ATU 1935 Topsy Turvy Land
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A tall tale of a land where everything is upside down: animals do people's work, tools swap their uses, and men and women trade tasks. In the Finnish songs the singer has seen these wonders on a journey to Häme: a stallion lies up in a spruce, squirrels pull the plough, people cook with an axe and cut with a cauldron.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
Possibly related: the songs of these types tell this tale (as judged by a language model).
- Hämeen ihmeet Wonders of Häme · SKVR · 280 poems
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish Rausmaa 1982ff. IV, No. 184
Full references:
- Rausmaa 1982ff.: Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (ed.): Suomalaiset kansansadut 1–6. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1982–2000.
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Topsy-Turvy Land X1505
Combines with: ATU 1930 Schlaraffenland·ATU 1960 The Great Animal or Great Object·ATU 852 Lying Contest (previously The Hero Forces the Princess to Say, 'That is a Lie')
Related types: ATU 1965 The Disabled Comrades (previously Knoist and his Three Sons)
Sources
Tale-type number, title, classification, related types and the Finnic sources: Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales (FF Communications 284–286, Helsinki 2004). · Uther 2004, part II (FF Communications 285), free online ↗
Possibly related runosong types: a reading of the song types by a language model (Claude Opus 5.5, 2 November 2026); only links it rated high or medium in confidence are shown.
Motifs and combinations with other tale types: the Trilogy dataset, from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the ATU catalogue.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.