Happy St. Urho's Day!
16/03/14 05:20
I guess I should start by wishing you happy St. Urho’s day. I like to keep track of the holidays and have the proper greetings for each occasion. Since my Irish relatives (who were likely more Scotts than Irish) were protestants and didn’t get into the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations all that much. It is hard to really celebrate St. Patrick’s Day properly when the family is made up of teetotalers and members of the WCTU. An St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow anyway.
But today is St. Urho’s Day. Now before we get too far, it is important for me to confess that I don’t know much about saints in the first place. I come from a long line of people who tend to believe that every faithful Christian is a saint and who don’t pay attention to the official lists of saints and saints’ days. I don’t even know who St. Cloud is! So telling you everything that I know about St. Urho won’t take too much time.
According to the legend, many years ago, grasshoppers invaded Finland and threatened its grapes. I suppose it was quite a crisis in that wind-scoured archipelago known for beer and herring without so much as a single grape in sight. Now I know about as much about the grape business as i know about saints, or perhaps a bit less, but I think that to make wine in Finland, they use apple juice or currants or some other type of fruit. Just for fun, the next time you are in the liquor store or a fancy restaurant ask the sommelier about the various vintages of Finnish wines and the grapes that are used to make them. If you happen to get someone who knows about Finland they might be able to teach you about Lakka, made from the cloudberry fruit. I guess the full name is Lakkalikööri. The little dots over the o’s in Finnish mean “English speakers cannot pronounce this.” It is a guttural language.Try inserting a snore into the middle of the word and you’ll come close enough.
But I digress. As I was saying, when the grasshoppers invaded Finland and threatened the grape crop, St. Urho stepped in and saved the day. Hooray!
Here’s how he did it: He’s got a big mouth, and he yelled really loud and the grasshoppers all ran away.
Now there is a saint a person could believe in! Big mouth, loud yell, instant fame.
Well, perhaps not instant.
I’m not sure that they know much about St. Urho in Finland. The place to go if you really want to get into the spirit of St. Urho’s day is Finland, Minnesota. There are quite a few Scandinavians in the town of 300 and some of them have ancestors who came from Finland. How else do you think they came up with that name for their town about four hours’ drive north of Minneapolis.
I could direct you to Butte, Montana, which is where I first heard of St. Urho’s day. But it is hard to get much clarity on the source of the holiday in Butte. Butte attracted quite a few Finns in the early days of the mine. It also attracted quite a few Irish folk. It seems that they didn’t like each other all that well. Or at least both the irish and the Finns liked their beer more than they liked the other folks. At least they had separate bars and different sides of the street, which provided an outdoor space for the fistfights that tended to break out around this time of the year. The Finns took to not participating in the St. Patrick’s Day parades.
So if you want a celebration that looks a bit less like a fight, head to Finland, Minnesota. They’re not to particular on the actual ethnic origins of the celebrants up there. In the cold north woods everyone has cabin fever by this time of the year and they’re looking for a party and anyone who can pronounce the name of their state, “MinnisOHTAH,” is welcome. Grasshoppers and grapes make for green and purple, the official colors of the celebration.
I think the official celebration also involves alcohol, not unlike St. Patrick’s Day.
There is even an official website devoted to the talks of St. Urho. According to that site, the tales date way back to the 1950’s! and could have been originated in Bemidji when Sulo Havumaki was telling stories, or maybe in Virginia in the stories of Richard Mattson. Either way the legend has grown in the stories of Finnish-Americans who, like their ancestors in Finland, seem to congregate in places with long winters and lots of snow.
So on this day, the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, I wish you a happy St. Urho’s Day with the words to the song by Sally Karttunen:
St. Urho was a Finnish lad,
A blue eyed, blond hair poika,
St. Urho, bashful suomalainen
Ate grapes and kala mojakkaa.
He chased those big green bugs away,
"Heinäsirkka, mene pois!"
He said it loudly, just one time ---
Tose 'hoppers had no choice!
And so the Finns are here right now,
To celebrate Dear Urho,
And sing and dance in temperatures…..
It's always way 'plo zero!
Then in snowbanks deep and rivers iced,
To our saunas we will go, oh!
Cuz' Urho is our hero, now,
As all good Finns must know!
An tats vhy Finss sill ‘mmeber tat guy, St. Urho. The problem, of course, is that I don’t really have a Finnish accent. I don’t even have a Minnesota accent. I did spend seven winters in North Dakota and so can pronounce the name of that state correctly and know that the Dakota is pronounced differently up north than it is down here in the balmy southern state that shares the name.
I guess that the story of Sinikka, St. Urho’s wife, will have to wait until another time. There are Finnish women who claim that the mother of 12 is the real hero of St. Urho’s Day. After all, someone had to pick the grapes and crush them to make the wine, though she probably was thinking more of making jam and jelly at the time. St. Urho, after all was just opening up his big mouth and yelling.
