Talk:Proto-Uralic religion

Comment

It seems that someone has misunderstood what disambiguation means? Uralic mythology is an umbrella term for the mythologies listed, not ambiguous with either Finnic mythology and or Finnish mythology , Hungarian mythology etc.--Termer (talk) 19:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

"Umbrella term" is a good way to put it. Are you arguing that this should not be considered a dab page? kwami (talk) 21:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think it's obvious that this page shouldn't be a disamb page. Unless someone thinks that Uralic mythologies=Hungarian mythology=Sami shamanism. Uralic Mythology is a subject that studies mythologies of the Uralic speaking peoples. Or even better the Encyclopedia of Uralic mythologies spells it out perhaps more clearly...Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies offers a comparative base for the study of the roots and present forms of Finno-Ugrian and Samoyedic mythologies and ethnic religions. So for Wikipedia purposes the definitions should be something like Uralic mythologies covers the study of the roots and present forms of Finno-Ugrian and Samoyedic mythologies and ethnic religions. etc. Also there is the periodical 'Ethnologica Uralica' published by the Hungarian Academy of Science, the Finnish Anthropological Society, Budapest:Akademiai Kiado etc. that covers the subject--Termer (talk) 04:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, made it a myth stub, and hopefully made it clear that this is piggybacking on a linguistic classification, and not based on comparative mythology. kwami (talk) 09:39, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Here you go again, the text just transforms, and gets far from what the sources say. For example from where did you get this, kwami?..."and are similar to the beliefs of neighboring non-Uralic peoples of north-central Eurasia". The fact is for example: one of the central aspects: the belief in the cosmogonic function of an egg has not been found everywhere; there are, rather, four broad areas where myths about cosmic egg(s) belong to indigenous oral traditions: 1) the Balto-Finnic region; 2) the Eastern Mediterranean lands; 3) South Asia (China, Tibet, Indo-China, India); and 4)the Malay Archipelago, Oceania, and Australia. Please kwami again and again stop editing related articles according to your personal opinions.--Termer (talk) 04:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

But "Balto-Finnic + East Med + South Asia + the Pacific" does not equal Uralic! It's not a matter of my opinion, but that you're writing garbage. There is no "Uralic mythology", there are just the mythologies of peoples who happen to speak Uralic languages. And especially when you say a certain concept is "called" something in "Uralic". Those are not proto-Uralic forms, and if they were, the article would be about proto-Uralic mythology. But it's not. There was nothing "Uralic" here apart from what was already mentioned in the Finno-Ugric peoples article, so I merged this there. — kwami (talk) 06:40, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Comment 2

This page had been recently redirected to Uralic neopaganism and I reverted this page approximately two days ago back to what it was before the redirect. The reason I did this was that Uralic mythologies, the term itself and the content on this page, refers to early Uralic mythology, and is very clearly not same as Uralic neopaganism which "encompasses contemporary movements which have been reviving or revitalising the ethnic religions of the various peoples who speak Uralic languages". After reverting, I also added little bits of early Uralic and Finno-Ugric mythology to the article. A few hours after that, Kwamikagami changed the page name to "Proto-Uralic religion" and deleted some of what I just had written. The only explanation for these changes given by Kwamikagami was that "If this is the topic, then it should be named accordingly". That didn't explain why some of my text had to be deleted. Also, the history page no longer shows my aforemetioned contributions. Seems like someone has removed this information. As far as I know, this makes it impossible to bring back my deleted texts if need be. Why all these changes? Like I said, I restored the page's earlier form and content because Uralic mythologies are a thing of their own, clearly to be distinguished from contemporary neopaganism. In addition to an interesting if somewhat short article text on this page (that could and should be expanded), the page also has a very good further reading list both of which were lost after the redirect. So, the reasons for reverting were pretty clear. What I would like to hear from Kwamikagami, then, is 1) Why was the page name changed to "Proto-Uralic religion"? 2) Why some of my text was deleted (the earth-diver creation myth)? Also, anybody responsible for erasing my name from the history page: 1) Why was this done? 2) Can my deleted text be brought back?. Even if the page name was "religion", the most important Finno-Ugric creation myth (earth-diver creation myth) should really be included in the article since creation myths are a crucial part of any religion. "Religion" and "Mythology" are terms that overlap quite a bit, obviously, but "Mythology" has a wider scope, in this context at least, since we are dealing with early religions most of which are no longer practiced. For example, "Proto-Indo-European religion" redirects to Proto-Indo-European mythology which I think is a good solution. Uralic mythology is a sibling concept to Indo-European mythology and I think the same solution would work here as well. Also, changing "Uralic" to "Proto-Uralic" is problematic and narrows down the scope of what can be discussed. Samoyedic languages are "considered to be an outgroup, branching off first from the other Uralic languages" and it's therefore more difficult to reconstruct a Proto-Uralic mythology/religion than a Proto-Finno-Ugric one and the latter has been studied much more. Both could, however, easily be discussed under the topic "Uralic mythologies". All in all, I would love to add a bits of text to this article, e.g. a couple of more examples of important Uralic and Finno-Ugric myths, but first it would be nice to hear people's opinions and explanations on the issues I have raised here. Tpalonen (talk) 07:33, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

You're simultaneously arguing for both a substance article and a dab page. If you want to list the various historically attested myths of the various modern peoples who speak Uralic languages (and who share those myths with people who do not speak Uralic languages), then this should be a bullet list directing the reader to Finnish myth'y, Estonian myth'y, Udmurt myth'y, etc. If however you want a substance article, then we need to stick to something substantial. Since your revision of the article was mostly about what could be reconstructed of the religion reconstructed through proto-Uralic, I moved it to an appropriate title. (Religion or mythology, I don't much care. I'm just leery of presenting religion as the Truth understood by civilized people and mythology as silly stories believed in by primitive people. E.g., Eden myth, Noah myth, Resurrection myth aren't even dab pages.)

