Bog iron is, iirc, just as common in Finland as it were in Sweden - however as with Sweden, what they lacked was proper cultural steel working knowledge. For example even in the days of viking raiding one of the most prized people to enthrall was foreign metalworkers, Swedish smiths just didn't have the know-how to consistently produce the same quality steel equipment. There's a whole different thing from "smelts metal and smiths tools for everyday uses" to "consistently smiths high grade weaponry and armour to the point of commonplacity".

[Jimmy]

I'm surprised you missed perkele; it's usually one of the first things people run into.

Spoiler: Relevant (click to show/hide)

Canadian Source
Finnish Source

Campaign Idea:

Outsiders from another plane have recently begun visiting the prime material plane, raiding it for resources and slaves as well as turning areas into dumping grounds for their violent prisoners/toxic waste/undead abominations/cursed items or whatnot.

[IcyTea31]

Wondering if anyone's got any ideas as to... well, anything given this setting.

Have you considered magic yet?

In Finnish mythology, practically everything has a specific origin ('synty', lit. 'birth', pl. 'synnyt'), a story of where it came from and what made it what it is today. To know this origin is to have power over the thing; the farther back, the better. These origins are stored in an oral tradition: songs and poems ('loitsu', pl. 'loitsut', lit. 'spell'), though they often lack a detail, a trust-word ('luote', pl. 'luotteet') that is held secret from the uninitiated. A shaman ('tietäjä', lit. 'one who knows', pl. 'tietäjät') can sing these songs and poems in their complete forms and thus gain control of their subjects. For example, one who knows the origin of iron can call upon an ancient oath to force the iron to heal a wound it has caused.

There's also the matter of souls: in Finnish mythology, a human has several, or maybe just one composed of several parts (historians disagree). These souls or parts of soul are 'henki' (breath, pl. 'henget'), 'itse' (self, pl. 'itset') and 'luonto' (nature, pl. 'luonnot'), and there may be more depending on who you ask. The henki is the general force that keeps you alive; lose it and you're dead. The itse is what makes you different from everyone else; lose it and you lose all self-esteem and probably fall into depression. The luonto is a faerie that protects you from evil, similar to the Christian concept of a guardian angel; lose it and evil forces and faeries will get to you. The luonto is also what translates the magic songs into actual effects. Also notable is that a luonto can be taken from someone else, usually after death but by legend sometimes from the living as well; the reason for this is that luonnot vary in power, and if a would-be magician doesn't have a strong enough luonto, they might turn to stealing...

Speaking of fairies, they are known as 'etiäiset' (sing. 'etiäinen', lit. 'distant-ling') or 'väki' (uncountable, lit. 'folk' or 'strength') or 'keijut' (sing. 'keiju') or 'haltijat' (sing. 'haltija', lit. 'keeper' or 'elf'). Evil ones are called 'kateet' (sing. 'kade', lit. 'jealosity') and can possess humans to make them evil ('kateellinen', lit. 'jealous'). More benign ones are generally content with being left alone, though if you disturb them (such as by building a house on top of their underground one), they may be vengeful. If one doesn't want to use loitsut to banish them, treating them like a good neighbour is enough to appease them: for example, never extinguish a sauna, instead let it burn out on its own so that the fairies can use it once you're done. Many types of fairies exist, such as 'metsänväki' (forest-folk), 'maahiset' (sing. 'maahinen', lit. 'earth-ling'), 'vetehiset' (sing. 'vetehinen', lit. water-ling) and 'ilmahiset' (sing. 'ilmahinen', lit. air-ling), and they can be as different from each other as they are from humans. In fact, depending on definition, humans can be considered to be a type of fairy: 'ihminen', the word for 'human' can be read as 'wonder-ling' and the alternative spelling, 'immeinen' as 'virgin-ling'.

Yes, Finnish fairies think we're all virgins.

[wierd]

Here's one.

A generic archetype for a cursed immortal.  (You can make this whatever gender, race, ethnicity you want.)

Many cultures have such an archetype; Somebody that succeeded in the mad quest to become immortal, but then finds the inability to die much more than they bargained for, and they disconnect from every society, and enter a dark and endless ennui about the subject.

Considering that this setting has access to epic/9th level magic without restrictions (because the gods are dead), succeeding in this endeavor should be possible.

