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Finns & Witchcraft: Sailors' Superstitions

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naitaka

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On the Personal Superstitions thread, rynner wrote:

"When I was at sea I subscribed to the sailor's superstition of not allowing whistling on board, which was thought to bring bad luck. There are a couple of explanations for this. One says that Finns (for some reason) are often witches who can whistle up a storm."

Dana mentions this belief in Two Years Before the Mast, where the ship's cook is terrified of the German carpenter, who he thinks is a Finn:

"I asked him the reason for this, and found that he was fully possessed with the notion that all Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms... He had been in a vessel at the Sandwich Islands, in which the sailmaker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to...

He had heard of ships, too, beating up the Gulf of Finland against a head wind, and having a ship heave in sight astern, overhaul and pass them, with as fair a wind as could blow, and all studding sails out, and find she was from Finland."

Is this superstition limited to sailors, or are Finns widely associated with occult powers?
 
I knew of the superstition, but don't know it had any special
association with Finns. The lists of things you can't take on board or say
on board are so lengthy, I assume they have been compiled from various
Nations and periods.

I had always assumed the whistling thing was based on sympathetic magic
and the fear that it would conjure up a reply from the Elements.
 
And of course, the same superstition applies in the theatre green room ( though not restricted to Finnish actors!) along with mentioning the name of that play with the witches in it.:D break a leg.
 
naitaka said:
... Is this superstition limited to sailors, or are Finns widely associated with occult powers?
Click to expand...

It's apparently best known from sailors' lore, but it seems to reflect a more general belief that Finns possess magical or preternatural abilities.

Here's an overview of Finn-targeting sailing and other superstitions. It includes a 19th century story about a murder supposedly motivated by such superstitions.

http://www.strangehistory.net/2014/02/18/finns-magic-and-murder/
 
Any Finns aboard who can tell us if they are in fact all wizards?
 
Probably going to ramble and topic-drift a bit here: but, a relative of mine has a great interest in ships and the sea -- especially sailing craft -- and has an impressive book collection on the subject, focusing particularly on the end of the sailing-ship era; which material I have on visits, dipped into quite copiously. The thing about Finnish seamen's supposed magical abilities vis-a-vis maritime conditions, quite often shows up therein.

Many of these writings are of course, by guys from the English-speaking countries who experienced the last decades of big sailing ships in commercial service, and reflect their experiences accordingly. There comes across often, the circumstance of there being two types of Finnish citizen: some (about 10% of the nation, I believe) being ethnically Swedish, with Swedish their first language. Swedish Finns tended to be disproportionately prominent on this scene; largely because of the last big-sailing-ships magnate, Gustav Ericsson, having his base in the Aland Islands, between Finland and Sweden: the islands Finnish territory, but overwhelmingly populated by Swedish Finns -- very many of the Ericsson ships' personnel were Alanders.

Broad-brush-wise: the English-speakers tended greatly to like the Swedish Finns -- who struck them as mostly excellent types, quite painfully straightforward and honest. "Finn Finns", who were present on Ericsson vessels in lesser numbers, gave the impression to the Anglophones as (though usually cordial enough in demeanour) "wild men" and unpredictable, and altogether somewhat weird; causing a degree of wariness toward them. It was the Finn Finns, who were believed to be into the wizardry stuff.

A slightly comical thing to me: in accounts written most of a century ago, the writers sometimes call the Finn Finns
(to distinguish them from the "Swedish" variety), "Russian Finns". Understandable, I suppose -- from a Brit or American's point of view, in the 1920s Europe was full of a host of crazy new nations, unheard-of and unimagined
in the "tidier" times of big empires which had prevailed up to World War I: someone without a big interest in geo-political stuff for its own sake, would be likely to have a problem trying to keep these places straight, and would likely drop some clangers. I can see a Finn Finn feeling mightily offended at being called a "Russian Finn" -- when Finns are emphatically not ethnically Russian, and had with great relief, been able in the late 1910s, to gain independence from Russian rule.
 
Don't mess with the finns.
 
Amayasleigh; Of course the Aalanders were famous sailors.

And yes, they were Swedish Finns.

(Is there a Finnish group of coastal Saami like you have in Norway?)
 
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