If the earth-diver creation myth can be reconstructed back to Finno-Ugric, it would be appropriate to cover it here. The fact that evidence might be lost from one branch or another of a family isn't critical. But if it's just that it's found in the ancestral religions of some (but not all) Finno-Ugric nations, and shared with some (but not all) of their non-Finno-Ugric neighbors, then it isn't "Finno-Ugric" in any coherent sense. Claiming it is is just another manifestation of the reification of linguistic postulates into other areas without any supportive evidence. In other words, pseudo-science.

More coherent would be to have a dedicated article on the earth-diver myth, and link to it in the 'see also' section of this article. In that article, we'd note which nations have traces of such a myth. Whether they're Finno-Ugric would be irrelevant. We might note that all Finno-Ugric-speaking nations but ABC have traces of such a belief, as do the neighboring XYZ peoples. But calling it a "Finno-Ugric myth" when it is not a Finno-Ugric myth is irresponsible. — kwami (talk) 07:49, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Kwamikagami! I appreciate you giving a lengthy reply. I will write a longer reply later, which might take a while. Be back soon-ish! Tpalonen (talk) 08:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello kwami, it took me a while to write a longer reply, sorry! Anyway, here it is. I will address several issues here.

1. Disambiguation. I guess by dab you mean disambiguation. I am not arguing for a disambiguation page. Disambiguation refers to the meaning of terms, ie. what distinct meanings a term may have, and how these should be separated and defined. You can find more info here: Ambiguity#Linguistic_forms. I must admit that Wikipedia’s own Wikipedia:Disambiguation page is not very clear on this point and should perhaps be revised. Anyway, quoting the Disambiguation page, here’s where the point is made a bit clearer “If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing it and not a disambiguation page. Where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. A disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a Foo primary concept or type, those should be included on a Foo (disambiguation) page."

Disambiguation therefore, is a separate thing from a hierarchical relation between a class and an instance or class and subclass, or, in more practical terms, topic and example. I understand how disambiguation and class relation might get mixed, but in Wikipedia, we need to use disambiguation correctly, according to common rules. Thus, having a Wikipedia substance article called “Uralic mythologies” and describing in it different kinds of Uralic myths and aspects of mythology is exactly what Wikipedia recommends as stated by the quote above. And that is exactly what I’m arguing for. Disambiguation page would be wrong here. On the other hand, disambiguation page should be used if the term “Uralic mythologies” referred to two or more clearly separate concepts, e.g. a company or a film or a book with the same name. Here are examples of disambiguation pages: New_York, Starbuck. As you can see, the word / name / phrase here refers to more than one concept:

Reneissance disambiguation page Renaissance_(disambiguation) I think is a good example. Renaissance, as the substance artile Renaissance states, “is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity”. On the Renaissance disambiguation page, however, it is not a question of listing examples of such a renaissance. Sure, African renaissance and Hawaiian renaissance are listed and may seem somewhat analogous to the European renaissance and could be argued to represent a kind of renaissaince. But what about the music albums and films with the name Renaissance that are also listed? Are they also periods of history marking a transition? There’s a Faberge egg called Renaissance also listed. Music, films and eggs are clearly not examples of what this one concept of renaissance means that I quoted above. Rather, they and all other topics listed are the different topics to which the word “renaissance” may refer to and that need to be disambiguated.

Like you said, there are no disambiguation pages for Noah myth, Eden myth etc. This is because apparently there are no companies, music albums, films, eggs etc with those names that would need disambiguating.

2. Uralic myth. You state that a myth that exists not only in one or more Finno-Ugric peoples but also in non-Finno-Ugric neighbours is not a Finno-Ugric myth “in any coherent sense” and calling it such would even be “irresponsible”. I understand the reasoning behind this, but I’m afraid you are wrong. Let me explain. First, in general, any people have a right for their myths. Again, as a general remark, it’s not the task of somebody from outside (a person of some other ethnic background or faith) to claim what is someone’s myth and what is not. This would be a situation similar to Mansplaining or whitesplaining and has been well discussed in recent years. See for example: https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/mansplaining.php

