Finnish paganism was a pagan religion in Finland and Karelia
before the Finnish people were Christian. Finnish paganism is
close to Scandinavian paganism and Baltic paganism. The Finns
believed that there were many gods. Finnish paganism was
animistic. This means that they believed that nature was full of
little and big spirits. The biggest spirits were Gods who had
names, the God of the sky was Ukko, the God of the forest was
Tapio and the God of water was Ahti. There were many other
spirits that had names. Humans had many souls. "Self" and "me"
were two different souls. If one's "self"-soul left him, he was
not dead, but very ill. A Shaman could go to the spirit world to
bring the soul back. The Bear was a holy animal to them, if bear
was killed to make food, he or she was celebrated with a ritual
called Peijainen. The purpose of the ritual was to make the soul
of the bear happy. A happy soul of a bear wants to be
reincarnated into another bear, so that people can eat bears in
the future. The swan was a hol