Uno Harva (Holmberg), Permalaisten uskonto (Helsinki, 1914)

The Komi-Zyrians (Finnish: syrjänit; Russian: коми-зыряне) are a Finno-Ugric people of the northeastern European Russia, inhabiting the basin of the Vychegda, Pechora, and Kama rivers — a forested world at the edge of the taiga, where the great rivers flow north and west toward the Arctic. Their closest linguistic relatives are the Komi-Permyaks and, more distantly, the Udmurts (Finnish: votjakit), with whom they share the broader category "Permian peoples." Both peoples — Komi-Zyrians and Udmurts — maintained pre-Christian religious traditions well into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traditions that Finnish scholars, armed with linguistic expertise and ethnographic method, were uniquely positioned to document.

Uno Holmberg — who later changed his name to the more Finnish form Uno Harva — was a Finnish ethnologist and comparative religion scholar whose 1914 study Permalaisten uskonto (The Religion of the Permian Peoples) remains one of the foundational scholarly surveys of Votjak and Komi-Zyrian religion. Written in Finnish and drawing on Russian fieldwork reports, German missionary accounts, and Holmberg's own considerable comparative knowledge of Finno-Ugric tradition, the book describes the full religious life of the Permian peoples: ancestor veneration, domestic and village sacrifice, nature spirits, the great sky god, and the domain of the dead. The text has never been translated into English in its entirety; scholars who need the material typically work from Holmberg/Harva's later German-language work or from secondary summaries. The selections translated here are taken from the nature-spirit and sky-god sections, which contain the most extensive cosmological material.

The central cosmological figures of Permian religion are two sky powers in fundamental opposition. The Votjak sky god is called Inmar — a name related to the Finnish word ilma (air, sky) and cognate with the Finnish sky-smith Ilmarinen and the Estonian Ilmarine; from this shared root, Holmberg argues, we can infer that some form of sky-deity worship is ancient in the Finno-Ugric tradition, predating the separation of the Finnish and Permian branches. Among the Komi-Zyrians the same deity is called Jen — a word that, by the nineteenth century, had become their general term for any sacred or holy object, including Christian saints and icons. Against Inmar/Jen stands the evil spirit: among the Udmurts, the dark spirits are called kul' and peri; among the Komi-Zyrians, the principal evil power is Omel' (Finnish: omel'). The relationship between Jen and Omel' is one of creation and counter-creation: Jen created the world and humanity; Omel' created the evil water spirits, the kul', who haunt rivers and marshes and pull the living to their deaths. In the passages selected here, Holmberg traces this theology through its cosmological architecture — the three-layered world — and through the specific traditions around water spirits, sacrifice, and the sky god's seasonal activity.

I. The Three-Layered World

The pagans among the Votjaks call life beyond the grave so dünne ("that world") or sopal dünne ("the world beyond"). The world, in their present understanding, is three-layered: the sky, where Inmar, the sky god, dwells; the earth, where people dwell; and the underground region beneath our feet, where the dead dwell.

Georgi records that the Votjaks distinguish further between different states of existence in the underworld: for the righteous there is "dunja-juggit" (bright life), where every happiness and good thing that Votjaks can imagine is available; for sinners there is "kuratsin-inti" (the bitter place). There stand many cauldrons of tar in which evil people are boiled. This conception, however, is not original among the Votjaks, nor is the belief that Vereshtshagin records from Sarapul district — that whoever lives richly here will live poorly in the world to come, and whoever lives in want here will live more happily there.

More original is the conception that the same author records from the majority of Votjaks in that district: that the dead of the same family line live together, forming a kind of common household. The patriarch — the ancestor who founded the lineage — is the head of this household. It is even said that the dead maintain a kind of order in their underground family society, for one who was not peaceful in life, but quarrelsome and disruptive, is not admitted to the common family. This conception clearly reflects the ancient belief that the clan burial ground is the common dwelling-place of the dead, and that each grave is the individual home of its occupant.

II. Inmar, the Sky God of the Votjaks

Among the natural spirits of the Votjaks, the sky god is preeminent. Inmar is the Votjak name for this deity; the word is generally understood as referring to the heavenly being who dwells in the sky, though it appears also to have originally meant the perceptible sky itself. Traces of this remain in expressions such as inmar zore ("it is raining") and in the Votjak claim recorded by Rogaevskij: "Everything luminous that we see, we call inmar" — which makes clear that the Votjaks originally meant by inmar above all the daytime sky.