Second, even if a similar myth exists in more than one culture, it doesn’t justify claiming that it’s the myth of only a number of these cultures and not the others. As you know, languages have words that are similar to words in other languages. Both English and German have the word “hand” with the same meaning and origin. English has loanwords from other languages, many of these originate from non-Indo-European languages, such as “cider” (Hebrew), “coffee” (Turkish) and “tea” (Chinese). All three words have undergone phonetic changes, as words often do, to better fit the English speaking environment. However, I don’t think it would make much sense to claim that “hand” or “cider” or “coffee” or “tea” are not English words even though same words exist in other languages. Whether a word has a cognant in another language, or is a loanword from a related or non-related language doesn’t really matter. They still are English words. And it doesn't really matter at which stage the borrowing took place. If it took place at the Germanic stage, it can then be called a Germanic or proto-Germanic word. Wiktionary has a page dedicated to loanwords from other languages to proto-Germanic [[1]], words corresponding to e.g. "rich" and "leather" in modern English. These can still be called Germanic words even if they are loanwords. Likewise, religions are a bit like words, they start from somewhere and spread around. Christianity and its concept of god originated among the Jewish people of eastern Mediterranean region, who are/were a Semitic people, ie. non-Indo-Europeans. I don’t think it’s right or correct or fair to tell modern American Christians, however, that Christian god is not actually their god. Myths are very much like words, they are cultural constructions that spread around. Any culture may absorb a myth from outside and usually will change that myth to suit their own environment, worldview and tongue, not dissimilar to how words like “cider” and “coffee” or the proto-Germanic predecessor of "rich" have been changed across time. Often myths borrowed to a culture do undergo changes and get combined with elements that are perhaps more ancient in that culture. In the example I wrote about (and which was deleted), the earth-diver myth, each ethnicity had changed the myth, in each myth there was a different creature who was doing the diving, for example. It would be odd to claim that a Finnish myth is not a Finnish myth when no other culture has an identical myth even if similar myths exist elsewhere. Likewise, it would be odd to claim that a myth is not a Finno-Ugric myth when there is enough evidence to show that the myth has existed at the Finno-Ugric proto-state. Namely, if the myth is well spread geographically among related cultures (even if each culture has somewhat changed the myth), then it is pretty safe to say that it is a Finno-Ugric myth or Germanic myth etc. I will get back to this later when I talk about sources. Anyway, similar mythological recontructions are well covered elsewhere in Wikipedia. Why do an exeption here? I will discuss this, too, later.

3. Myth. Myth is a very commonly used and accepted term in comparative religion, folkloristics and other similar academic fields. Some like to use other terms, yes, but myth is the norm. See Myth. In addition, the terms myth and mythology have already been used widely in many similar contexts in Wikipedia. Example articles are given below. So, I see no problem using the terms “myth” and “mythology” and would prefer them to “religion”.

4. Earth-diver myth. Two issues here. First, when I was writing the bit about the earth-diver myth, the Wikipedia page was called “Uralic mythologies”. This bit of text, according to reasons I have given above, was quite relevant to that topic and its inclusion well justifiable. You then changed the page name and deleted this text. It is of course easy to change the topic of a page (e.g. from "Uralic mythologies" to "Proto-Uralic religion" such as happened here) and then claim that certain pre-existing parts don’t belong to the current topic. Second, I may be wrong but I get the picture from your reply that you are confident that the earth-diver myth is not well spread among Finno-Ugric peoples. Or perhaps not well-rooted enough to justify its inclusion under “Uralic mythologies” or similar topic. It sounds like you have sources that claim this to be the case. If so, I would strongly recommend you to name these sources. Are they studies by acknowledged academic experts on the field of Finno-Ugric mythologies? As you may agree, we should trust the experts and not someone’s gut feeling. My main sources in including the earth-diver myth and writing about it were Encyclopedia Britannica and it’s article “Finno-Ugric religion” and the book “The Great Bear - A Thematic anthology of oral poetry in Finno-Ugrian languages”, particularly the book’s introduction to Finno-Ugric mythology and culture written by one of the leading scholars of the field, Lauri Honko, a folklorist and professor of comparative religion. Encyclopedia Britannica itself, of course, is should by no means be unreliable. I’m quoting the encyclopedia here: “The most widespread account of the creation among the Finno-Ugric peoples is the earth-diver myth.” So, unless you have more recent sources from more respected scholars or encyclopedias that prove otherwise, I think it’s pretty fair to state that earth-diver myth is a Finno-Ugric myth. It is, of course, the myth of many other non-related peoples as well, but referring to what I stated earlier, it doesn’t mean that it is not also a Finno-Ugric myth. It might be good tho, I agree, to add in the text that “similar myths exist in other cultures” or something like that. If you or anybody else has any ideas how this should be phrased, I’d be happy to hear, thank you!

5. Pseudo-science. Folkloristics, Comparative_religion and similar academic fields studying myths are not pseudo-science. They are subfields of humanities. However, it is true that proto-religions and proto-myths are mere hypotheses and we can never know about them for certain. Therefore, it might be good that these texts be accompanied by a kind of disclaimer, something like, “This is a hypothesis / theory.” or “There have been attempts to reconstruct a proto-mythology which includes..” or something like that. My text didn’t include such a disclaimer, but it probably should have included one. I would be happy to hear any comments on this disclaimer idea. However, I must add that even if these proto-myths are hypotheses, they still must obey the rule of Falsifiability, articulated by Karl Popper, and crucial to all science. New evidence may rise and prove that a given proto-myth hypothesis is no longer the best-grounded one. This is exactly how any field in humanities operates. Therefore, just because they are hypotheses doesn’t mean they are pseudo-science. Wikipedia has many topics of similar reconstructions of an early religion or mythology with same methods being used. See, for example:: hProto-Indo-European_mythology, Proto-Germanic_folklore, Tengrism, Ancient_Celtic_religion, Yahwism, Turkic_mythology.

