Anna-Leena Siikala
Humanist of the day

Anna-Leena Siikala

Academician Anna-Leena Siikala is a scholar of oral traditions and comparative religion. Her works, which cover a wide geographical and historical range, deal with issues relating to folklore, ethnography and cultural anthropology. She has carried out fieldwork in both Finland and the Polynesian Cook Islands, as well as among Russia’s Finno-Ugrian peoples, the Udmurts, the Komi, or Zyrians, and the Khanti of Siberia. Siikala holds that the small departments are an equally important resource for the University as the large ones.

Anna-Leena Siikala

Anna-Leena Siikala (formerly Kuusi, née Aarnisalo)
Born January 1, 1943, Helsinki.
Died February 27, 2016.

Master of Arts (folkloristics), 1968, Licentiate of Philosophy, 1970, Doctor of Philosophy, 1978, University of Helsinki

Academy Professor, Academy of Finland, 1999–2004
Professor of Folkloristics, University of Helsinki, 1995–2007
Professor of the Study of Tradition, 1988–95, University of Eastern Finland
Senior Research Fellow, State Committee for the Humanities, 1986–1988
Acting Professor of Folklore and Comparative Religion, University of Turku, 1979–1982

Publications, research projects and other academic activities

Research interests
Rituals, myths, oral storytelling, poetry written in the Kalevala verse form, regeneration of tradition and its political use in peripheral regions

Awards and Special achievements
Annual Prize for Non-fiction, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing, 2014
Academician, 2009
Kalevala Society prize for academic work, 2007
Commander, Order of the Lion of Finland, 2006
Honorary Member, Finnish Literature Society, 2004
Honorary Member, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2008
Honorary Member, The Kalevala Society, 2011
Honorary Doctorate, University of Joensuu (present-day University of Eastern Finland), 2004
Honorary Doctorate, University of Tartu, 2008
Honorary Doctorate, University of Turku, 2009
Honorary Award, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, 2004
Doctor Honoris Causa of the Societas Ethnographica Hungarica, 2000
Knight (First Class), Finnish Order of the White Rose, 1999
Honorary Professor, Udmurt State University, 1998
Finnish Literature Society Prize for Scientific Literature, 1979, 1992 & 1994

Photo: Sakari Majantie
Written by Anna-Leena Siikala (Tomas Sjöblom, ed.)
Translated by John Calton

Shamanism takes many forms

The 1964 English translation of Mircea Eliade’s book on shamanism (Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase) marked the beginning of a surge in shamanist literature in the West. Readers of these popular books were mainly young people interested in altered states of consciousness.

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Ethnic Minorities on the March

In seeking to examine the living tradition dependent on human interaction, poring over archived material seemed to be a blind alley. When in the 1970s I requested that I be sent to Siberia to study shamanism, I was told that the shamans are long since dead and I would not be going beyond the Ural Mountains until they built hotels in the tundra.

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Mythologies as the Symbols of Nations

For Finns, the poetry of Kalevala is a world of ideas which has served as a cultural foundation for individuals and art as well as the nation. Kalevala, as compiled by Elias Lönnrot, has in fact become a symbol of the Finnish identity, the strength of which has not diminished with time.

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My Best Moments at the University of Helsinki

Parties are typically assured a place in our memories when we look back on the best moments of our lives. In the lively milieu of academic research even everyday activities can feel like a proper party, in particular when they are bolstered by the wisdom of old teachers and the youthful creativity of students.

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Multicultural and Multilingual Research

Fieldwork abroad and many lecture tours to distant countries have shown that young academics studying their own culture benefit from being educated in a country like Finland. Anna-Leena Siikala has continuously strived to further the studies of young post-graduates of Finno-Ugric studies by ensuring that there are grants available to…

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