Oldest Oral Legend

[clairobscur]

*Originally posted by CaptEgo *
**The reason I brought it up however is the fact that there are still active Finnish ‘Rune Singers’ who continue to pass on the knowledge to each other orally.
**

That’s great! I like storytellers. I don’t know how they compare to runesingers, but I certainly would like we had something similar over here…

[Spoke]

tisiphone wrote:

There’s a really neat one about giant beavers, and why they no longer exist. Interestingly enough, one of the more common Ice Age fossils we have up here is that of the giant beaver.

Now that’s really interesting. I had wondered whether tales of megafauna might still be alive in native lore. (But, to maintain a healthy skepticism, I also have to wonder whether the story of giant beavers has been passed down from when they were still alive, or whether it arose later, as a way of explaining the fossils.)

[Manduck]

*Originally posted by Tuckerfan *
**That got me to wondering what the oldest oral legend would be. **

I bet it’s the one about the man from Nantucket.

[Johanna]

Speaking of the Kalevala…

The Theft of the Sampo story is considered the oldest core of all in Finnish mythology. The Sampo mill symbolizes the world axis, the same as Hamlet’s mill. The world axis mythology is found throughout Central Asian and Siberian Ural-Altaic shamanistic lore. (Recall the 9th-century Central Asian astronomer al-Farghani who located the axis of the cosmic mill in Ursa Minor.) When the Sampo is stolen, this celestial center is removed away to another place. This is how the Finnish myth expresses the shift of the celestial pole that is seen in the precession of the equinoxes.

[tisiphone]

*Originally posted by spoke- *
**

Now that’s really interesting. I had wondered whether tales of megafauna might still be alive in native lore. (But, to maintain a healthy skepticism, I also have to wonder whether the story of giant beavers has been passed down from when they were still alive, or whether it arose later, as a way of explaining the fossils.) **

Could well be either. In fact, this story is part of a display in one of our local museums, the Beringia Centre, and both theories are presented.

Unfortunately, those stories don’t often come with celestial events, never mind identifiable ones. Most of them happened in Grandfather Time - which has some parallels with the Australian Dreamtime, IMHO.

But as I said, according to legend, the First Nations hunted and ate mastodon as recently as just over a hundred years ago. And according to a story I only found once - and that a turn-of-the-century newspaper clipping - that a First Nations chief had sketched and described a four-tusked elephant as something his grandfather’s grandfather had hunted. I forget which pachyderm relation that is - I’m not much of a specialist in Beringian megafauna, I’m afraid.

[furt]

Tisiphone: Have you ever thought about doing a “ask the guy who lives in Whitehorse” thread?

I’m one of those people who loves to look at maps and daydream, and I’ve always wanted to go up there…

[tisiphone]

/hijack, sorry/

*Originally posted by furt *
**Tisiphone: Have you ever thought about doing a “ask the guy who lives in Whitehorse” thread?

I’m one of those people who loves to look at maps and daydream, and I’ve always wanted to go up there… **

Woman.

Uhhh,not really. I’ve been afraid it would be autoclassified as “Another Inane Ask The…Thread”, and die a miserable death with only three mocking replies. And I’d be crushed.

Lemme think about it, and maybe I will sometime over the holidays. I ought to have enought time to spare to tend it if it gasp takes off…I have a middlin’ good grasp of the history…

/end hijack/