Tuonela, The Land of The Dead
Tuonela was the land of dead. It was an underground home or city for all the dead people, not only the good or the bad ones. It was a dark and lifeless place, where everybody slept forever. Still a brave shaman could travel to Tuonela in trance to ask for the forefathers' guidance. To travel to Tuonela, the soul had to cross the dark river of Tuonela. If he had a proper reason, then a boat would come to take him over. Many times a shaman's soul had to trick the guards of Tuonela into believing that he was actually dead.
Read more about this topic: Finnish Mythology
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