I'm working on this again. During this week and the following two, I have five days of school, total. I'm writing up some documents, and I'll have to take screenshots from the game and that kind of boring stuff, but pretty soon I'll get to making new sprites and other interesting stuff. I also went to see a Kalevala-themed exhibition in Helsinki (to get some inspiration), and have been reading about early Finnish shamanism again.
I read about a really interesting Scandinavian shamanistic tradition that was also found in Finland: rage-trance. A shaman has a strong "luonto" or "haltija". When you say that something is "in his nature", well,
that's the nature where it's in. These shamans rise their spirits high ('olla haltijoissaan', 'nostaa luontoaan'), and then shout and spit and rage and hit things, and may do traditional trance-trickery such as walking through fire, and the book I've been reading compares it to berserkers. Must've been a sight, a wizard running after spirits with an axe in hand, pausing to stomp the ground when his other hand starts shaking on its own!
For some reason, reading the book also reminded me of a talk I had with my father when I was younger. I wondered what I could've been if I didn't live in modern times, what with my poor eyesight and introverted nature and poor physique. Matter-of-factly, he told me that I would have been a shaman.
Re: Kaleva, Songs of Sorcery - 0.87 released
Hybrid Mode
