From Harva's Survey of Permian Religion
This is the sixth part of a series of translations from Uno Holmberg's Permalaisten uskonto (The Religion of the Permian Peoples; Helsinki, 1914). This part and the next — "Memorial Feasts and the Cult of the Ancestors" — together translate the entirety of Holmberg's second chapter, "Vainajainpalvonta" (The Worship of the Dead), the longest and arguably most important chapter of the book. What emerges from Holmberg's patient assembly of fieldwork reports is a portrait of a people for whom the dead were not gone but merely relocated — living in their graves as in houses, hungry, cold, lonely, capable of anger and of love, needing food and drink and fire and clothing, and above all needing to be remembered.
Two soul-concepts stand at the heart of Permian religion. The urt — the shadow-soul, the ghost-double — departs the body during fright or sleep, appears as a bat or a white butterfly, and after death becomes the ancestor-spirit that haunts and protects the living. The lul — the breath-soul, the life-force — departs at the moment of death as steam or vapour through the mouth, and vanishes into the air. Only the urt survives death as an entity that can be fed, clothed, addressed, feared, and loved. The Komi-Zyrian parallels are exact: ort (shadow-soul) and lol/lov (breath-soul). This dual soul-system is, as Holmberg notes, of great antiquity within the Finno-Ugric world.
The burial customs described here preserve a worldview of astonishing concreteness. The dead are given tools, clothes, food, drink, money, a comb, a bathing-whisk, a shoe-last and birch-bark for making new footgear, and for children a favourite toy and honey smeared on the lips. Unmarried girls receive extra clothing "because unmarried men in the afterlife prefer to court those with ample dowries." Everything the dead might need, the living provide — and everything that touched the corpse is afterwards destroyed, burned, or cast into the forest at a special "bark-disposal place," for the contamination of death must not return to the house of the living.
I. The Two Souls
Besides the visible body, a person possesses, in the Votjak understanding, invisible parts: the spirit lul and the phantom urt. In later times the former soul-name has, doubtless under the influence of foreign culture, come to the fore. The old meaning of the word urt, by contrast, has already in many regions faded from memory, and the word itself survives only in a very few old-fashioned phrases. Only the eastern Votjaks, living in the provinces of Perm and Ufa, who at least in part have preserved their paganism more completely than others, still use alongside the more modern lul designation the old urt word when speaking of the human soul.
Of the old-fashioned phrases in which the urt designation appears, and which are known in most Votjak regions, let us mention a few, since they at the same time reflect the Votjaks' most original conception of the soul and its properties. One such phrase is: urtez koshkem ("his soul has departed"), by which the Votjaks express that a person has for one reason or another been deeply frightened — for they have believed, in the manner of many natural peoples, that the soul leaves its dwelling when a person is frightened. When the soul has departed, which in their understanding also occurs during severe illness, a seer is called to search for it and bring it back, so that the person may recover consciousness and health. Such a ceremony the Votjaks call urt-kuton ("soul-searching").
The name urt-kuton is used in the province of Ufa also for a kind of name-renewal ceremony, which takes place when a child falls ill and the illness is believed to result from the child having happened to receive the wrong name at birth. This detail shows how closely a person's name and urt are connected with one another. Vasiljev mentions that the Votjaks of the Sarapul district also call the above-mentioned ceremony lul-uttshan ("soul-searching"), but the latter phrasing is doubtless more recent than the former.
Besides during fright and illness, the urt can detach from the body while a person sleeps. Then it may appear in visible form, usually as a bat. A certain Votjak elder in the province of Ufa explained that one never sees the aforementioned creatures by day — for the reason that people are then awake — but only at night, when they sleep. If a bat that a person sees approaches him, it is a sign that it is the soul of some relative or acquaintance. The old man even presented a story as proof that the bat truly is a soul-bird: "A man went to bed, but his companions stayed awake sitting in the yard. They saw a bat flying about in certain places. When the sleeper awoke, they asked him what he had dreamed while sleeping. The man reported that in his dream he had walked here and there — that is, in exactly the same places where the bird had flown. From this the men concluded that the bat they had seen was the sleeping man's soul." If the urt does not manage to return to its dwelling before the person wakes, the person falls ill, grows pale, and begins to waste away. For this reason one must not wake a sleeper suddenly or by force.
