The scientific approach in ethno-medicine in Ostrobothnia by Dr Antti Hernesniemi

There are many important persons which I have met, interviewed, photographed and co-worked with during my study in ethno-medicine in Ostrobothnia.   Bonesetters, cuppers, herbalists; earth radiation revealers, healers with healing hands. And others. Many of them showed interesting, special skills which the Western medicine doesn’t know.

My both parents come from Kannus. I  was born there in 1950. Therefrom our family moved, through Köyhäjoki in Kaustinen and Aitoo in Luopioinen, to Ruovesi, in Northern Häme, in 1956. I went to school there and became a student. There I learned the basic skills with piano and played in a teen agers’ guitar band and a jazz band.

Some of these Ostrobothnian persons, since 1981 ,were especially impressive to me, a young but  curious  scholar of folk traditions. Mrs. Ina Känsälä (born Nygren, from Nedervetil), an indigenous bonesetter who lived in Kaustinen,  became the central figure of my medical thesis (Hernesniemi 1999), in the treatment methods of   bonesetters (“jäsenkorjaaja”, “kotknackare”). I  was deeply impressed when I met her for the first time. There was my central folk tradition person really worth to meet !  Mrs. Känsälä  was a specialist in her  family healing traditions. She was a real folk artist with the beautiful and effective movements of her hands.  

There was Mr Eero Hautala, a folk musician, an accordion player, whose music, arrangements and compositions I recorded on tape – as I did with all those tens of people with whom I discussed.  Eero Hautala introduced me to his friend  Mr Aleksi Kultalahti from Evijärvi, a farmer and specialist in local histories. He was a man who had thousands of tales of the past and today to tell. There was a blacksmith who would have liked to be a poet, Mr Karl-Johan Nyström  in Pensala (see the photos and story above). He made poems about local people’s lives in the village and about himself.  I have composed two of his poems.

In those years I met many healers with healing hands. One of them was  Mr Vilho Viljanmaa living in Sykäräinen. They had a power in which they and their patients trusted.  But this was not usually the case with authorities of the Western medicine which is based mostly on physics and chemistry. It is not paying much attention to peoples’ own experiences. Which you cannot maybe measure with a conventional scientific device. 

All these inspiring people I met during my study in ethno-medicine in Ostrobothnia.  I would not have met them without this work of a young physician in the region. They were not important for the medical faculties in Finland in 1960’s and 1970’s. They are not important even to day.