A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.
Finnicization is the changing of one's personal names from other languages into Finnish. During the era of National Romanticism in Finland, many people, especially Fennomans, finnicized their previously Swedish family names.
The exessive case is a grammatical case that denotes a transition away from a state. It is a rare case found in certain dialects of Baltic-Finnic languages. It completes the series of "to/in/from a state" series consisting of the translative case, the essive case and the exessive case.
Droodles was a syndicated cartoon feature created by Roger Price and collected in his 1953 book Droodles, though the term is now used more generally of similar visual riddles.
Matti Akseli Kuusi was a Finnish folklorist, paremiographer and paremiologist. He wrote several books and a number of articles on Finnish folklore. He was the first to have introduced the type system of proverbs similar to the Aarne–Thompson classification system of folklore, the Matti Kuusi international type system of proverbs. With encouragement from Archer Taylor he founded the journal Proverbium: Bulletin d'Information sur les Recherches Parémiologiques, published from 1965 to 1975 by the Society for Finnish Literature, which was later restarted as Proverbium: International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship. He was a member of the noble family Granfelt, but his father had fennicized his original Swedish surname to express his political sympathies.
Jalmari Verneri Sauli was a Finnish writer and track and field athlete who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Cristfried Ganander was a Finnish compiler of folk culture, a priest and an 18th-century lexicographer. Ganander's greatest achievement was the compilation of the first fully extensive Finnish-language dictionary which was, however, unpublished. He was also a collector of folk culture well before Elias Lönnrot. His most well-known published work is Mythologia Fennica in 1789, a reference book of folk religion. He also published some poetry and worked as a teacher.
Martti Henrikki Haavio was a Finnish poet, folklorist and mythologist, writing poetry under the pen name P. Mustapää. He was born on 22 January 1899 in Temmes, and died 4 February 1973 in Helsinki. He was also a professor of folklore and an influential researcher of Finnish mythology. In 1960, Haavio married Aale Tynni, after his first wife Elsa Enäjärvi-Haavio died in 1951 of cancer. His daughter, Elina Haavio-Mannila, is a social scientist. During Haavio's early career, he was a member of the Tulenkantajat literature club.
Jussi Niinistö is a Finnish politician and a former Minister of Defence. Since 2011, he has been a member of Finnish Parliament, representing the Finns Party 2011–2017 and Blue Reform since 2017. By occupation he is a military historian, a docent of Finnish history in the University of Helsinki and a docent of military history in the Finnish National Defence University. In 2013 he was elected as the first vice-chairman of the True Finns, but lost his seat in 2017.
Seppo Erkki Sakari Heikinheimo was a Finnish musicologist, music journalist, writer and translator.
Jooseppi Mustakallio, originally Josef Schwartzberg, was a Finnish minister and the fourth mission director of the Finnish Missionary Society, after Akseli Hirn. He was also a poet and a lyricist. His best known poem is called “Evening Song”.
Ella Margareta Kivikoski was the first Finnish female to earn a doctorate in archaeology in Finland. In 1931, she studied at the Baltic Institute in Stockholm and developed a scholarly working relationship with the Estonian archaeologist Harri Moora. She was a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki from 1948 until 1969, specializing in both Finnish and Nordic archaeology. Her specialty was the Finnish Iron Age.
Suomen kansan vanhat runot, or SKVR, is an edition of traditional Finnic-language verse containing around 100,000 different songs, and including the majority of the songs that were the sources of the Kalevala and related poetry. The collection is available, free, online.
Synty is an important concept in Finnish mythology. Syntysanat ('origin-words') or syntyloitsut ('origin-charms') provide an explanatory, mythical account of the origin of a phenomenon, material, or species, and were an important part of traditional Finno-Karelian culture, particularly in healing rituals. Although much in the Finnish traditional charms is paralleled elsewhere, 'the role of aetiological and cosmogonic myths' in Finnic tradition 'appears exceptional in Eurasia'. The major study remains that by Kaarle Krohn, published in 1917.
Arja Anna-Leena Siikala was a professor emeritus at the University of Helsinki, specialising in folk-belief, mythology, and shamanism, along with oral storytelling and traditionality.
Riddles are widely attested in post-medieval Scandinavian languages, though the traditional, oral riddle fell out of widespread use during the later twentieth century, being replaced by other oral-literary forms, and by other tests of wit such as quizzes.
Jacobus Petri Finno, sometimes known as Jaakko Finno or the proper Finnish form of his real name Jaakko Suomalainen, was a Finnish priest and the rector (headmaster) of the Cathedral School of Turku. He was the publisher of the first Finnish-language hymnal as well as a catechism and a prayer book. Finno was doctrinally a moderate reformer.
Martti Aleksander Pihkala was a National Coalition Party MP who became known as a Jäger activist, Ostrobothnia White Guard founder, in the 1920s and 1930s, leader of the strikebreaking organisation Export Peace, also known as "Pihkala's Guard" and an influencer of the Lapua movement and the Patriotic People’s Movement.
Arvo Martti Oktavianus Räsänen was a Finnish linguist and turkologist. He operated as a docent of turkology at University of Helsinki from 1926 forwards, and as an additional professor of Turkic philology from 1944 to 1961.
Aili Annikki Nenola is professor emerita of the University of Helsinki. Her research specialty was folklore and she pioneered multidisciplinary and critical women's studies in Finland, designing the curricula and introducing courses at the University of Tartu. She later assisted in establishing the national curricula for women's studies, became director of the graduate program in women's studies at the Kristiina Institute, and secured accreditation of the field as a degree major. Nenola was also a participant in creating the curriculum of the Women's Studies Centre of Vilnius, Lithuania. From 1995 to 2006 she taught women's studies at the University of Helsinki and simultaneously served as the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities between 2004 and 2006. In 1999, Nenola was honored as a Knight, first class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland and was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2002.