Besides in the form of a bat, the soul may also appear as a small white butterfly, which on summer evenings appears at the window. In this way the souls of the dead in particular appear to their relatives. A certain Votjak mother in the province of Kazan said to her child, when a butterfly fluttered at the window during the celebration of the deceased father's memorial feast: "his soul has arrived in the form of a butterfly." Sometimes even a living person's soul may appear thus. In the village of Mozhga in the district of Birsk I heard it told that when the urt, during a person's fright, has detached from the body, the people turn to a charm-woman, who with a white cloth in hand begins to search for it. After searching everywhere she finally notices a small white butterfly, captures it in her cloth, brings it into the dwelling, and ties the cloth with the butterfly around the sick person's neck for the night. The following morning the matter is investigated by tin-casting, to determine whether the captured soul-butterfly is truly the sick person's urt. The ceremony, called urtse kistalon ("soul-casting"), is performed by pouring molten tin while reading a charm into a water-basin that is held above the sick person's head. If the tin does not scatter but forms a whole and shapely figure, it is a sign that the sick person's urt has been found. The tin figure, urtkuton uzves ("soul-searching tin"), is thereafter hung as an amulet around the person's neck.
A sleeping person's soul also appears as a butterfly in a tale that I recorded in the Mamadysh district of the province of Kazan: "Two men went into the forest to fell trees. At midday they rested. One fell asleep. His companion saw how from his mouth the lul flew forth in the form of a butterfly and went into the water-bucket the men had with them in the forest. From the water it flew into the hollow of a lime tree, from there it went again into the water-vessel and from there back into the sleeping man's mouth. Then the sleeper woke. On waking he said to his companion: 'I fell asleep and had a dream — I was swimming across a river, on the far bank of which was a tree with a hollow, and in the hollow were many gold coins.' After finishing their work the men returned home, but after a little while the companion of the sleeper, who had seen where the man's soul had moved during his dream, went back to the forest, found the said tree, and discovered there much money." The storyteller called the soul-butterfly, despite using the word lul for the soul's name, by the name urt-bugl'i ("soul-butterfly"). The Votjaks consider harassing or killing the said butterfly a great sin.
II. The Zyrian Soul
The Votjak soul-names and partly also the concepts attached to them correspond to the Zyrian lol (also lov) and ort. Among the Zyrians too, lol has in modern times come to the fore. Dobrotvorskij relates of the Permians of the Orlov district that when holding a memorial feast for the dead they open the door, seat themselves at the table, and invite the deceased's soul (lol) to dine with them. That lol has preserved even its original meaning of breath-soul right down to our time is evident from the beliefs that Nalimov mentions — namely, that lov in the Zyrian understanding dwells inside the skull and that when a person dies it escapes into the air in the form of vapour.
The lol may sometimes detach from the body also during sleep. This is shown by the following story recorded by the same collector, in which it is told how the lol of a certain woman, while she slept, left its dwelling and ran back and forth across the sleeping woman's breast in the form of a small mouse. Meanwhile the woman's mouth became covered by the blanket, but the soul changed back into vapour and as such returned to the body, so that the sleeper could rise refreshed from her bed. The "soul-mouse" belief appearing in the story, which the Zyrians likely received through Russian intermediation, is found also among the Germanic peoples.
Alongside the lol-soul concept, in many regions the older ort has also been preserved, though its meaning has somewhat changed from before — for in the present folk understanding, the ort resembles a person's guardian spirit or protective genius rather than a proper soul. Nalimov relates that every person has an ort, which always stays near the person it protects. It takes part in the person's activities and appears in dreams, usually in the likeness of its charge. Popov mentions that a child receives its ort at birth, from which time it follows the person wherever they go. Several writers further know that the ort is above all a herald of death. Then it appears either as a blue flame — ort-bi ("ort's fire") — or in the form of the person in question; sometimes it pinches blue marks into the skin.
In some regions the ort has become entirely separated from the person. Wiedemann, who in his Zyrian dictionary translates ort with the words "ghost of the dead, guardian spirit, apparition, hallucination, spectre," adds that the Zyrians believe the ort dwells in birds. The death omen appears in this case when a bird violently flies into the room, strikes its head against the wall, and dies. After its guardian the person himself soon dies. Thus even among the Zyrians the ort has developed into a soul-bird, but the belief attached to it, which resembles our own folk belief, nevertheless differs from the Votjak soul-bird concept.