The sky god's worship is closely connected with agriculture, which more than any other way of life turns human eyes toward the sky. That Inmar is above all an agricultural deity is evident from the fact that sacrifice to him is performed primarily in the grain fields. Rytshkov records this while noting that the Votjaks pray to Inmar for the fertility of their fields. Equally telling are the epithets kildis-vordis ("the begetting and sustaining one") that the Votjaks often give their sky god in sacrifice prayers.

The oldest account of Inmar worship is Rytshkov's description, which, brief as it is, has preserved several valuable features: "The chief god Ilmer (Inmar) dwells in the sky and has created everything. His feast is celebrated in spring, when the worship takes place in the middle of the fields. There come both men and women, praying to him to increase the fertility of their farmlands. The sacrificial animals — horse, cow, sheep, or calf — must be white."

In later times, Inmar has grown, under the influence of higher religions, into God in the monotheistic sense, and the Votjaks have begun to worship him in all the needs of life. Yet they still turn to him exclusively in moments of material need. An anonymous account in the Vyatka provincial newspaper (1861) describes their general belief aptly: "Inmar, in their understanding, is only a good spirit who protects their lives and gives them food and clothing, but who has nothing to do with relations between people." In this original form, Inmar is therefore not, as is natural, a judge of morals among the dead.

III. Jen, the Sky God Among the Komi-Zyrians

The modern Inmar resembles on one hand the Allah of the Muslims — from whom, through early contact, the Votjaks have borrowed the epithet budzim ("great"), which Muslims always use when praying to Allah — and on the other hand the God of the Christians. The Christian influence is evident in Inmar-atai (Father-Inmar) and Inmar-anai (Mother-Inmar, meaning the Virgin Mary as used by the Votjaks). The trinity Inmar-kildisin-kuaz, which appears regularly in the sacrifice-prayers of Glazov district Votjaks, is also not accidental; we know that kildisin appears in Votjak legendary stories always in the place of the Savior, while kuaz (properly meaning "weather, air"), known as a divine being only in this district, is used as a folk name for the Holy Spirit.

The Komi-Zyrians call by the name of Jen the same guardian saints — even their icons.

IV. The Water Spirits and the Counter-Creation of Omel'

Among the Komi-Zyrians, the water spirit is more feared than loved. Even to see it is an ill omen — a portent of storm, death, or disaster. In waters where it dwells, it is dangerous to bathe, especially late in the evening, for the water spirit, as Popov says, draws to itself both people and animals. Nalimov records that the female vasa lures men to herself for sexual union. Zhakov says the water spirit rejoices in advance over its human sacrifices, for many have seen it on the bank or in the water a little before their drowning.

In the Christian era, the water spirit has grown more malevolent, and its name kul' has come to be used also in the sense of "devil." In this capacity the water spirit cannot endure the sign of the cross or the sound of church bells, which on hearing it always plunges at once into the earth. Jen, the sky god, shows his wrath toward the water spirit by striking it with lightning in the thunderstorm.

Yet in the people's original conception, the kul' was not an absolutely evil being. Zhakov says that when one sacrifices to the water spirit, it gives fish and allows people to travel on the rivers. Wichmann's field notes record that the Komi-Zyrians sacrifice butter and bread to the lake spirit for a good catch. When fishing, one must be careful not to speak foul words, for this angers the water spirit, which grabs hold of the net's rope. Millers, too, must be at peace with the water spirit. Janovitsh records that when a mill is being built, the water spirit demands a "head" as sacrifice — otherwise it will break the dams on its wedding journey. Today only a rooster's head is sacrificed. The Komi-Zyrians, Janovitsh says, do not step over water without giving a gift to the water spirit; if nothing else, they throw a thread from their belt into the water.

Popov is certainly right when he argues that the very name vasa is a direct translation of the Russian "vodjanoj" (water-dweller). Foreign influence is further confirmed by the name shishiga, which the Komi-Zyrians, as Smirnov records, sometimes use for the female water spirit — a name borrowed directly from the Russian.

The question of the water spirits' origin divides the two peoples. The Komi-Zyrians hold that Omel' (the evil one, the devil) created the water spirits — while the Russian common people believe that water spirits arise from the souls of the drowned. Nalimov defends the Komi-Zyrian view as the original one, but his arguments — more the product of national sentiment than of scholarly judgment — carry no evidential weight. For, in the first place, the stories of the spirits created by Omel' are as legends late and foreign in origin; and secondly, the conception of the drowned turning into water spirits — in which a quite ancient idea is reflected — is not unknown even among the Komi-Zyrians themselves.

Colophon

Translated by the Uralic Deep Translator tulku (New Tianmu Anglican Church), March 2026.