All in all, I strongly argue that the topic of this page should be changed back to “Uralic mythologies” and any myths known to have been told by Uralic peoples as part of their mythology could then be included as well as protomyth hypotheses. Again, this should be a general substance article. Having this as a disambiguation page would violate Wikipedia rules as I’ve explained above. “Uralic mythologies” is the optimal topic, in my opinion, because it allows a broader discussion from mentions of specific myths to discussion of what is common to all Uralic mythologies and what is common to its main branches Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, as well as hypothetical arguments for proto-myths. More specific domains like Finnish mythology and Mari mythology could be briefly discussed / overviewed and accompanied by links to corresponding substance articles. The links could be either “Main article” or “See also” links. I can’t really decide which is better and would be happy to hear opinions. There are several very similar overviews already on English Wikipedia (see e.g. Celtic_mythology Germanic_mythology), and some examples given above, so it would very well fit to the Uralic case as well. Not having a Uralic equivalent, when so many other cultures are already covered in Wikipedia, would be unfair and would really not be in line with Wikimedia Foundations goals, as stated by Aubrey Williams: “diversity and inclusion are core to our mission”. Anyway, as to whether the topic should be “mythology” in singular or “mythologies”, I would go with the plural since it has already been in use as the topic. But I also understand if someone would argue for the singular, since it’s been used elsewhere. Again, would be happy to hear opinions.

Oh, and by the way, anyone who added me back to this page history list of contributors, thank you! Tpalonen (talk) 09:49, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

You're still arguing for a conflation of two different things: a disambiguation page for Uralic mythologies (because again as a single topic there is no such thing) and the actual topic of what can be reconstructed of proto-Uralic religion. As far as people having a right to their beliefs, there's no such thing as the Uralic people, and so no-one to have those beliefs. You're conflating comparative religion with a fictional ethnicity. — kwami (talk) 11:28, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello kwami. Again, I am not arguing for a disambiguation page. As I quite thoroughly explained above, describing different kinds of Uralic myths under topic "Uralic mythologies" is not a disambiguation page. That would be against Wikipedia standards. Instead, it would be a substance article in the form of a general mythological overview of related peoples. Several very similar overviews already exist in Wikipedia. Please read my previous reply again, where I explain disambiguation in detail, before you make new claims about disambiguation, because your conception of disambiguation, at least as far as Wikipedia goes, is clearly wrong. However, I would be pretty ok with the topic being "Uralic mythology" in singular even though I prefer the plural. But I strongly prefer "Uralic mythology" over "Proto-Uralic mythology" not least because "Uralic", not "Proto-Uralic", is the original topic of this page. Most of the similar pages in Wikipedia are named this way. There is no "Proto-Germanic mythology", no "Proto-Celtic mythology", no "Proto-Turkic mythology", but there is "Germanic mythology", "Celtic mythology", and "Turkic mythology" etc. There is definitely such a single topic as "Uralic mythologies" (or "Uralic mythology"). It is an overview topic of Uralic mythology and such an overview, as far as I know, is against no rule in Wikipedia. See Celtic mythology, Germanic mythology, Turkic mythology which all are such overviews. (All three, by the way, are not disambiguation pages, and rightly so, even though according to your individual view of disambiguation they probably should be. This, again, shows that your individual view of disambiguation is not Wikipedia's view of it. You are simply mistaking overview for disambiguation.) The point that there is not one single Uralic people speaking one single language today is true but irrelevant. There is no single Celtic people today, nor a single Germanic people today, nor a single Turkic people today. Yet, all three have their own mythology overview substance articles. Again referring to Wikimedia Foundation's Aubrey Williams statement, “diversity and inclusion are core to our mission”, English Wikipedia really should have a similar Uralic mythology overview as well. I'm not saying that there shouldn't also be a Proto-Uralic mythology/religion page, but since the original topic of this very page here is "Uralic mythologies", it should really be changed back to that, or if not that then the singular form "Uralic mythology". Tpalonen (talk) 12:20, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The Celts, German tribes and Turks are ethnographic constructs. The "Uralics" are not -- they're an ethnographic fiction, a reification of a linguistic theory, not an ethnographic one. Having a comparative-mythology article for an ethnographic group is reasonable. Having one for a spurious group is not. The only way we could have "Uralic mythologies" is as a dab page -- that's why I say you're arguing for a dab page. The only way we could have a "Uralic mythology" article is if it's about proto-Uralic mythology, in which case it's best to keep the more precise title, either "Proto-Uralic religion" or "Proto-Uralic mythology". — kwami (talk) 19:52, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: @TaivoLinguist: We're going in circles here. Would either of you like to chime in? — kwami (talk) 19:55, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello kwami. First, we need to distinguish two things here: 1) a group that has spoken a proto-language and 2) all groups speaking languages derived from that proto-language. Clearly, the one is not the same as the other. "Celts", in my view, refer to the latter, but I'm not sure what you mean by it. Second, you are being inaccurate with terms like "German tribes" and "Turks". As far as I know, there is no such thing as "German tribes". "German" refers to the German language and citizens of Germany. "Germanic" on the other hand may refer to either 1) proto-Germanic language or, perhaps more often, 2) all Germanic languages. The words "Turk" and "Turks" refer to many things:. Which of these do you mean? See Turk disambiguation page. Btw, once again here we see the correct use of disambiguation page in Wikipedia. Yet, you in your latest reply again insist on your own personal view of disambiguation, which is wrong and against Wikipedia's own definition of how disambiguation should be used. Third, your claim that Uralic people is a fiction is wrong. Whether we refer to it by the term "Uralic people" or "speakers of proto-Uralic" or some other term doesn't really matter. "Uralic people" may not be the best term to use in this context, I agree, but that really doesn't make your claims any more supportable. Whenever a language family is constructed, it supposes a proto-language which has been spoken by a single people at a certain time in history. Celtic and Germanic are proto-languages within the Indo-European language family while Turkic languages are a language family of their own, as are Indo-European and Uralic language families. The idea of a single group speaking proto-Uralic language is no more fiction than are ideas of corresponding groups speaking proto-Germanic, proto-Turkic, proto-Celtic or proto-Indo-European. See for example pages Proto-Indo-European_homeland and Proto-Uralic_homeland for discussion on the homeland of two such single people. So, "Uralic people" as referring to single people is not fiction and "Uralic peoples" referring to all peoples speaking Uralic languages is not fiction. See my earlier comments for arguments on why I prefer the term "Uralic" to "Proto-Uralic" as the topic. I may also tag some people later so that we can get more opinions. Tpalonen (talk) 07:26, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

