Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vammatar

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. PhantomSteve/talk¦contribs\ 18:08, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Vammatar

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This article may be a hoax or a WP:TNT candidate. I cannot find any reliable source that calls her a goddess, there are a few Google Book hits but they are not very reliable - first is an obvious copy from Wikipedia, another is a New Age publisher (Llewellyn Worldwide). The only reliable source for this is [1] but it is a one liner, and academic works can have errors too. As a goddess, she seems to fail GNG as she has not been a subject of any academic study or discussion, and all we get is a one line in a single source (that does not cite a source). She does seem to be mentioned in the Kalevala, but it is unclear she is a goddess, and I can't find any literary or otherwise academic analysis of her as a character, so she she fails WP:NFICTION (also as a minor Conan the Barbarian character). As a side-note REDFLAG, you'd expect a Finnish goddess to have an article on a Finnish Wikipedia... At best, I think this can be redirected to Kalevala#Characters but right now the article does not mention her (it seems she plays a very minor role in the epic, I think gets only a few sentences in the work...). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:23, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:23, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Finland-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:23, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per nominator - GizzyCatBella🍁 05:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete I too find nothing significant scholarly on it; the context of what I can see suggests that it's either a poetic figure or possibly an attribute of some other deity, but in any case what we have here seems to be a fiction created by unwary new age authors. Mangoe (talk) 16:42, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm fairly certain its not an outright hoax. Aside from the one reliable source shown by the nom, The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology also mentions her and another goddess named Kivutar as some of the children of Tuoni and Tuonetar, and states they were "goddesses of pain and disease". This book also mentions her as one of Tuoni and Tuonetar's children, as well. With all of the sources pretty much being one to two sentences long and just stating those same two facts, there probably is not enough to work with to develop a stand alone article, but this should probably be Redirected somewhere. Rorshacma (talk) 02:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
possible "redirect" targe Finnish mythology#Heroes, gods and spirits? Coolabahapple (talk) 15:10, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Not a hoax. Although there doesn't seem to be much in-depth about her, Vammatar is in Rune 45 (Birth of the Nine Diseases) of the Kalevala. The line in Finnish is: ""Kun ei tuosta kyllin liene, Kivutar, hyvä emäntä, / Vammatar, valio vaimo, tule kanssa, käy keralla / tekemähän terveyttä, rauhoa rakentamahan!"[2] which Crawford translates as "Should this prayer prove unavailing, / O, Health-virgin, maid of beauty / Come and heal my dying people, / Still their agonies and anguish."[3] This source says Vammatar (Spirit of Injuries) is synonymous with "Kivutar" (Pain Spirit) in the same verse and "Kiputyttö" (Pain Girl) in the previous verse. There is a Finnish Wikipedia article for fi:Kipu-tyttö, although it doesn't mention Vammatar. All three names appear in passing in this source (p. 150). Carter (talk) 13:22, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not to put too fine a point on it, but The "Larrousse" is, as I understand it, a Robert Graves concoction, who I am loathe to accept as reliable. I'm also dubious about the Virgin Mary paper given that the claim is uncited. Beside that, the question remains as to whether this name appears anywhere else in Finnish primary sources besides this one passage from the Kalevala. Mangoe (talk) 13:59, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Robert Graves actually just wrote the four page Introduction for the English edition. The actual text of the encyclopedia was translated to English by a Richard Aldrington and Delano Ames from the original French Larousse Mythologie Generale, which was originally edited by Felix Guirand and published in France by Éditions Larousse. A lot of places, such as Amazon, list Graves as the "author", when he actually had nothing to do with the actual text of the encyclopedia itself. Rorshacma (talk) 14:48, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
agree with Rorshacma, Laroussee Mythology is not "a Robert Graves concoction", it is a reliable source. Coolabahapple (talk) 15:02, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As best I've been able to determine this morning, Kiputyttö gets more ink than Vammatar in discussions of the Kalevala, but even her not that much. For the Conan character, she first appeared in the short story Legions of the Dead, which was the source material for her first Marvel Comics appearance. It looks like she appeared in about a half issues of various Conan titles, as well as a mention in some Marvel encyclopedias (although it's not clear if the Conan Vammatar is supposed to be the same character). In either case, she fails WP:NCOMIC for a solo article, but would meet for a list candidate. Carter (talk) 15:26, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mythology-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 15:07, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This is not a hoax, but it is impossible to write an in-depth article about her. A minor mythological figure which gets passing mentions in texts. The fictional character named after her is a mortal witch and is not depicted as a deity. Dimadick (talk) 10:50, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. The deity was worshiped, and there is plenty of evidence in the form of scholarship. However, the Conan character isn't the same person, and is a minor character. Not surer what we should do here. 20:24, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Merge into the relevant articles on the Kalevala and Marvel Comics. No need for a separate article. Vammatar is also noted in the the book Kalevalan sanat ja niiden taustat by Aimo Turunen (p. 371a:5) He states that she sometimes appears in spells, even though there is no such being in Finnish mythology. He also posits that she is another name for the Virgin Mary in much the same way that Kivutar and Päivätär are. There is some scholarly research about Vammatar, nothing that I've seen refers to her as a goddess, just as a mythical being. -Yupik (talk) 06:13, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here is one of the spells she is referred to in and another one -Yupik (talk) 06:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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