The forest has offered protection from enemies and comfort amid any number of cares. When Marjatta is forsaken by her mother, father and neighbors, the forest is her only recourse:

Marjatta the lowly maid
thereupon burst into tears
and she put this into words:
'The time comes for me to go
as of old for the gipsy
or the hireling serf --
to go off to the burnt hill
to head for the lea of pines 

With her hands she rolled her clothes
with her fists she grasped her hems
took a bath-whisk for cover
a sweet leaf for her shelter
and she trips along
in hard belly-pain
to the hut among the pines
the stall on Tapio Hill;

The area between Sudnozero, Latvajärvi and Lapukka is the last great wilderness in Karelia. For centuries, it has served the needs of the people in the bardic villages in many ways. For example, in addition to providing catches of fish and power for mills, the rivers running through the area support rich beds of mussels. It is here that Inha took some of his extraordinary photographs of a pearl-catcher from Venehjärvi collecting mussels from his raft. These forests still conceal wilderness huts built over a century ago, as well as hunting platforms like those immortalized in the drawings of Samuli Paulaharju in the 1910s. The forests are dotted with any number of other hunting huts, built at various times, the oldest of which still sport skillfully crafted birch bark roofs. The huts were built for both hunting and fishing, for the forests contains ponds, lakes and rivers where the perch may reach three kilos. Game is abundant. Bears roam the woods, and capercaillie thrive. And even the wild deer in the World Wildlife Foundation's Red Book can be found wandering the backwoods of Viena.

The huts were built for both hunting and fishing, for the forests contains ponds, lakes and rivers where the perch may reach three kilos. Game is abundant. Bears roam the woods, and capercaillie thrive. And even the wild deer in the World Wildlife Foundation's Red Book can be found wandering the backwoods of Viena

The wilderness has a large natural population of predators. One finds no fox or mink that have escaped from fur farms, but one may encounter wolves, who cull the animal population as needed. 

It is these forests that embody the identity of the bardic families of Voknavolok and of the Karelian people in Viena. These woods are as much a part of the global cultural heritage as the Kalevala itself, whose words have sprung to life like the berries that carpet the forest floor. These forests - the fields of Tapiola, which hold the secrets of many births, the entire mythology of Karelia - were threatened with destruction in the early 1990s by short-sighted, exploitative economic thinking. But the Revitalising Project of the Viena Karelian Folklore Villages succeeded in staying the extensive logging that had been planned, saving thereby this unique wilderness area and preserving it as a monument to Karelian culture and a tribute to its traditional livelihoods.