This is not my personal opinion. There is general consensus on WP that we do not create articles for fictional ethnicities, and both Uralic and Finno-Ugric have been discussed before, with consensus to delete (along with several other faux-ethnic articles). You don't seem to appreciate that Uralic is a linguistic construct. As such, it's only appropriate as a linguistic concept. "Uralic" is no more appropriate as an ethnic category than Italo-Celtic, or Indo-Iranian, or Niger-Congo or Sino-Tibetan, or any other linguistic construct that has no basis in ethnography. Basically what you're saying is that when a linguist postulates a language family, an ethnicity and religion magically appear to match it, and when a proposed family is debunked, the people and religion magically disappear again. A true ethnic group or mythology is not dependent on the vagaries of linguistic reconstruction. — kwami (talk) 07:33, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello kwami. The issue at the core of this discussion is your misunderstanding of what disambiguation means in Wikipedia and this prevents us to move any further. I'm arguing for a general overview article on Uralic mythology and there is, as far as I know, no rule in Wikipedia that this would violate. I have mentioned several similar articles already and will get to that later. Let me again quote Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Broad-concept_articles: "If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing it and not a disambiguation page." And here is another quote from Wikipedia:General_overview_article: "General overview articles are better than disambiguation pages in which clearly one meaning is of primary importance/usefulness/interest. Even if the general overview articles starts out in poor quality, the increase in its visibility by replacing the disambiguation page with it may spur improvements in its quality." Like I said before, Wikipedia doesn't always make clear, how disambiguation should be determined, but nevertheless, both of these quotes very clearly back up the notion that there should be a general overview article on Uralic mythology and this should not be a disambiguation page. When in Wikipedia, we should use Wikipedia's own guidelines. I hope you agree. As to Uralic and Finno-Ugric being fictitious ethnicities, this claim is inaccurate and also unjust. I will get back to that. It's unfortunate if any deletes have been made regarding these. You are simply mistaking fiction for theory or hypothesis. Wikipedia describes Fiction as "any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, comprised of people, events, or places that are imaginary in a manner that is not based strictly on history or fact." On the other hand, Wikipedia defines Theory as "a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking" while a working Hypothesis is "a provisionally accepted hypothesis proposed for further research, in a process beginning with an educated guess or thought." Please be careful when using such terms as "fiction" or "pseudo-science". Again, comparative religion, folkloristics, linguistics and etymology are not subfields of fiction, nor pseudo-science (nor magic, as you also seem to suggest) nor are they based on fiction. Also, nothing appears or disappears "magically" in these fields of humanities. The theories / hypotheses made in these fields are based on data, which is by no means only linguistic data. Scholars on Uralic peoples have collected a vast amount of mythological data, poetry, stories (that may or may not include deities) etc, and these certainly have been compared and used as a basis for reconstructing more ancient forms of mythology. As to which ethnic group counts as "fiction" on the one hand and "true" on the other hand by your standards really seems to me to be nothing but a personal opinion / gut feeling. It seems that to you Celtic, Germanic and Turkic ethnic groups are more "true" than Uralic (since they have a mythology overview page and Uralic doesn't). I would be happy to hear any actual scientific proof for this categorization. In stead, the truth is that there used to be a proto-Celtic language which lead to several daughter languages some of which are still spoken today. Same is true with Germanic and Turkic. And same is also true with Uralic. I don't see any good reason to separate Uralic from Celtic, Germanic or Turkic in this regard. This is just discriminatory categorizing, pure and simple. Ethnography is a whole different topic and by no means represents a straightforward or unproblematic line of arguing, but there too, I don't see any good reason to separate Uralic from Celtic, Germanic or Turkic. All four groups of peoples encompass vast amounts of ethnic, genetic and cultural diversity as well as geographic distance. Excluding only one group and not the others based on ethnography would really again be an example of discriminatory categorizing, nothing more. I'd like to quote Aubrey Williams again but I've done it twice already so I hope that is enough. Tpalonen (talk) 15:54, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Except that it wouldn't be a broad-concept article. What's the broad concept? What's the difference between this supposed Uralic mythology and, say, Siberian mythology? Or Finnic mythology? Or Mythologies of the non-Slavic peoples of Russia? Why specifically Uralic? Why not a Ugro-Samoyed mythology article? Or Uralo-Yukaghir mythology? Or Indo-Uralic? The scope is arbitrary, and by choosing it, you'd give credence to the idea that there's something called "Uralic mythology".

I would support a "Finnic mythology" article, which would include most of the peoples Uralic covers. The Finns are an actual ethnographic concept, independent of linguistic concepts. Just the opposite, actually. That would be parallel to Turkic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic etc.

