River of tuonelaThree fingered handHat of darknessSwan
Mythology Summary
Tuoni rules Tuonela, the Finnish land of the dead, with his wife Tuonetar; he is darkness personified and appears as an old man with three fingers on each hand and a hat of darkness. His children and household - Kipu-Tyttö, Tuonenpoika, Kalma and Loviatar - are the divinities of suffering and disease, and the dead cross his river, guarded by the swan. The sixteenth runo of the Kalevala sends Väinämöinen into his hall, where Tuonetar offers the beer of oblivion, and the runo's warning is that Tuonela is easy to enter and hard to leave.
Modern Practice
Tuoni is not prayed to but acknowledged: silence at a death, black bread and salt at the threshold, a coin for the crossing, and the refusal to call the dead back. The practice is mourning with a boundary in it, and the swan on the river is the sign that the boundary is real.