Source language: Finnish. The source is Uno Holmberg (later Harva), Permalaisten uskonto (The Religion of the Permian Peoples; Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1914). The book is in Finnish and has never been translated into English in full. The Project Gutenberg edition (ebook #61164) was the text consulted; the Finnish plain-text file at gutenberg.org/files/61164/61164-0.txt was read directly in Finnish, and this English is independently derived from that Finnish. No English translation of Permalaisten uskonto was consulted.

Note on the author's name: The author published this 1914 work under the name Uno Holmberg. He later changed his surname to the more Finnish form Harva, and is more commonly cited in later English-language scholarship as Uno Harva. Both names refer to the same person. This file uses "Harva" in the title (the more commonly recognized form) and "Holmberg" for the 1914 publication itself.

Translation method: This is a translation of selected passages from Holmberg's Finnish scholarly text — not a translation of original Votjak or Komi-Zyrian sources. Holmberg's text is a secondary ethnographic account written in Finnish, drawing on Russian and German primary fieldwork sources (Rytshkov, Georgi, Popov, Nalimov, Janovitsh, Wichmann, Zhakov, Vereshtshagin, and many others, all cited in his original text). Translating Holmberg's Finnish into English constitutes a genuine act of translation from the Finnish source language; it does not constitute translation from the Votjak or Komi-Zyrian originals. The colophon is honest about this: this is Finnish scholarly text made accessible in English, not a primary-source translation of Komi or Udmurt.

On coverage: The passages selected focus on: (I) the three-level cosmology; (II) the Votjak sky god Inmar as creator and agricultural deity; (III) Jen as the Komi-Zyrian equivalent name; (IV) the water spirits and the counter-creation of Omel'. These sections cover the core cosmological dualism of the Permian tradition. The water-spirit material (kul', vasa, omel') is drawn from the chapter on humanlike spirits; the cosmological and sky-god material from the nature-spirits chapter.

On the deities:

• Inmar (also spelled Ilmer in Rytshkov): The Udmurt/Votjak sky god and creator. The word is related to the Finnish ilma (air, sky) and Old Finnish Ilmari; Holmberg argues it points to a Finno-Permian sky-deity tradition more than two thousand years old.
• Jen: The Komi-Zyrian name for the same sky deity. By the nineteenth century the word had been generalized to mean any holy or sacred entity, including Christian saints and icons. The older sense — sky deity, creator god — is preserved in the Komi tradition of Jen striking water spirits with lightning.
• Kul': The Komi-Zyrian water spirit; the word became also a Komi term for "devil" under Christian influence. Ambivalent in the oldest tradition — both dangerous and appeasable.
• Omel': The Komi-Zyrian evil spirit, the counter-creator. In Komi belief he is specifically credited with creating the kul' water spirits. The name appears to be a Komi-Zyrian form of a Slavic loan (cf. Russian "нечистый", "бес"); Holmberg notes that the stories of Omel' as creator are late and foreign in origin, showing Christian dualistic influence.
• Vasa: The female water spirit of the Komi-Zyrians. The name is a direct translation of the Russian "vodjanoj" (water-dweller), per Popov.

On the source population: Holmberg distinguishes throughout between votjakit (Votjaks, i.e., Udmurts) and syrjänit (Syrjani, i.e., Komi-Zyrians). Passages about Votjak belief are explicitly labeled as such; passages about Komi-Zyrian belief likewise. This translation preserves that distinction throughout.

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Source Text: Finnish passages from Holmberg, Permalaisten uskonto (1914)

Source: Uno Holmberg, Permalaisten uskonto (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1914). Project Gutenberg ebook #61164, plain text file gutenberg.org/files/61164/61164-0.txt. Passages are cited by approximate line number in the Project Gutenberg plain-text edition.

Passage I: The Three-Layered World (lines ~565–585)

Haudantakaista elämää pakanalliset votjakit nimittävät so dünne ("tuo maailma") tai sopal dünne ("tuonpuolinen maailma"). Maailma on heidän nykyisen käsityksensä mukaan kolmiosainen: taivas, jossa Inmar, taivaan jumala asuu, maa, jossa ihmiset asuvat, ja maanalainen osa jalkaimme alla, jossa vainajat asuvat. Georgi mainitsee, että votjakit tekevät vielä erotuksen erilaisten tuonelaolotilojen välillä, hurskaita varten on olemassa "dunja-juggit" (valoisa elämä), jossa on tarjona kaikenlaista onnea ja hyvää, jota votjakit vain voivat mielessään kuvitella, syntisiä varten on "kuratsin-inti" (katkera paikka). Siellä on monta tervakattilaa, joissa pahoja ihmisiä keitetään.