If you wish to cover the pre-Christian mythologies/religions of the region, that's how I would approach it. A main article on Finnic mythology, without desperate attempts to find parallels among the Hungarians. Regardless of scope, you're going to need to mention parallels with their neighbors. If you have enough material, you could create articles on Ugrian mythology, Yeniseian mythology, Samoyed mythology, Yukaghir mythology, Chukchi mythology, etc. And they could all be cross-ref'd in the 'see also' section, or with a 'Mythologies of Siberia' table template. — kwami (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Like kwami above, I too will tag a couple of people here. It would be nice to hear what other people think of these issues. I'm tagging people I've seen being active recently-ish in other Wikipedia articles related to Uralic / Fenno-Ugric mythology. I know there is a lot to read in this talk page. Anyway, I will tag @Estopedist1: and @Tropylium:. I hope I'm not bothering you. Sorry and thank you! Tpalonen (talk) 18:35, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

As per Tpalonen, comparative Uralic mythology is a topic that has been studied; much less so than Proto-Indo-European mythology (obviously a better point of comparison than e.g. Germanic mythology), and I get the impression mostly so pre-WW2, but it does have reliable sources going for it. It's an interesting question whether this really would be different from Siberian mythology or Laurasian mythology (which don't currently seem to exist as articles either! the former redirects to an article that is a vague lumped overview of the kind kwami seems to dislike), but that's not a question for us to decide as editors and deciding which of these scopes to dedicate WP articles to should depend on sources. I see no good objection against there at least existing an article of this name.

As per kwami, though, I do think this article should not look especially much like an "overview" of the Uralic-speaking peoples' mythologies as attested later, except perhaps to cover what sources think on how to delinate the two (which is not necessarily obvious). I don't see much signs of this problem in the article currently though. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 09:56, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

My concern isn't that it's vague, but that we'd end up pushing pseudoscience/pseudohistory. Such an article would require constant vigilance against editors who think, like Tpalonen, that there's such a thing as Uralic mythology. What'd be the point of all the astrology-like edit-wars that that's likely to produce, like we had before the old Uralic and Finno-Ugric articles were deleted? You could take any arbitrary set of peoples and compare their religions, but we wouldn't want to imply that they're a single people. If the field is historically notable, then we could cover it as pseudoscience/pseudohistory. If it's not a notable pseudoscience, then IMO best to relegate any elements we do mention to a related article, like Finnic mythology. Or it could be a term of convenience in Russia, like Khoisan or Papuan is for some scholars, but if so we'd need to be very clear that it has no substance, so again, why bother? I don't know what 'Uralic mythology' would contribute that 'Finnic mythology' would not. Many of the sources we'd have exclude the Samoyeds anyway, and they really have to stretch to find parallels with the Hungarians, so the main diff would be the inclusion of the Ugrians, and the Finns and Ugrians aren't any more similar than other peoples in the region, like the Kets, so no particular reason to lump them together either. Especially if we treat Finnic mythology as not being notable enough for an article of its own. I'm not familiar with Finnic mythology, and perhaps there isn't a field for it like there is for Germanic, Slavic or Turkic mythology, but if there is, I think it should take precedence over fictional mythologies like Uralic or Sino-Caucasian or Turanian -- or like Indo-European, for that matter. No-one compares the mythologies of the Nepalese and the Irish and claims it's a thing, though they may trace elements of either to proto-Indo-European mythology. (Note that Indo-European mythology is a rd to Proto-IE mythology.) If we're going to compare what the Hungarians and Samoyeds have inherited from proto-Uralic mythology, that would similarly belong in an article of that name.

Though I'm not sure Finnic mythology has much coherence either. The Western Finns were recently shamanistic, whereas the Eastern Finns have long been agricultural. Their mythologies are very different. The only substantial similarity in the old article was a sky god, but that one point is not much to base an article on. Maybe better to have separate Western Finnic (Baltic and Sami) and Eastern Finnic (Volgaic and Permian) articles, and to mention in each that they have a sky god in common. And something like the sky-diver, that's shared by Uralic and non-Uralic peoples, probably deserves its own article. — kwami (talk) 17:46, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

"I don't know what 'Uralic mythology' would contribute that 'Finnic mythology' would not": this sounds like you're confused about the terminology. Finnic mythology should only cover the Baltic-Finnic peoples, who are one out of the nine main groups of Uralic (and whose mythology does reconstruct in quite a lot of detail). We actually seem to for some reason currently use different, obsolete terminology at Finnic peoples, however. Also even with updated terminology, we absolutely should not have an article on "Finno-Permic mythology" which has basically nothing going for it that wouldn't be better covered in this article (or maybe in more specific articles like Jumala); and which has the additional problem that "Finno-Permic" is most likely not a valid subgroup of Uralic in the first place.

And "the western Finns were recently shamanistic whereas the Eastern Finns have long been agricultural"? What? For starters, since when are agriculture and religion in any way complementary? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 08:10, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Why should 'Finnic mythology' mean 'Balto-Finnic mythology' and not 'Finnic mythology'?

The linguistic validity of Finno-Permic is irrelevant, because this isn't a linguistic topic. It's an ethnographic one. If the Finns (in the broad sense) are valid ethnographic group, then we can cover any aspect of their ethnography that we have adequate sources for. But I'm not promoting a mythology article, I'm just trying to explain to Tpalonen what might be accept able if they wanted to create one.

