Nyland och Österbotten

The Haji recounted: There is a story from far west, beyond the Barentines, that the pagans of Finland worshipped not one God, as we do, whether Christian or Muslim, but a multitude: In the province of Nyland they worshipped the gentle goddess of the sun, who caressed the trees with the rays of her light, and brought succour and joy to the herding-boy of the field, but the Ostrobothnians worshipped the Thunder-God, who called doom upon the wicked; burned them up like a candlewick with a swift bolt arcing across the heavens. The people of Nyland and Ostrobothnia engaged each other in frequent feuds, especially between their high-priests and warlocks, ever jostling for supremacy, and to settle once and for all which god was to come out top — Justice, or Mercy?

And then commented Abbé Musa: I pity the pagans of yore for fashioning the masters of their world out of the human understanding, as the wisdom of men brought the civilizations of the old world only to perpetual war. As it was in Finland, so it was also in Persia, where battled the demons Hêlal and Angra Mainyu. A world of two evils, while goodness barely seeps between their front lines! But we know from revealed truths from the Father what we never would have otherwise: that Justice and Mercy are One, embodied in the same God; that the justice dealt a repentant sinner among us is the same time mercy!

And Olivia added: Remember that the Father we call to in Heaven is a Father, but even his love for his children is also like that of a mother, that he would smother us in warm embrace and say: more then a treasure, or the sun itself, you are worth the sacrifice at Cavalry; what would I give to place you in the furnace, strike you with blows of the hammer, so that it becomes a shining jewel?

The Abbé agreed: It is exactly with this understanding, that the children of Amatodate are at the same time the children of the Almighty, that we have endured all the abuse the world has heaped upon us down the centuries — right from the beginning, when we faced down the tyrants of P'yŏngyang.

Symbols carved into rock at Namforsen near Näsåker, Sweden, discovered only after a hydroelectric dam was built across the Ångermanälven in the 1940s

Picture taken August 2013.

References:
1. Psalm 85:10

2. St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge (1987), Author's Preface.

3. A song from Gjallarhorn's 1997 album (Solbön/Åskan), a medley of pre-Christian Finland-Swedish chants: a) Bön från Nyländska Folvisor, Uusimaa, and b) Åskbesvärjelse från Österbotten.

4. Rudolf Steiner, Incarnation of Lucifer and Ahriman (1919). The Abbé mistakenly refers to the ideas of Steiner as the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion.