Jumala
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Jumala, Jumal or Jumali means "god" in Finnish, both the Christian God and any other deity of any religion. It is thought to have been a sky god of the ancient Finnic-speaking peoples. The linguistic equivalent of Jumala is "himmel" (the heavens) in German.
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[edit] Jumal
In Estonia, Jumal was the name of the god of the sky. He was believed to make the earth fertile through the rains of the summer's thunderstorms. Among the south Estonians, he was represented by a wooden statue in their homes.
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In Finland, Jumala was the name of two of the Finns' sky gods, or one of two names for the sky god (cf. Ilmarinen).
According to John Martin Crawford (see the Preface to his translation of the Kalevala):
"The Finnish deities, like the ancient gods of Italy, Greece, Egypt, Vedic India or any ancient cosmogony, are generally represented in pairs, and all the gods are probably wedded. They have their individual abodes and are surrounded by their respective families. ... The heavens themselves were thought divine. Then a personal deity of the heavens, coupled with the name of his abode, was the next conception; finally this sky-god was chosen to represent the supreme Ruler. To the sky, the sky-god, and the supreme God, the term Jumala (thunder-home) was given."
Later on, the sky itself was called taivas (sky or heaven) and the sky-god Ukko. However, when Christianity came to dominate Finnish religious life in the Middle Ages and the old gods were ousted or consolidated away from the pantheon, Jumala became the Finnish name for the Christian God.
