September 19, 2005
Believe it or not
Last weekend both of us were a bit sick. It is really scary to run fever right now in Leijonakaupunki, as there're already over 9500 dengue fever cases & 8 deaths since the beginning of the year. The more I read about it, the less I'd like to contract it... However, I woke up this morning feeling exceptionally healthy.. No choice, lah, got to go to work, lah..
As we both felt dizzy and weak yesterday, we decided to see The Brothers Grimm movie. Wow, it was scary from the minute one! It got me thinking about how forest is perceived and represented in the movie. This was a German forest - evil, haunted and cursed. Surprisingly, forest is perceived as a holy peaceful place that gives shelter and feeds people both in Lithuania and Finland. Lithuanian classic literature has several pieces describing the beauty of forest, basically worshiping it. Finnish literature, I don't really know, but I believe so.. Even these days a common Finn has a very special (and positive) relationship, some kind of symbiosis with forest :) Anyway, in the Middle ages Lithuanians still had temples in the forest and worshiped trees. German crusaders, christians, that came to Lithuania were cutting down holy oak woods and in general thought that forest is evil. How and why? There's some written evidence in chronicles about crusaders claiming that Lithuanian forests were full of spirits and demons. Maybe they were right? Were the Germans bringing the modernity, aiming to control the nature, kill and drive the spirits away till they turned back, fought and did evil things?
It is interesting to think about how forest/jungle is perceived in here. In general it is something to be fought against and controlled (Leijonakaupunki excells really well in this), but the old beliefs and habits still prevail. I was surprised to learn that Leijonakaupunki youngsters are taught in the army (yes yes, the powerful and efficient Leijonakaupunki army) to excuse themselves and ask forest spirits for forgiveness when they need to pee in the forest. They also don't have night shifts on Thursday nights, because it is a bad day for Muslims (or the night when Muslim demons are roaming free or smth like that). There's a lot of stories, what happens when soldiers are sent to do something in the forest on Thursday night. For example, one of the soldier's intestines could be found in his rucksack, people disappearing, etc. All this was told to me by my colleague, a big guy, he said the intestine story happened the year before he joined the army.. You want to believe this? Or not?
Several weeks ago I went to a storytelling event where people retold ancient tales from the region. One of the stories was about native Orang Asli people that still live in the jungle in Malaysia. They're know for being badly integrated into the modern society & still very much living according to the rhythm of forest and nature. The story was about the first shaman of Orang Asli people. He learned how to control the spirits of the forest (called "bes" that is strangely the same word in Russian for a "devil"!) & he could negotiate with them not to harm his people. My colleague made an unexpeted connection with the real case of 3 young boys (1 from Leijonakaupunki) getting lost in a very touristy & well explored area of forest in Fraser Hill that happened few months ago. Somehow the children strayed away from the path and went missing for about a week. They were found safe and healthy by an Orang Asli man. My colleague told me that one of the explanations she heard from the people was that the boys did something wrong in the forest and the spirits lead them away from the path. These stories are always similar - familiar places start looking strange all of a sudden & you seem to be walking round and round (and possibly find a ginger bread house ir a bear's cottage or smth similar). When it is time to go home, you find yourself just few steps away from the road or home or some familiar place. So the explanation goes that you get trapped in alternative reality and forest spirits deliberately keep confusing you, till somehow you break through. The story of the 3 boys is that one Orang Asli man went out to the forest "to find the boys". He actually asked the spirits to help him look for them them & it didn't take him longer than few hours to find them stranded 7km from the familiar road (although helicopters & volunteer teams were brushing the forest for a week!). Want to believe this? Or not?
Spirits and ghosts seem to be everywhere around us in the modern Leijonakaupunki. For example, one should never change the seats in the cinema, even if they're unoccupied, because some of the seats are given to the invisible ghosts (but they're still there, sitting and trying to enjoy the movie! of course, they get furious when someone sits on their lap!), also the first row is almost always reserved to the ancestors & spirits. My colleague sayed that some people are born with an invisible veil on their eyes. If they have the veil, they see many things not visible for others, they can glance to the alternative realities, see ghosts and spirits. The same big guy, my colleague said that there were 5 other poeple living in his childhood house. His grandmother saw all of them, he saw only 4. He said that whenever he saw these people, they used to get very scared of him as well... Apparently he has a veil on his eyes.. Want to believe this? Or not?
Posted by gkligyte at September 19, 2005 08:56 PM