Many different sources point to the fact that traditionally each household one kantele. It supposes that an instrument was a property of a head of a family. It also suggests a kind of personal relationships between an owner and an instrument. There are no evidences that traditionally kantele was produced by specialist in large quantity and sold on the market like today. On contrary there are evidences that instrument was often made and played by the same person. It allows to suppose that traditional kantele was never an instrument of professional performers but rather an instrument of every adult man. Sound of an instrument was not loud and rarely it was used to entertain a lot of people. It may have happened at celebrations but usually instrument was played for small audiences or very often for oneself. Considering all this and the fact that women and children traditionally did not play kantele seems to be reasonable to suppose kantele being at least a sign of maturity or probably even an attribute of a certain initiation level. But this statement still needs to be proven. On "sacred" nature of this instrument points such facts that sometimes kantele was blessed by a local priest and it was a good thing to take a kantele when going on pilgrimage. Different folk tales relate kantele and mortuary rituals. Some elements of decoration point also to the ritual function of the instrument and some specialist even relate this to the ancient shamanistic functions of the instrument but at this point one have to stop and say that still we have no sufficient grounds to support this point of view.