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Illustration of Kirkonväki
Original AI-made illustration based on the descriptions in the sources. Not an official design.
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Kirkonväki

Imadziwikanso kuti: kirkkomaanväki, kalmanväki, churchyard folk, manalaiset

Kirkonväki is the Finnish name for the dead as a body, the population of the churchyard acting together. Finnish legend gives them corporeal form, as a congregation of decaying corpses that fills the church at night and mauls any living intruder, though everyday belief treated them more as an invisible, foul-smelling force. They enforced respect for graves and proper burial and could be weaponised by cunning folk. They are the closest thing in Finnish tradition to a horde of the walking dead.1

Amenyane!
Inalembedwa koyamba
1551
Related terms occur in Finnish sources from Mikael Agricola (1551) onward; most archive records date from the late 19th century to the 1960s
Kochokera
Finnish
Finland
Chimayambitsa
Zina
The collective dead of a churchyard, active as a crowd around the church and around any unburied corpse.
Momwe umasandukira zombie
The dead buried in the parish churchyard.
Momwe imayendera
Zimasiyana
In legends they gather in the church at night as a solid crowd; in personal accounts they pass as a swarm of small figures in the air.
Nzeru
Nzeru pang'ono
Malo ofooka
  • precautions when crossing churchyard boundaries
  • leaving something behind: in one legend a man escapes by dropping his fur coat on the church threshold, and the dead tear the coat apart

Inaoneka liti koyamba?

Related terms occur in Finnish sources from Mikael Agricola (1551) onward; most archive records date from the late 19th century to the 1960s

zolemba za kumunda

Zimene magwero akunena

1

The word means 'churchyard folk', but väki also carries an older sense of 'force' or 'power'1

2

In legends they look like ordinary people or like rotting corpses and skeletons1

3

A migratory legend tells of the dead holding their own Christmas service and attacking a living person who walks in1

4

They reek of death; seers can see them, others only smell them1

5

Churchyard soil, bones or splinters of grave markers could be used to 'send' them against an enemy or set them on a thief1

6

Kaarina Koski's study draws on more than 2,000 records in the Finnish Literature Society's archives, richest in Ostrobothnia1

Ukanatha kuithawa?

Gulu la liwiro malinga ndi momwe magwero amaifotokozera (zimasiyana), osati muyeso.

Iwe, ukuyenda pafupifupi 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
Iwe, ukuthamanga pang'onopang'ono pafupifupi 10 km/h (6.2 mph)
Kirkonväki pafupifupi 10 km/h (6.2 mph)
Munthu wamkulu wamphamvu akuthamanga kwambiri pafupifupi 24 km/h (15 mph)
Woyendetsa njinga wothamanga pafupifupi 37 km/h (23 mph)

Magwero

  1. Kaarina Koski, 'Conceptual Analysis and Variation in Belief Tradition: A Case of Death-Related Beings', Folklore 38 (2008)

Mfundo iliyonse patsamba lino ikuchokera ku magwero awa, yolembedwa m'mawu athu. Waona cholakwika? Tiuze pa [email protected].

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