Some might easily think that the Guild is just a couple of guys, fooling around drunk, doing nothing important. We don't see it that way, though the drunken state is an essential part of our meetings. Via mere photos and words in the net it's extremely hard to convey the atmosphere and the feeling of our 'cave', as well as our trips to the woods. We listen to music, scratch rune- and pictorial stones, play 'Kakkipallo', discuss the way of the world, give sacrifice to the gods and above all, have fun. Rarely there's any stress of the progress of the work, since we have no ambitions to sell anything if not actually asked for. The Guild is a way for us to escape the doomed society of ours, to relax and to show a proper respect for the nature.

When the Guild was founded back in 1999, faith didn't play a big part. The most important for us back then was to break the chokehold of christianity around our necks and rebel against it by making these 'heathen' runestones and fleeing back in time. We had little to none knowledge of our ancient Finnish beliefs. We borrowed the religion and culture from our neighbours, the Germanic people of Scandinavia, of which it was a lot easier to find knowledge. Still the Germanic pantheon never quite felt like our own. Without so much a thought about it, we painted on our cave wall poems from Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, with elder Futhark. We also scrathced and erected an altar for Ukko, an ancient Finnish god of thunder. Perhaps our ancestors whispered in our ears? Soon we noticed that we lifted a toast to Ukko, Tapio and Pelto-Pekko, not any longer to Thor or Frey. Thus our interrest in the beliefs and faith of our own people started to grow. We set on an expedition to our own gods and try to find the truth from all sources possible. Alas the road is rocky, since the christianity has done it's best effort to destroy and twist the knowledge of the pagan beliefs.

To us faith means respecting the nature. Thru the gods we show our gratitude to the land from which we are born and fed, and try to be one with the eternal cycle of the wheel of nature. This is a difficult task as the modern society has driven us further from the nature. The growth of humankind and the senseless consuming of natural resources threat to pollute the whole globe. A man isn't in harmony with his surroundings anymore, and thus feels rootless. A major part of this rootlessness is caused by the fact that we were converted by violence and force to a religion that is strange and above all, foreign to us. By reverting to the faith of our ancestors we can re-discover our connection to the nature and land.

Though we have began to pursue the Finnish paganity and the Finnish culture did not include runestones, we will not stop scratching them. We still can respect the pagan beliefs of our neighbours, which are in many areas very similar to the beliefs of our own. Also an extremely important to us is the fact, that we get to create, to practice, not just talk about it. Do the same, find out, research and contradict, take action!

To Ukko!