Well actually finnish have little to do with the norse...
Finnish language has nothing and culture little to do with neither the germanic (German, danish, english, islandic, swedish, norwegian, dutch) nor slavic (russia, poland, check, latvia, lithuania, etc.)
Finland is certainly politically and historically bound to scandinavia from the 1300's onwards, but the myth, ancient religion of the finnish etc. have nothing to do with them.
We are speaking of totally different cultural sphere from its most neighbours. The myths have more similarities to estonian and uralian tribal then to Russian or norse/scandinavian. As the cultural sphere associates even loosely with definately less then 8 million people, one just has to "find" it. Tolkien did and glad that he did.
Janne Harju
PS. Must correct myself... faerie I believe were originally consept in the Cymric/celtic myth, not anglosaxon.
[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: bombur ]
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