After the adoption of the traditions of European literary culture and research, Finland began to develop new areas of research over the 19th century, focusing on native and folk culture. This type of research was needed to dig out the roots of Finnish culture and to promote the growth of the nation. The new research was based on spoken material unlike classical humanist research, which worked on literary sources. Hence, the data could not be found on library shelves, as it was collected from the speech of people.

The most significant recorded and studied collection of material turned out to be the old tradition of poetry and song, which later became known as the Kaleva tradition. The name Kaleva issued from Elias Lönnrot’s data from Eastern Finland and Karelia, collectively known as the Kalevala epic, which remains one of the most notable works in Finnish culture.

The publication of the Kalevala in 1835 inspired scholars and students to collect and record what still remained of the tradition. The Finnish Literature Society (SKS, which had been originally founded partly to support Lönnrot’s work and to publish the epic, was an active party promoting the scholars’ work. These moments in history have a decisive role in the process of building the Finnish nation.

On their trips, the collectors of the Kaleva tradition encountered another old custom in Karelia and Ingria: ritual laments by women, which at first aroused both amazement and dread.

It was clear that the lamentations belonged to a set of old traditions, but were unlike other traditions of folk poetry and song both in their use of language and in their performance. They employed a characteristic language and were performed in a voice, which sounded like a combination of singing and crying. The rather alienating effect of the laments was partly explained by the fact that they were sung at folk funerals and weddings, which the scholars from Western Finland, who were used to mostly Christian rituals, had not previously been acquainted with. The collectors came from a tradition where women had a different role, whereas in the eastern lamentation rituals the women took a strong stance to the matters at hand, arousing feelings and interpreting the twists and turns of human life.

A couple of the collectors wrote down lamentations to their best effort, as Lönnrot himself had done in Viena Karelia. Much like Lönnrot in his time, most of the collectors must have thought that they would be of use to future generations of scholars. There were some exceptions in the lot, however, perhaps the most notable of them being the recorder of Western Ingrian lamentations in the 1880’s, Volmari Porkka. After returning home, he wrote an extensive article presenting the data and the cry-women, drawing connections between the tradition he had heard and recorded and the lamentations in the biblical tradition as well as other older literature.

It is evident that the cry-women’s rituals, unlike the epic Kaleva poetry, which also originated in the east, had nothing to do with the development of the Finnish nation. Some Karelian laments were seen at national festivities at the beginning of the 20th century representing Karelian culture, but that was it.

The lamentations remained difficult to interpret and study in many ways, and interest in them would maybe not have sparked if it had not been noticed that the tradition was still alive in both Karelia and Ingria, where the Kaleva poetry had already nearly died out.

When Martti Haavio and Lauri Honko initiated the research project on the lamentations of Baltic Finns at the University of Turku, where I started my career as a research assistant in 1970, plenty of notes on lamentations were already archived, but there were only scarce explanations and very few academic articles. New data was being recorded in both Karelia and Ingria, the latter of which could only be accessed by researchers from Petrozavodsk, such as Eino Kiuru. Recording was made a great deal easier by the then new recording machines.

During our research project, Honko mostly focused on recording Karelian (and later also Vepsian) lamentations, which he had already started earlier. Around that same time, recording the lamentations had also become the primary objective of some researchers of Karelia from Petrozavodsk. The Ingrian-born Unelma Konkka and the Viena Karelian Aleksandra Stepanova worked extensively on recording and researching Karelian lamentations. Collaboration and discussions with them were priceless to us scholars from Turku. We also worked together with Estonian scholars, who specialised in the study of Southeastern Estonian Seto laments.

My task in the lamentation project was to collect Ingrian laments from the archives, to study them and to publish the collection of material. In addition to mapping out the Ingrian lamentations’ language, content and history, the research acquainted me with many other topics: the study of death and grieving as well as funeral and wedding rituals, the social structures of the Ingrian rural community, especially the role and influence of women. A great starting point to the research I got from the studies I had done in Folk Poetry and Religious Studies as well as getting acquainted with the closely related languages Estonian, Olonets Karelian, Vepsian and Votic. As lamentations, especially ones related to death, but also to some extent matrimonial or bridal laments, are an old universal tradition, there was a relatively large amount of background and comparative material on ritual crying for me to use.

Lamening as a women’s tradition and as an indication of their cultural competence in older societies both near and far led me, naturally, to think about and to examine women’s place and role in both their private lives and in culture and society. This is how lamentations gradually built me a bridge to new feminist thinking and Women’s Studies – although much more than lamentations were needed for that.