I should add that the Kalevala is on my short list of epics to re-read; Rachel and I just re-read Beowulf and enjoyed it very much indeed. I don’t remember it, but apparently there’s a whole section about a bear hunt.

Sounds interesting. As you’ll see, I referenced the Jungian “Earth Mother” archetype in the last section, despite my distaste for Jung. He himself apparently talked about dreams of bears in relation to it. Plus, I figured that, regardless of their scientific soundness or lack thereof, Jung’s ideas have now thoroughly embedded themselves in our culture, thus becoming authentic myths about myths.

Thanks! Yes, indeed, and not just pagans — some of it has survived to modern times. That landmark paper I drew on for Part 6, “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere,” has much about the Finns, and I included at least one Finnish hunters’ euphemism, “honey paws.” (I think a couple of the others are also pretty close to translations of Finnish terms, but were actually taken from different cultures.) The author’s conclusion is that the bear cult is a circumpolar remnant of very ancient Paleolithic belief and ceremony. What’s interesting too is that the ways in which this ancient belief system adapted to more recent, farming cultures had strong parallels on both sides of the Atlantic. I wrote about the straw bear midwinter festivals of northern Europe (which still survive), but the Lenape Indians of what is now Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York also had a renewal-of-the-world midwinter ceremony in which a bear hunt was essential to the continued fertility of crops.