Passage II: Inmar as Creator and Agricultural Deity (lines ~6280–6330)

Taivaanjumalan palvonta on varmaankin hyvin läheisessä yhteydessä maanviljelyksen kanssa, se kun ennen muita elinkeinoja suuntaa ihmisten katseet taivaalle päin. Että votjakkienkin Inmar on ennen kaikkea maanviljelyksen jumala, osoittaa ilmeisesti se seikka, että hänelle uhrataan etupäässä viljavainioilla. Siitä kertoo jo Rytshkov samalla huomauttaen, että votjakit rukoilevat Inmarilta maalle hedelmällisyyttä. Sitä osoittavat myös määresanat kildis-vordis ("siittävä, ylläpitävä"), joita votjakit uhrirukouksissaan usein antavat taivaanjumalalle.

Vanhin votjakkien Inmarin palvelusta koskeva tiedonanto on Rytshkovin kuvaus: "Pääjumala Ilmer (Inmar) asuu taivaassa ja on kaikki luonut. Hänen juhlaansa vietetään keväällä, jolloin palvonta tapahtuu peltojen keskellä. Sinne menevät sekä miehet että naiset anoen häntä lisäämään heidän vainioittensa hedelmällisyyttä. Uhrieläinten, joina käytetään hevosta, lehmää, lammasta tai vasikkaa, tulee olla valkeakarvaisia."

Passage III: Jen Among the Komi-Zyrians (lines ~6347–6390)

Nykyisen ajan Inmar muistuttaa toiselta puolen muhamettilaisten Allahia, toiselta puolen kristittyjen Jumalaa. Edellisten taholta, jotka varhemmin ovat joutuneet kosketukseen votjakkien kanssa, johtuu Inmarin määresana budzim ("suuri"), jota muhamettilaiset aina Allahia rukoillessaan käyttävät. Kristinuskon vaikutusta todistavat Inmar-atai (I.-isä) sekä Inmar-anai (I.-äiti), jolla votjakit tarkoittavat neitsyt Maariaa. Kolminaisuus Inmar-kildisin-kuaz, joka Glazovin piirin votjakkien uhrirukouksissa säännöllisesti ilmaantuu, ei myöskään voi olla satunnaista, vielä vähemmän omaperäistä.

Samoja suojeluspyhiä, jopa niiden kuviakin nimittävät syrjänit Jen nimellä.

Passage IV: Water Spirits and Omel' (lines ~5987–6065)

...on pikemmin paha ja pelätty kuin hyvä haltia. Jo sen näkeminen ennustaa myrskyä, kuolemaa tai muuta onnettomuutta.

Kristillisenä aikana on vedenhaltia tullut entistään pahemmaksi ja sen nimeä kul' on alettu käyttää myös paholaisen merkityksessä. Sellaisena ei vetehinen voi sietää ristinmerkkiä eikä kirkonkellojen ääntä, jota kuullessaan se aina heti pistäytyy maan sisään. Vihaansa vedenhaltiaa kohtaan osoittaa Jen (taivaan jumala) iskemällä siihen ukkosilmalla salamoitaan.

Kansan alkuperäisen käsityksen mukaan ei kul' kuitenkaan ole ollut ehdottoman paha olento. Zhakov sanoo, että kun vetehiselle uhraa, se antaa kaloja sekä sallii ihmisten matkustaa joilla. Wichmannin muistiinpanoissa kerrotaan, että syrjänit uhraavat järvenhaltialle hyvän kalasaaliin vuoksi voita ja leipää.

...syrjänien käsityksen mukaan omel' (paholainen) on luonut vetehiset, jota vastoin venäläinen rahvas uskoo, että ne ovat syntyneet hukkuneitten hengistä. Perustelut, joilla Nalimov tukee olettamustaan, mikä enemmän lienee kansallistunteen kuin tieteellisen arvostelun aiheuttama, ovat kuitenkin kaikkea todistusvoimaa vailla. Ensinnäkin on huomattava, että kertomukset omel'in luomista hengistä ovat legendoina myöhäis- ja vierasperäisiä, ja toiseksi ei käsitys hukkuneitten muuttumisesta vedenhaltioiksi, jossa kuvastuu sangen alkuperäinen ajatus, ole syrjäneillekään vieras.

Source Colophon

Translated from Uno Holmberg, Permalaisten uskonto (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1914). Project Gutenberg ebook #61164. The full text is freely available at gutenberg.org/files/61164/61164-0.txt. The book is in the public domain; it was published in 1914, and its author (Uno Holmberg/Harva, 1882–1949) died in 1949. Under Finnish copyright law the work is in the public domain. No English translation of this work exists; the Project Gutenberg edition is Finnish only. Source retrieved 2026-03-23.

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