フィンランドの死者のカルシッコ : 風習の形成、変化、現在

北海道大学大学院文学研究院北方研究教育センター

北方人文研究

A Vainajan karsikko is a tree selected to commemorate the deceased, a custom once known in the Savo area of Finland. The tree was chosen from trees along roads to a cemetery. It was marked by cutting branches or carving initials of the deceased and numbers on a trunk. Those trees functioned to prevent the return of the deceased from Lutheran Savo peopleʼs cemeteries in the 17th century. The karsikko protected peopleʼs life styles and garnered their respect and fear. However, modernization changed how people recognized the karsikko in the 19th century. Prior research has focused on karsikkoʼs form, function, distribution, and relations with Europe and the Baltic area. Research on the karsikko continued uninterrupted from the 1880s and into the 1990s and has mainly focused on its origin and functions, as well as its relations between the deceased and the living. However, in my fieldwork conduced since 2018, talk about karsikko is often not about the commemorated deceased, but instead about the tree and the living locutors themselves.” In this article, first I introduce the Finnish religious and cultural background as the foundation of recognizing the karsikko, and I describe the formations and changes of the karsikko based on previous research. Then, I indicate its present situation with information from my fieldwork and approach the relationships between the karsikko and its family, focusing on the word elämä.