III. The Breath-Soul and the Moment of Death
Returning again to the Votjaks: the urt and lul originally differ greatly from each other in that, although the urt may at times leave its dwelling while the person sleeps or is ill, the lul remains faithfully in the body throughout life. The latter was originally not conceived as a personal soul-being at all, but rather was understood merely as the life-phenomenon that appears in breathing as breath or vapour. The word lul, which is of Finno-Ugric origin, was already by Europaeus rightly compared with the Finnish word löyly (steam, vapour — now the word for the steam of the sauna). Only with the coming of death, which the Votjaks call lul-polon ("departure of the breath"), does the lul leave the human body forever.
The lul departs its dwelling through the mouth or nostrils, "for its rattling is last heard at the top of the throat." What this lul is and where it goes, the Votjaks cannot explain. Mihail Jelabuzhskij mentions that a few Votjak elders told him that when a person dies, his soul (naturally lul) evaporates into the air like steam. Among the Votjaks of the province of Kazan the belief is generally current that when a great sorcerer dies, a whirlwind or storm arises. The notion of wind caused by "the departure of the breath" does not appear to be unknown to the Zyrians either.
As tracelessly as the lul, the urt does not vanish at death. It retains its human features and is, even after death, the faithful companion of the body. This is easily understood when we know that the urt is precisely the dead person's phantom- or shadow-soul. While the body lies "on birch-bark sheets" the urt moves about in its vicinity. After burial it stays for a time at the home and then moves to the cemetery, from which it may, however, from time to time, summoned or unsummoned, come to visit the house and the household. It can also be settled by special ceremonies in a designated special place. Of these two souls of the dead, only the urt therefore remains an object of the descendants' worship.
IV. The Three-Layered Afterworld
Life beyond the grave the pagan Votjaks call 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 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), where there stand many cauldrons of tar in which evil people are boiled.
More original, however, is the conception that the dead of the same lineage 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. In this conception there 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.
Life there is in every way a continuation of earthly life. A child can grow, one who died unmarried can marry, and each deceased person may generally pursue the same occupations as when living on earth. There the dead can also, like the living, go hungry, be in want, suffer from cold, and so forth.
That the Zyrians once held exactly the same belief is clearly reflected in the conception still preserved in some regions that a person after death continues the occupation of their lifetime — the hunter hunts, the fisherman fishes. Moreover, as Nalimov observes, their custom of calling both the house and the coffin by the same name gort ("home") demonstrates this. Even their original thought held that the bosom of the grave was the dead person's true abode.
V. The Burial
Although Votjak burial customs vary somewhat in different regions, the main ceremonies are everywhere the same. As soon as the lul has departed, the dead person's eyes and mouth are closed, butter is placed in the mouth, and sometimes the whole body is anointed with it. Then a cloth is spread over the dead and preparations for burial begin at once, for the Votjaks do not keep the dead long in their dwelling. If burial cannot be performed on the same day the life was extinguished, the deceased is left at home for the night, but that night no one goes to bed. While the dead person is at home, no one may begin working.
Before the body stiffens, the dead person's hands and feet are straightened, the deceased is lifted onto birch-bark sheets and washed with soaped whisks and lukewarm water. The deceased often designates before death who is to perform this task. A male body is washed by men, a female by women. The deceased is believed, before washing, to hear everything that is said around them. They may also show their feelings toward the washers. If some of the washers are disagreeable to the deceased, the body holds its limbs stiff and rigid, clenches its fists, and so forth. If, on the other hand, the body is soft and pliable, then all the washers are acceptable.
When the body is washed, the deceased is dressed in a white festive garment, new leg-wraps and bast shoes are tied on the feet. Men are given a homemade felt hat on the head, often also mittens, and for the elderly a walking-staff in the hand. Women are dressed in adornments befitting their age. Thus equipped, the deceased is placed in the coffin (koros), which in former times was hewn by hollowing out a log. The dead person's pillow is made from a bathing-whisk with a cushion spread over it. In the coffin the deceased is placed on their back, the head-end turned toward the door.
The dead are given all manner of necessary objects, among which may be mentioned: a kettle, a cup, an axe, a knife, a spade, a spoon, a bathing-whisk, a comb, a purse, a tobacco pouch and tinderbox if the dead person was a smoker; moreover birch-bark sheets, a shoe-last, and an awl for making new footwear are placed in the coffin. Women are given needles and thread. Furthermore, money is placed in the deceased's hand — which some explain as the price of the land (muzem kerlim) that the dead person will henceforth own; others say the deceased must have money to ransom themselves from the power of shaitan (the devil).
