The forewords to Dauidin psaltari (David's Psalter, 1551) by Michael Agricola and the first Finnish hymnal (the Finnish title is unknown, 1583) by Jacobus Finno illuminate the views of the educated elite on folk beliefs and practices labelled as either ‘idolatry’ or ‘ungodly’. Both have been read as the very first descriptions of folk beliefs, ethnic religion, and traditional song in Finland. All this evidence has been taken as a major proof of the vitality of pagan culture and an aggressive Lutheran attack on superstition and pagan idolatry. However, my intention here is to analyse Agricola's and Finno's forewords as a learned and Christian discourse about folk beliefs and songs in their own right rather than as direct evidence of the pre-Christian beliefs.

Obviously, these texts should be read in their primary context and compared with the relevant works of Lutheran reformers around the Baltic Sea. In these cases, ‘pagan’, ‘superstitious’, or ‘ungodly’ practices were identified through textual tradition. In the distant eastern Finnish province of Savo, the rituals of fertility were named with reference to more familiar Swedish equivalents, the Finnish Ukko becoming Swedish thunder (thorden), and the world of magic, superstition, and paganism was interpreted in vocabulary picked from the Old Testament. As Ulinka Rublack has noted, even the reformers in the centres of the sixteenth-century learned world shared the belief in active evil forces and spirits in this world. Similarly, royal officials and clergymen in the dioceses of Turku (Swe. Åbo) and Vyborg (established 1554; Swe. Viborg, Fin. Viipuri) were searching for words to define the religious practices and supernatural forces around them. These habits were to be overcome by preaching and printing books, and by teaching Christian hymns to illiterate peasants. Songs were considered especially powerful in fighting the ever-present evil forces.

What did Agricola and Finno mean by their descriptions? Are they proofs of a vivid pagan cult or merely the reflections of the writers’ learned mindset and vocabulary? Why were the pagan beliefs often treated in the context of psalms, hymns, and other Christian songs? Why, on the other hand, are sources of pagan practices in sixteenth-century Finland so scarce?