Finnish goddess of the air
Ilmatar
Ilmatar is the Finnish goddess of the air and a virgin spirit in the Kalevala, the national epic. She is the mother of Väinämöinen, the singer-hero of the poem. Her name comes from ilma, "air", and she is also called Luonnotar, "spirit of nature".
The myth
According to the tradition, Ilmatar drifted alone over a vast sea-filled abyss, counting rainbows and letting the wind play through her hair. Lonely and longing for a child, she was pitied by the east wind, who courted her in a stormy romance. Afterwards she conceived Väinämöinen, who would become the great rune-singer of the Kalevala.
While she was pregnant, an eagle nested on her knees and laid seven eggs. When Ilmatar, cramped from staying still, stretched her legs, the eggs fell into the rough sea. Their shells became the sky and the earth, the yolks the sun, the whites the moon, and the scattered fragments the stars. Later she shaped the seas and continents. She barely appears in the older runic songs; her role as mother of the world comes largely from Elias Lönnrot's arrangement of them.
Legacy
In 1913 Jean Sibelius wrote Luonnotar, Op. 70, a tone poem for soprano and orchestra, now counted among his most intense works. The Finnish band Värttinä released the album Ilmatar in 2000, inspired by her origin story. Asteroid 385 Ilmatar is named after her, and in the novel The Quantum Thief, humanoids living in the Oort cloud pray to her. Two liners of the Finland Steamship Company bore her name, and the anime Strike Witches gave the pilot Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen a name that echoes hers.
Ancient sources: Finnish runic songs collected from oral tradition, and the Kalevala compiled by Elias Lönnrot.
In art
Music, opera and dance
- Luonnotar · Jean Sibelius, 1913