Besides useful objects, the dead are also given clothing. A wife places an undergarment in her husband's coffin, "so that the deceased may change clothes when needed." A husband collects towels and ornaments for his wife's coffin. For unwed maidens, many different articles of clothing are placed, "because the unmarried men in the afterlife prefer to court those with ample dowries." A bride whose life was extinguished shortly before her wedding is given her sewing and urged to marry in the new life. Children receive a cup, a spoon, and their favourite toys, "so they do not grow bored and long for their mother."
VI. The Grave and the Purification
To their underground dwelling the dead also receive provisions: bread and salt, meat and pancakes, and homemade spirits — kumyshka and the like — "so that they do not return home hungry to disturb the household's peace." Children receive an egg or a bottle of milk; often honey and butter are smeared on their mouths.
Before the coffin is carried to the yard, the relatives jump over it, "so that they will not fear the dead." The deceased is conveyed to the grave by sleigh or wagon depending on the season. Among the eastern Votjaks, the deceased is not placed in the coffin until at the graveside. In the coffin-lid, on the right side at the level of the head, a small square hole is carved so that the dead person's urt may freely pass through it as needed — the hole is therefore called urt vellon pas ("soul's passage hole"). Before the coffin is closed, one of the deceased's relatives tears a white cloth, which they have brought to the cemetery, in half at the graveside: the part that remains in the left hand is laid on the dead person's breast; the right-hand part is taken home and tied for a year to the beam or wall of the dwelling. While tearing, the words are spoken: "just as part of this cloth remains here and part we take home, so do not yet wholly part from us."
The deepest dread of the dead is most clearly reflected in the purification ceremonies connected with burial, by means of which the living seek to free themselves from the painful and often destructive company of the dead. Objects that have in any way been in close contact with the dead are considered contaminated. The relatives do not use them, but destroy them by burning or casting them onto the meadow. All cloths on which the deceased lay are burned, and the sleigh on which the body was carried is left to rot. The widespread custom has been to cast these objects to a special designated place called kir-kujan ("bark-disposal place"), named for the birch-bark sheets on which the dead person lay during washing.
To prevent the deceased from visiting home uninvited after death, the Votjaks observe many superstitious customs. In the Jelabuga district they place an axe on the threshold as the body is carried out, so that death in that household may cease. In many regions the door is taken off its hinges when the body is carried out and rehung so that it opens from the opposite side. Shestakov knows of Glazov Votjaks who do not carry the dead through the door at all, but through the window — and if the body cannot pass that way, they open the roof and take the dead out through the roof. To confuse the deceased so that they cannot find the way home, the Votjaks in some regions place the coffin on a log in the yard and spin it three times counter-clockwise.
The proper purification rites, however, take place only upon return from the cemetery. At the cemetery gate the eastern Votjaks begin to free themselves from the pressing company of the dead: one of the escort, who has brought spruce branches to the cemetery, strikes their companions on the back, saying: "go to your home, do not remain here!" In other places the escort-men, returning from the cemetery, wave juniper branches at their sides and cry: "do not come along, go to your homes!" Having returned home, the escort purifies themselves by smoking themselves with incense, jumping over fire, or rubbing their hands in ashes. The most common means of purification, however, is bathing in the sauna.
Colophon
This is a Good Works Translation.
Source: Uno Holmberg (Harva), Permalaisten uskonto (Suomensuvun uskonto 2), Porvoo: Werner Söderström, 1914–15. Chapter 2: "Vainajainpalvonta" (Worship of the Dead), first half. Project Gutenberg #61164.
Translator: Vös III of the Tulku Lineage, with the New Tianmu Anglican Church, March 2026. Translated from Finnish. No English translation of this chapter has previously been published.
Note: Holmberg's Finnish text is a secondary scholarly account drawing on fieldwork reports by Georgi, Rytshkov, Müller, Aminoff, Wichmann, Pervuhin, Vereshtshagin, Gavrilov, Vasiljev, Shestakov, Bogaevskij, Nalimov, Popov, Wiedemann, Hlopin, and others. Translating from Finnish into English constitutes a genuine act of translation from the source language. The second half of this chapter — covering memorial feasts, ancestor worship, the horse-wedding bone procession, and the dead as protectors — is published separately as "Memorial Feasts and the Cult of the Ancestors."
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Source Text (Finnish)
The source text for this translation is Uno Holmberg's Permalaisten uskonto, Chapter 2: "Vainajainpalvonta," lines 387–886 of the Project Gutenberg text file #61164. The full Finnish text is freely available at:
Source Colophon
Uno Holmberg (Harva), Permalaisten uskonto (Suomensuvun uskonto 2). Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1914–15. Project Gutenberg eBook #61164, released 2020. Public domain.
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