Re. agriculture, what I've read suggests that Western and Eastern Finnic mythology is quite different, and that the differences tie into agriculture. But this isn't my field, so I don't know how wide a scope is feasible -- perhaps a Finnic mythology article would be doable. — kwami (talk) 09:01, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Equivalently, why should 'Finnic mythology' mean 'Finno-Permic mythology' and not 'Finnic mythology'? :)

Anyway "Finns" in this wider sense are by no means a single valid ethnographic group. The relevant unit is "Volga Finns" which means exclusively the Maris, Mordvins and possibly Permians. It does not decompose as "a sub-branch of Finns in the Volga Region" but "people in the Volga Region, who speak some Finn(o-Perm)ic languages". I'm sure we can find ethnographic sources that are talking about them as "Finns" in shorthand, but such sources should not be taken as implying that anything they say is also valid for Baltic-Finnic. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:17, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Kwami, sorry, I'm a bit late to chime in; I'm not really inclined to read long forum-like posts when WP isn't a forum. But it's good to see that Tropylium already has been here to comment.

The only relevant question for WP is whether there is a solid corpus of literature about Proto-Uralic religion/mythology. I'm not referring to sources that collectively present religion and mythology of the various Uralic-speaking peoples just because that's one of many ways to assemble and catalogize data and knowledge. But sources that discuss common elements that are widely shared, and only shared among Uralic-speaking peoples (especially including Samoyedic), combined with terminology going back to PU. This is also what PIE, PGmc etc. mythology is about. If such literature exists, fine, but the scope and size of an article like this will crucially hinge on the amount of existing lit. If it's bascially only Aikio's still unpublished chapter with a handful of PU words, then this probably not even enough for a stub and could just as well integrated into another article; however I don't feel strongly about it either way. But: if this article exists, it should not contain coatracked material, e.g. things shared within a more restricted scope like Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic etc., or formal similarities not matched by any terminological cognates. –Austronesier (talk) 15:29, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, I find it weird how kwami claims to know that there isn't such a thing as Uralic mythology. If the concern is over scope creep into people adding bits of arbitrary mythologies of historically known Uralic peoples, I think renaming the article to the clearer Proto-Uralic mythology would likely help. But every valid language family did have an actually existing proto-language, this was spoken by at least one ethnic group, and this people (these people) can be assumed to have had some kind of a mythology(ies). This is a basic application of uniformitarianism, not "fiction". As said I think recent sources are fairly few, but since when do we deem that sources stop being reliable simply due to age? (If someone goes out to find an explicit refutation of any ability to reconstruct PU mythology, that'd be another issue, but one that likewise depends on sources.)

Comparative mythology for that matter doesn't strictly require the ability to reconstruct a proto-language expression for its contents. E.g. speaking of the earth-diver myth, we can be pretty sure that the Proto-Uralians did have this mytheme, but very little idea which name of a diving bird might have been used in this (could be e.g. *śodka 'goldeneye' as appearing in Finnic or *toktə 'loon' as appearing in Ob-Ugric — my informed guess would be the latter, given traces of a special status of the loon also in other Uralic peoples' mythologies, but it would have to remain a guess). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 08:55, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I think we're confounding terms here. I have no problem with a Proto-Uralic mythology article -- I'm the one who moved the article to the present name, and I've said I'd by happy with 'mythology' instead. And if we can find RS's that trace the earth-diver myth to pU, I'd be happy to include it as well.