While not Scandinavian in nature, you could look to the Mesopotamian myth character of Utnapishtim for some inspiration.  That story though, is the progenitor to modern "noah and the flood" myths of latter religions, so something you might not want to copy.  (Just borrow bits from, such as seeking and attaining immortality.) You might also combine it with bits from greek mythology, such as how Prometheus stole fire from the gods.   You could end up with a sorcerer/sorceress, that exploits the chaos of the godswar to claim immortality for him/herself while the gods are distracted, succeeds, but then has to watch as the world goes berserk and prevents civilization (such as they remember it) from ever returning.

A hilarious twist might be to combine the "end of the world" myth of the death of Yggdrasil, the world tree, in the sordid tale.  Say, while the gods are distracted, the sorcerer/sorceress uses magic to travel to Yggdrasil, steals a branch from it along with some sap, and water from the well beneath, to create the elixir of life, and to become the true master of his/her own destiny.  (See also, the poetic edda concerning the Norns.  In your setting, they would be killed by the godswar, however-- the sorcerer/sorceress would have imbibed some of the wellspring water, and thus would have "a measure" of that power, in accordance with your views that they can return. However, this sorcerer/sorceress refuses that destiny, being able to freely choose it.)

In so doing, you would end up with a prometheus like character, who unwittingly creates the alternative foundations for this mutated material plane (The sorcerer/sorceress grows the stolen branch in a pot, creating a second, shrimpy and stunted world tree that survives the gods war, where the tree it came from gets burned up completely. This has parallels to Utnapishtim, who is given a magical herb to become immortal; but also ties in knowledge and fate. (the well beneath the world tree is said to be the source of the deep knowledge and wisdom of the 3 goddesses/wise women who laid down the laws of the earth, aka, the Norns) This character has very advanced knowledge and power, but is not a god/goddess, and in truth, now deeply regrets the decision to become immortal, as this person is now cursed horribly by that knowledge.  (What worse fate can you give a sorcerer, than to give them immense knowledge or power that the very world itself wrangles to prevent from being used?)  We can tie in an archetype for a great library here as well if we like-- which, given the nature of the world you are depicting, would all be knowledge from before the godswar, and thus "Forbidden" by the new nature of the material plane.

Such a story would be very compelling and tantalizing to "contemporary" spell casters, as both a cautionary tale, and as something that tempts them. (Seeking the old one out, to gain their knowledge, despite the price.)

[Kagus]

Instead of using filthy coinage, convert the world's economy over to a nobler currency of meat chunks and wooden fox traps.

[wierd]

Instead of using filthy coinage, convert the world's economy over to a nobler currency of meat chunks and wooden fox traps.

Why stop there?  Turn the mechanic on its damned head, and make it a full barter based society.  (Standard coinage implies a well established social hierarchy, which this setting forbids! Coin based money is incompatible!)

That means you will have to write a replacement for any GC costs for item creation, but I am sure you can do it.

[Digital Hellhound]

I can add to IcyTea's stuff on Finnish mythology. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have on Finnish myths and folklore, I'm not an expert, but I've studied the topic a bit. Let me dig up my course notes... *shuffle shuffle*

Tietäjät tietää

To add on tietäjät and their role... the tietäjät (singular ’tietäjä’, come up with something else if that twists your tongue too much) were essentially the wise men/women of the village. These were people you turned to for healing, for dealing with the (restless) dead, finding lost cattle and stolen stuff, turning curses/damages back at the person who caused them, fixing your, uh, bedroom problems, etc. It's mostly very low-key and mundane stuff, but Väinämöinen, the OG bard, does stuff in the Kalevala (Finnish national epic) like singing people into swamps and other badass shit. Songs and singing is generally important to Finnish magic and rituals.

Tietäjät needed to be ’hard of nature’, having a powerful luonto, which maybe means strong-willed and forceful in practice as well. You could tie that into some stat or mechanical aspect. How they accomplished things differed; some went into shamanistic trances, others jumped around wildly in ecstatic inspiration, some did ritualistic stuff. You had subsets and variants: witches and 'trullit' who did harmful stuff, seers, herbalists. Women who’d take care of the bodies of the dead and act as midwives were referred to as 'strong-blooded', though that's not a profession/category per se, more of a quality. Later on Christian priests were there as an alternative - the two existed side by side for centuries to choose from.

The Spirits Grow Restless

Finnish pagan/folklorish ideas of disease and healing generally held that whatever affliction plagued you was the result of a supernatural taint, caused by disturbing/disrespecting the dead or angering the spirits/supernatural beings (’väki’ in Finnish, there's loads of kinds). You could also have lost your soul, been possessed, or been attacked with a noidannuoli (witch’s arrow, some kind of magical projectile), resulting in various ailments. This would be cured by rituals, especially ritual washing, and taking you to the source of the taint to be purified (so to the water if you were thought to be hurt by spirits of the water, the graveyard if the dead, etc).

