I know that this was a year ago, but I have to say it... Finland is cool... in more ways than one. Lol Had to make a pun... I'm part Finnish from my Dad's side, hence my last name.
If I recall correctly, according the album booklet ("Finnish Folk Voices"), this is a traditional Kalevala metre lyric-chant of shamanistic provenance, written down sometime in the 19th - 20th century (I would guess), which Laitanen has (re)constructed musically in the vein of extant Northern Eurasian chants. (For anyone who is not familiar, Heikki Laitinen is a highly respected musicologist, professor, and scholar with the Folk Music Department of the internationally renowned Sibelius Academy.)
Finally: Using linguistic and comparative textual analysis, folklorists have determined some of the probable ages and possible provenances of certain folk chants and songs, and specific lines, concepts, themes, or figures within. I am pretty sure, though not certain, that this chant, at least in part, is of quite ancient provenance and originates from a shamanistic, largely hunter-gather society, which describes both Eastern and Western Finnic tribes preceding late medieval Christianization.
Kalevala metre lyric-chant of ancient Finnish shamans. The rhythm of it, with the drumming, is intended to drop the listener into a trance. The way that these oral traditions were transmitted is very interesting -- the initiate and master would sit on the floor (often of the sauna), placing forehead against forehead, rocking back and forth to the meter of the poem, repeating it together in synchrony. Entering trance together. The weaving of the language, the ancient spellcraft, gets intense!
To continue: Because these chants went forcibly and willingly extinct in much of Western Finland beginning with Christianization and-probably more so-a few hundred years later following the Protestant Reformation, most of the Kalevala metre chants recorded by folklorists were collected from Eastern Finland and surrounding Finnic-speaking regions, where Orthodox Christianity was professed but was sycretized with old pagan traditions in a way that was illegal and unacceptable under Lutheranism.
