- Ilmatar
In
Kalevala , the Finnish national epic, Ilmatar was a virgin spirit of the . [Lönnrot, Elias, compiler. "The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People". Translated by Eino Friberg. Otava Publishing Company, Ltd., 4th ed., p. 365. (1998) ISBN 951-1-10137-4]Origins
The name Ilmatar is derived from the Finnish word "ilma", meaning "air," and the suffix -tar, denoting a female spirit. Thus, her name literally means "female air spirit." In the Kalevala she was also occasionally called Luonnotar, which means "female spirit of nature" (Finnish "luonto", "nature"). [Lönnrot, Elias, compiler. "The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District: A Prose Translation with Foreword and Appendices". Translated with foreword and appendices by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.]
In Kalevala, Ilmatar is portrayed as
androgynous with both male and female aspects, though she is primarily female. She was impregnated by the sea and wind and thus became the mother of Väinämöinen.
=Ho*"Ilmatar" is the title of a C.D. by the Finnish band
Värttinä , released in 2000. Its theme was inspired by the goddess's origin-story in the "Kalevala" and similar Finnish folk-lore and magic.In Sibelius's "Luonnotar"
Jean Sibelius composed thetone poem "Luonnotar", for soprano and orchestra in 1913. In the tone poem, the mythical origin of the land and sky, recounted in craggy verses from the "Kalevala", becomes an intense Sibelian metaphor for the inexporable force - even the terror of all creation - including that of the artist. One of the composer's most compelling works, it alternates between two musical ideas. As heard at the out-set, these are the shimmering stirrings of ever-growing possibility; and, underpinned with dissonant, static, harp strokes, the even more incantatory, distressed cries of the "nature spirit" ("Luonnotar") herself, heavy with child. In its relentless physicality and eruptive violence, Luonnotar is unlike aught else in the entire repertory. Fact|date=February 2007In Finance
The Ilmatar Fund is an Eastern European Multi-Strategy Hedge Fund for investors.
Reference
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