Generally in magic similarity/connections were important, so you’d use ritual objects like snakeskins, bear paws, belongings of the deceased when dealing with those things.

Bear With Me

The most important being in Finnish paganism is absolutely the bear. Even modern Finnish has countless words for ’bear’ because you could not call it by its true name. The bear had a heavenly/divine origin, so it was a Big Deal. The furs and meat they offered were very important to Finnish communities, so people both feared them and wanted them to return. You couldn’t kill a bear while it was asleep - the soul might not be present, and you want it to be present when killing it.

When bears were killed, there was a whole festival/ritual (’peijaiset’) where people sung to the bear to mollify/deceive it (trying to convince it that it had died in an accident or been killed by foreigners, heh) and someone was chosen to ritually marry the bear. The hunters are also called ’suitors’ and the whole thing framed as a kind of courtship, it’s nifty. There's some evidence that bears and humans were thought to be kin, and could have children with one another. The whole bear would be eaten and the bones returned to the forest to be reused by bears. I like to think a new bear would straight-up reform from them.

So for the love of Ukko, make bears the holy kings of the forest they are, the dragons of the campaign. Bears are already terrifying in real life, so imagine a bear that's divine and supernatural too!

Gods and Beings

I'm not all that well-read on the Finnish gods themselves and there's not all that much concrete information on them. Ukko Ylijumala ('Old Man Overgod') is (possibly) the head honcho, a sky/storm/harvest god, goes around with a hammer, beseeched and used in rituals before battle/hunting/harvest stuff. You might notice the similarities to certain deities in surrounding cultures, whodathunk. He's married to Akka ('Old Woman'), maybe associated with fertility. Women and, uh, their genitalia were generally held to have great power and there's a bunch of rituals I don't think I'm going to describe here. I'm not sure if that's something you'll want to work into your campaign in the year of 2019, but hey, why not.

Other likely-important-but-who-knows gods were Tapio, king of the forest, with his wife Mielikki*, mistress of the forest, and their many daughters; Ahti, god of water/the sea; Väinämöinen, the aforementioned OG bard (but he's also kind of a... culture/folk hero?) and Ilmarinen, master smith (the same deal). The problem is that we don't really know how ancient Finns actually thought of these beings - should we call them spirits or gods or what? For your purposes, it doesn't matter all that much. Perkele was also a god before the word began to mean 'the devil' and then turned into a curse word, so work him in so you can keep shouting Perkele over and over at your table.

Giants and other familiar beings exist in Finnish beliefs just the same. There's a lot of overlap with the myths and folklore of surrounding cultures, plus centuries of later interpretation and modification, and so little point in trying to find some kind of 'pure' mythology. I wouldn't be too worried about mixing and matching a bit.

Googling these things should yield you more information. I'm prolly forgetting some really obvious stuff. Reading a synopsis of the Kalevala could also be worthwhile.

*Isn't Mielikki used as a name for some god in a DnD setting? I can see what they were going for, but the problem is that Mielikki today is a name you'd give to a cow, not a powerful and mighty deity. Oh well...

[Kagus]

I believe several native American nations regarded bears as being the closest relatives of humans as well, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. I suppose there aren't that many other forest critters that regularly stand on two legs...

[scriver]

I really think that as a Swede, I am a much more trustworthy source of information on Finns than the Finns themselves.

I believe several native American nations regarded bears as being the closest relatives of humans as well, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. I suppose there aren't that many other forest critters that regularly stand on two legs...

Jokes aside, I read somewhere that the Sami legends say that their people originated from a bear and a woman. So all Sami are descended from bears, like.

One might say the woman beared him a child.

[Culise]

Interesting.  The founding mythology of Korea also held that their founder was a Heavenly King who wed a bear who became human through perserverence and personal privation.  The bear and tiger wished to become human, but such a thing was an act against heaven.  Nonetheless struck by their entreaties, the Heavenly King personally intervened to give each a bundle of mugwort and 20 cloves of garlic, saying that if they remained in a cave for 100 days with no company and no sunlight eating only those things, they would become human.  The tiger was impatient and fled after days, but the bear was transformed after a mere 21 days into a beautiful woman, who would later wed said Heavenly King (who himself became human to do so) and together found the royal house of Gojoseon.