St. Urho: The Finnish Saint America Had to Invent

Every 16th of March, in small towns across Minnesota, Michigan and the rest of Finnish America, people put on royal purple, raise a toast and honour St. Urho, the mighty Finnish saint who drove the grasshoppers out of Finland and saved the nation's grape crop. There are three problems with this. Finland has no grasshopper plagues, Finland has no grape crop and Finland has no St. Urho. Ask in Helsinki and you will receive the special blank stare Finns reserve for people who may need medical attention.

St. Urho is a complete fabrication, invented in America in 1956. That is precisely what makes him magnificent.

Invented in a department store, perfected by a psychologist

The story starts in Virginia, Minnesota, in the spring of 1956, at a place called Ketola's Department Store. A worker named Richard Mattson was being gently needled by his colleague Gene McCavic about the Irish and their St. Patrick and about the awkward fact that the Finns had no famous saint of their own. Rather than concede the point, Mattson did the most gloriously unFinnish thing imaginable. He made one up on the spot.

The legend was then taken up and improved by Dr. Sulo Havumäki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College, who gave him his famous chant, in which the grasshoppers are commanded, in determined and somewhat homemade Finnish, to clear off to hell, and who is generally credited with changing the saint's vanquished pests from frogs to grasshoppers. A department store clerk and a professor of psychology. If you were designing a committee to invent a saint, you could scarcely do better.

A legend with suspiciously convenient timing

The genius of St. Urho is not the legend. It is the calendar. His feast day was set for the 16th of March, which happens to fall precisely one day before St. Patrick's Day, meaning Finnish Americans get to start celebrating a full 24 hours before their Irish neighbours and to arrive at the 17th already warmed up. As acts of neighbourly one-upmanship go, inventing an entire saint to win the pre-party is up there with building a taller fence out of cathedral parts.

The official colours are royal purple and Nile green, the official cry salutes the saint's victory over the grasshopper and the official legend explains that his mighty roar (powered, it is said, by sour milk and fish soup, two deeply canonical Finnish power sources) drove every last grasshopper into the sea and saved the vineyards of old Finland. That Finland has never had vineyards is not a flaw in the story. It is the joke, planted lovingly in the foundations and everyone celebrating is in on it.

That Finland has never had vineyards is not a flaw in the story. It is the joke, planted lovingly in the foundations and everyone celebrating is in on it.

The saint with a fibreglass shrine

Like any respectable saint, Urho has shrines. The grandest stands beside Highway 71 in Menahga, Minnesota, a towering figure gazing sternly into the middle distance with an enormous grasshopper impaled on his pitchfork, part folk monument, part fever dream. It was dedicated in 1981. Because Finnish America understands ceremony, the christening was performed by breaking a bottle of Wild Irish Rose wine over the statue's toe. An Irish wine, sacrificed to a fake Finnish saint, in the middle of Minnesota. Somewhere, both nations felt a disturbance and could not explain why.

The town of Finland, Minnesota (yes, it exists and yes, it is smaller than the original) throws its own celebrations and over the decades the day's promoters claim to have collected proclamations honouring the saint from governors and legislatures across all 50 states. St. Patrick needed centuries, a snake miracle and the entire Catholic church to conquer America. Urho did it with a department store, a psychology professor and a pitchfork.

What Finland makes of all this

Mostly, Finland has no idea it is happening. Mention St. Urho in Helsinki and people will assume you have confused Finland with somewhere else, or possibly confused a saint with President Urho Kekkonen, who admittedly also had a legendary quality but was never once depicted holding a giant grasshopper. When Finns do learn about the day, the reaction tends to pass through confusion into a kind of delighted national pride. Somewhere across the ocean, the descendants of Finnish emigrants missed home so much they built it a mythology.

And that is the real story. The more than 300,000 Finns who sailed for America between the 1870s and 1920s took the sauna, the sisu and the stubbornness, but they had to leave the folklore in the forest where it lived. St. Urho is what happens when a community five thousand miles from home decides the heritage is not finished and starts writing the next chapter themselves, with a wink, in purple. He may be fake. The love underneath him is completely real.

St. Urho is what happens when a community five thousand miles from home decides the heritage is not finished and starts writing the next chapter themselves, with a wink, in purple.

How to celebrate properly

Wear something purple. Say the word grasshopper with unearned gravity. Eat fish soup, drink whatever a Finn would drink and raise a glass at some point to Richard Mattson and Sulo Havumäki, two men who understood that if history refuses to give your people a legend, the correct response is to file the paperwork yourself. Then, on the 17th, wish your Irish friends a happy St. Patrick's Day with the serene smile of someone who started yesterday.

More from Finland