The Fabled Life of A.I. AHJOPÄÄ (1890-1952):
—How the object of study became folklorist’s destiny

Akseli Ilmari Ahjopää was born in 1890 in Vyborg, Finland. His parents were the pharmacist Johan Christian, and Mrs. Ida Lovisa Ahlqvist. Ahjopää changed his Swedish surname into its Finnish form in 1915. An undergraduate of the Vyborg Classical Lyceum in 1909, he studied Finnish and comparative folklore in the University of Helsinki, becoming Master of Arts in 1915, Licentiate of Philosophy in 1919, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1921. He died in 1952 in Helsinki.

Akseli Ilmari Ahjopää found his calling at an early age. Having read the Finnish national epic Kalevala from cover to cover at the age of seven, he became fascinated by Finnish mythology and the rhythm of the poetry.

At the University of Helsinki, Ahjopää was guided by one of our most significant researchers in the history of folklore, the Professor Kaarle Krohn. Even as a student, Ahjopää questioned the prevalent geographical and historical bias of his teachers, which stated that the Western Finland was the cradle of all Finnish poetry.

Following in his mentor’s footsteps, Ahjopää specialized in the research of spell lore. He chose Savo as his area of research, given that the area’s oral folklore had been studied conspicuously little by the 1910s in contrast to Karelia, which had received a permanent status as the archaic home of our cultural heritage due to Lönnrot’s work and the completion of Kalevala.

In 1921, A. I. Ahjopää defended his dissertation, titled “Incantations from Savo for the Curing of Sickness,” in which he reviews spells recorded in the Savo area and preserved in the archives of the Finnish Literary Society. The dissertation was met with a mixed reception due to Ahjopää’s conclusion that on the basis of the spells gathered in the Southern Savo area, one could reconstruct “an essential core of incantations.” These spells contained mythological elements to which there are no correspondences anywhere else in Finland.

In 1924, Ahjopää decided to undertake a journey of gathering spells in ten districts of the Southern Savo. The first target of the journey was to be the district of Sulkava, where a local elementary school teacher advised Ahjopää to visit the village of Iitlahti, the home of the most highly regarded healer, the old man of Iikasti.

The old man of Iikasti lived by the little Lake Tokee in a run-down cottage. None of the inhabitants of the neighbouring farmhouses knew his exact age, but they estimated him to be around eighty. Ahjopää was told that the old man was a quiet recluse who did not interact with other people except when healing a sick supplicant. The people of Iitlahti regarded the old man with some fear, yet they had the deepest of respect for him due to his healing abilities.

Ahjopää’s extant diary entries tell us that he met the old man of Iikasti for the first time on the 17^th of June in 1924. It took a long time to persuade the old man to reveal his spells. Ahjopää returned to the cottage many times. Little by little, the stranger acquired the old man’s trust. Ahjopää was at first allowed to accompany him on fishing trips and walks in the forest.

In the beginning of September of the year 1924, Ahjopää had managed to review the spells traditions of Puumala and Juva, and he was discontent with the results. The silence of the old man of Iikasti fascinated the mind of the resilient researcher, particularly after the people of Iitlahti had told him that besides madness and feeble-mindedness, there was almost no ailment that the old man could not cure. Ahjopää returned to the shores of the Lake Tokee, and this time the old man began to share his secrets with him.

The notes concerning the interviews with the old man of Iikasti are obscure due to the fact that Ahjopää made use of, perhaps in order to conceal his material, a peculiar form of semi-cryptography. The notes contain a plethora of abbreviations and symbols which replace conventional words. Yet, after a five-year analysis, a large part of the text has now been deciphered.

The old man of Iikasti is known to have revealed to Ahjopää numerous spells for curing sickness. Apparently, the incantations contain a lot of inscrutable words or sentences, since among the notes from the spells there are many phonetically written excerpts, whose language, let alone the contents, have not been adequately defined. Whole pages in the notes contain writing which has been conducted phonetically.

It would appear that Ahjopää went through some kind of shamanistic journey with the old man of Iikasti. In his diary he describes how the old man made him drink “a thick brew, rather resembling tar in its composition,” and how the drink “reeks of swamp and has a taste of repulsive bitterness.” The brew would render the drinker unconscious, allowing him to “sink deeper and deeper through the layers of the Earth,” as Ahjopää described his experience.

On the evidence of the notes, Ahjopää travelled with the old man of Iikasti to the mountain of the people of the latter’s foremothers, far back in time. He understood this place to be the source of the old man’s lore of healing. “They spoke a strange tongue, but at that moment I understood everything. Everything. And I conversed with them in their own language, as if in a dream.” Ahjopää estimated that their stay with the tribe lasted for “several cycles of the Moon,” but upon waking up in the old man’s cottage he realized having actually been in a state of trance for mere three days.

Ahjopää emerged from this experience a changed man. His wife and colleagues in Helsinki found that the formerly tranquil researcher had become inordinarily agitated after his return from Sulkava. Ahjopää spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Helsinki, immersed in drawing and writing. He spoke little about his gathering journey, nevertheless hinting to colleagues that he had stumbled upon something quite unprecedented.

As soon as the snow melted in the spring of 1925, Ahjopää returned to Sulkava only to learn that the old man of Iikasti had died during the winter. Ahjopää moved into the empty cottage of the old man and began a solitary project of excavation at a swamp near the mountain known as Likasti. Ahjopää’s actions bewildered the locals in the village of Iitlahti; he became scarce of speech and isolated himself in the cabin. One of the villagers reported having seen Ahjopää build a temporary encampment on the top of the mountain Likasti where the researcher had begun to spend his nights.

In August, Mrs. Elina Ahjopää arrived with her brother in search of her husband, of whom no word had arrived in Helsinki for three months. Doctor Akseli Ilmari Ahjopää was found at the top of the mountain Likasti suffering from severe weight loss, holding in his hands a strange block of iron of which he would not let go. Two men from nearby farms helped carry Ahjopää down the steep mountain. The shocked wife collected her husband’s travelling gear and papers from the cabin of the old man of Iikasti.

And so it was that A. I. Ahjopää was transported to Helsinki. The silent man was taken into the mental asylum of Lapinlahti for further examination. From this place he never returned. Ahjopää lived the rest of his life in the institution, spending nearly three decades obsessively committing to drawing a set of strange female figures. At times he was heard chanting a spell-like song, whose few words none could understand.

The notes and drawings from the fateful gathering journey of Akseli Ahjopää were bequeathed to his wife who could not bring herself to burn the papers of her beloved husband, but rather hid them into the ceiling structures of a storehouse at the summer villa of the Ahjopää family. The metal artefacts excavated from the swamp by Ahjopää were found under the floorboards of the storehouse. These papers and artefacts, now known as the Ahjopää Collection, were discovered in the summer of 1999 when the storehouse was being repaired. The objects of silver and iron date back to the 11^th century, much to the amazement of the present-day academicians. The characteristics of the tribe that Ahjopää described in his notebooks have since been identified in the folklore of the people of Savo.

The international Ahjopää Society was established in the autumn of 2002. Its mission is to carry on the study of the papers left behind by the tragic researcher. Plans to commence excavations on the mountain Likasti and its surroundings have been drawn.