Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation, alekkonkka@outlook.com
ABSTRACT
Introduction: the article is devoted to the methods of using the “kesu stump” in Karelian magic – the dried (often scorched by a forest fire) tar stump of coniferous tree.
Objective: to identify and systematize information about kesu stumps in the commercial and healing magic of the Karelians, as well as to determine the mythological semantics of the object.
Research materials: texts of spells extracted from the SKVR website (Suomen kansan vanhat runot); materials on ethnography and folklore, dictionary entries and encyclopedia data.
Results and novelty of the research: the scientific novelty of the study is the first introduction into scientific circulation of rare and hard-to-reach materials on practical magic taken from Finnish collections of texts and other sources. It is especially worth emphasizing that no research has been conducted on this subject. The result of the text analysis was the map-scheme given in the article, which gives a clear localization of the center of origin of mythological ideas about kesu stumps, which is the territory of the White Sea Karelia. The main component of magical actions is fire: a sick person is dragged through the fire from burning chips of a kesu stump, he is passed through traps, water is heated on it for treatment, etc. Sometimes, as an additional means of influence, along with the fire from the kesu stump, chips from a tree struck by lightning are used, as if transferring the “fiery essence” of the tree to a specific situation in which it is necessary to drive away or destroy the sent damage or spirits of diseases. In some cases, for these purposes, they resort to the roots of the kesu stump, through which unwanted elements are expelled into the lower world, using the location of the stump on the border between the worlds. In this regard, the presented material, in the author’s opinion, supports the hypothesis that the burial of the dead in stumps among some peoples is associated not only with the “return” to the tree (as the place of the mythological birth of man), but also with the method of transition to the underworld, the world of the dead.

Key words: kesu stump, magical practices, Karelians, Finns, peoples of Siberia, mythological parallels

For citation: Konkka A. The “fire” stump kesu of the Karelian-Finnish area and its mythological parallels // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2025; 15 (3/62): 529–542.