My problem is lumping together all the mythologies of the modern Uralic-speaking peoples as if they were a single mythology, or a coherent family of mythologies, to the exclusion of their neighbors who share(d) the same beliefs, where the scope of the article is not defined by ethnography or the mythologies themselves, but by linguistic theory. Linguistic and ethnographic groups do not always align, and the older the language family, the poorer the fit. The Uralics are not an ethnographic group any more than Indo-Europeans are -- that's the fiction I'm speaking of. — kwami (talk) 09:07, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Having an etymon from the proto-language with reflexes displaying characteristic sound correspondences is usually a good way to ensure that the shared concept has not just spread later via diffusion, but if reliable sources (←plural) find good reason to assign this concept to the proto-language speaker group without such an etymon, then sure, it's not ours in WP to deconstruct it. –Austronesier (talk) 09:20, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Anything reconstructable or assignable to pU is fair game. I'd go so far as to accept things attributed to pFU if it might be that those elements were present in pU and lost in Samoyedic. But an article on 'Orthodox Christian Uralic mythology', that tries valiantly to demonstrate that those beliefs are common to the Hungarians and Sami as well for no other reason than that they both speak Uralic languages, would not be a legitimate topic. That's what I'm trying to argue against. — kwami (talk) 09:28, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Completely agreed. But then this is a strawman concern that, as far as I can tell, no one has tried to actually propose. So what's the actual problem here? Are we trying to discuss issues in the article as it currently stands, or some kind of a future hypothetical problem? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:17, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Tpalonen has been arguing for that. He wants this article to be about Uralic mythology -- not proto-Uralic, but about the modern (presumably pre-Christian) mythologies, lumped together solely on the basis that their peoples speak related languages, regardless of whether the myths cover the whole family or have wider distribution. I moved the article to its current title (though 'mythology' instead of 'religion' would be fine) and removed what wasn't traceable back to pU, so yes, I'm happy enough with the article as it is now. But we've deleted a number of pseudo-ethnographic articles on 'Language family-X mythology' from WP, and I'm objecting to going backwards and recreating them. — kwami (talk) 18:21, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for Trɔpʏliʊm and Austronesier for joining in and sharing your views! As to kwami's argument of arbitrariness, Uralic is a language family accepted by the whole academic community, basically. The word "Uralic" represents this language family in its entirity and also the proto-language stage of that language family, comparable to "Indo-European" or "Turkic". It is not at all arbitrary. Instead, it is the least arbitrary concept available. Urgo-Samoyed, Indo-Uralic and other concepts kwami mentions don't represent any academically accepted units and therefore your argument of arbitrariness doesn't hold true. Finnic is one of the branches of the Uralic family and includes a number of languages, see Finnic languages. With regards to this argument of arbitrariness, I don't see any reason why having an article on Finnic mythology would be more or less acceptable than one on Uralic mythology. Also, it seems odd to me that both kwami and User:Austronesier insist that every myth that deserves mention should be restricted only to Uralic peoples. I don't see this principle practiced anywhere else in Wikipedia. Why apply it only here and not elsewhere? Proto-Indo-European mythology for example mentions a Serpent-slaying myth which is "generally associated with water" while Sea serpent mentions "The Drachenkampf mytheme, the chief god in the role of the hero slaying a sea serpent, is widespread both in the ancient Near East and in Indo-European mythology". Another example from the PIE mythology article, "Although the concept of elevation through intoxicating drink is a nearly universal motif, a Proto-Indo-European myth of the "cycle of the mead", originally proposed by Georges Dumézil and further developed by Jarich G. Oosten (1985), is based on the comparison of Indic and Norse mythologies." Turkic mythology mentions horse, dragon, and a tree of life as being central concepts in that mythology. These concepts are central to a host of other non-related peoples, too. As I've said, even if similar myths appear elsewhere, doesn't mean they are not also Uralic myths. True, like in the case of the PIE drinking myth mentioned above, it might be good to mention that similar myths appear elsewhere and then give more detail on what are the particularly Uralic features of the myth that don't appear elsewhere. Kwami's argument of whose related and whose not (Finns vs. Hungarians etc), again, could be applied anywhere and really has no special value here. Are Swedes and Persians more related than Finns and Hungarians? Are Turkish people and Yakuts more related than Finns and Hungarians? No. So, why use such argument here when it has not been used elsewhere. As to the argument of lumping together of related peoples' mythologies, mentioned by kwami, would not be unique to the Uralic case. Celtic mythology represents exactly such lumping. The article states that "Although the Celtic world at its height covered much of western and central Europe, it was not politically unified nor was there any substantial central source of cultural influence or homogeneity; as a result, there was a great deal of variation in local practices of Celtic religion". Also, Turkic mythology discusses various epics, mythology in Siberian Turks, Buddhist Turkic mythology etc, so, the article is not at all restricted to what's shared by the whole Turkic family of peoples. As I've said, I don't see any good reason why there shouldn't be a similar overview article on Uralic mythology (and why not have separate articles on branches like Fenno-Ugric which apparently has been deleted). Not having such an overview while other very similar ones exist just seems to me to be the kind of exclusion that is against Wikimedia's mission. True, there is more literature on mythology at the Fenno-Ugric stage and therefore "Fenno-Ugric mythology" would make up a more extensive article but since the topic of this page has been "Uralic" and there is no other place to cover Fenno-Ugric mythology, I see this as the best place to cover F-U mythology as well. Tpalonen (talk) 08:04, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

You're still missing the point. Indeed, Uralic is a language family. A family of languages. Not a family of mythologies. It's not like the Christianity practiced by Uralics is distinct from the Christianity practiced by Indo-Europeans; an article on "Uralic Christianity" would be completely arbitrary. And indeed, it's the same for Indo-European: we shouldn't have an "Indo-European mythology" article either -- which is why we don't. Same standard applies here. — kwami (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I understand that argument, kwami. But could you then please explain what makes Uralic different from Celtic and Turkic in this respect? I know that Celtic is a subbranch of Indo-European but that alone doesn't explain anything.) These two are also language family groupings. Why would Celtic or Turkic represent more "real" ethnic groupings (or families of mythology) than Uralic? If you could provide any literature to back up this claim, I'd be happy to see. Otherwise, it seems to me that it's just your personal opinion. And also, why aren't these articles named "Proto-Celtic mythology" and "Proto-Turkic mythology"? And why is it allowed for these articles to include broader overviews of myths of various peoples in these families with no need to trace everything back to a shared proto-mythology? See, for example, Turkic_mythology#Buddhist_Turkic_Mythology. Tpalonen (talk) 05:54, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The Turks and Celts, like the Germans, Finns, Slavs, Tai or Iroquois, are an ethnographic group independently of linguistics. Of course, they're seen as kindred at least partially because of language, but they didn't need linguists to reveal that to them. The Romans spoke of the Celts and of the German tribes; medieval Europeans saw the Turkic tribes as related (as they did themselves). Their myths, history etc. as a group were discussed before historical linguistics was invented. But it took linguistics to reveal Uralic, Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and such. Those aren't ethnographic groups, they're linguistic constructs. We could speak of Hunnic mythology, if we had the records, because they were a political and cultural unity, even though the languages they spoke were likely not even related. But to speak of a group of people as somehow related just because their languages are -- what happens if the linguistic theory is debunked? Do the people and their mythology disappear into the ether? If it turned out that some of the Celts didn't speak Celtic languages, but were only ethnically Celtic, that wouldn't matter for ethnography, because "Celt" as an ethnographic group is independent of the validity of linguistic theory. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)