Finnic riddles
Traditional form of word-play in Finnic-speaking world / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Finnic riddles?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The corpus of traditional riddles from the Finnic-speaking world (including the modern Finland, Estonia, and parts of Western Russia) is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions show particular influence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Slavonic riddle culture.[1] The Finnish for 'riddle' is arvoitus (pl. arvoitukset), related to the verb arvata ('to guess') and arpa ('raffle ticket').
Riddles provide some of the first surviving evidence for Finnic literature.[2] Finnic riddles are noteworthy in relation to the rest of the world's oral riddle canon for their original imagery, their abundance of sexual riddles, and the interesting collision of influences from east and west;[3] along with the attestation in some regions of an elaborate riddle-game.[4]
The archives of the Finnish Literature Society contain texts of 117,300 Finnish-language riddles collected from oral tradition, some of which are in Kalevala metre;[5] meanwhile, the Estonian Folklore Archives contain around 130,000 older traditional riddles, along with about 45,000 other riddle-type folklore, such as conundra, initial letter puzzles, droodles, etc.[6]