Heinasirka, heinasirka, mena taalta heiteen! So all the praise has been going to the boys again! Have a wonderful day.
But today is St. Urho’s Day. Now before we get too far, it is important for me to confess that I don’t know much about saints in the first place. I come from a long line of people who tend to believe that every faithful Christian is a saint and who don’t pay attention to the official lists of saints and saints’ days. I don’t even know who St. Cloud is! So telling you everything that I know about St. Urho won’t take too much time.
According to the legend, many years ago, grasshoppers invaded Finland and threatened its grapes. I suppose it was quite a crisis in that wind-scoured archipelago known for beer and herring without so much as a single grape in sight. Now I know about as much about the grape business as i know about saints, or perhaps a bit less, but I think that to make wine in Finland, they use apple juice or currants or some other type of fruit. Just for fun, the next time you are in the liquor store or a fancy restaurant ask the sommelier about the various vintages of Finnish wines and the grapes that are used to make them. If you happen to get someone who knows about Finland they might be able to teach you about Lakka, made from the cloudberry fruit. I guess the full name is Lakkalikööri. The little dots over the o’s in Finnish mean “English speakers cannot pronounce this.” It is a guttural language.Try inserting a snore into the middle of the word and you’ll come close enough.
But I digress. As I was saying, when the grasshoppers invaded Finland and threatened the grape crop, St. Urho stepped in and saved the day. Hooray!
Here’s how he did it: He’s got a big mouth, and he yelled really loud and the grasshoppers all ran away.
Now there is a saint a person could believe in! Big mouth, loud yell, instant fame.
Well, perhaps not instant.
I’m not sure that they know much about St. Urho in Finland. The place to go if you really want to get into the spirit of St. Urho’s day is Finland, Minnesota. There are quite a few Scandinavians in the town of 300 and some of them have ancestors who came from Finland. How else do you think they came up with that name for their town about four hours’ drive north of Minneapolis.
I could direct you to Butte, Montana, which is where I first heard of St. Urho’s day. But it is hard to get much clarity on the source of the holiday in Butte. Butte attracted quite a few Finns in the early days of the mine. It also attracted quite a few Irish folk. It seems that they didn’t like each other all that well. Or at least both the irish and the Finns liked their beer more than they liked the other folks. At least they had separate bars and different sides of the street, which provided an outdoor space for the fistfights that tended to break out around this time of the year. The Finns took to not participating in the St. Patrick’s Day parades.
So if you want a celebration that looks a bit less like a fight, head to Finland, Minnesota. They’re not to particular on the actual ethnic origins of the celebrants up there. In the cold north woods everyone has cabin fever by this time of the year and they’re looking for a party and anyone who can pronounce the name of their state, “MinnisOHTAH,” is welcome. Grasshoppers and grapes make for green and purple, the official colors of the celebration.
I think the official celebration also involves alcohol, not unlike St. Patrick’s Day.
There is even an official website devoted to the talks of St. Urho. According to that site, the tales date way back to the 1950’s! and could have been originated in Bemidji when Sulo Havumaki was telling stories, or maybe in Virginia in the stories of Richard Mattson. Either way the legend has grown in the stories of Finnish-Americans who, like their ancestors in Finland, seem to congregate in places with long winters and lots of snow.
So on this day, the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, I wish you a happy St. Urho’s Day with the words to the song by Sally Karttunen:
St. Urho was a Finnish lad,
A blue eyed, blond hair poika,
St. Urho, bashful suomalainen
Ate grapes and kala mojakkaa.
He chased those big green bugs away,
"Heinäsirkka, mene pois!"
He said it loudly, just one time ---
Tose 'hoppers had no choice!
And so the Finns are here right now,
To celebrate Dear Urho,
And sing and dance in temperatures…..
It's always way 'plo zero!
Then in snowbanks deep and rivers iced,
To our saunas we will go, oh!
Cuz' Urho is our hero, now,
As all good Finns must know!
An tats vhy Finss sill ‘mmeber tat guy, St. Urho. The problem, of course, is that I don’t really have a Finnish accent. I don’t even have a Minnesota accent. I did spend seven winters in North Dakota and so can pronounce the name of that state correctly and know that the Dakota is pronounced differently up north than it is down here in the balmy southern state that shares the name.
I guess that the story of Sinikka, St. Urho’s wife, will have to wait until another time. There are Finnish women who claim that the mother of 12 is the real hero of St. Urho’s Day. After all, someone had to pick the grapes and crush them to make the wine, though she probably was thinking more of making jam and jelly at the time. St. Urho, after all was just opening up his big mouth and yelling.
Heinasirka, heinasirka, mena taalta heiteen! So all the praise has been going to the boys again! Have a wonderful day.