Finns are the Wizards of the Sea

This is from the book “Two Years Before the Mast”. As someone married to a Finn, I found it amusing. So, why not share on my blog? I have noticed that Finns show up quite a bit when reading accounts of naval or merchant marine sailing, though most people probably don’t think of them as a particularly sea-faring people. But, they do seem to be. As for the supernatural aspect, well, the wife does have a fairly significant interest in such things (always asking the fairies to find lost items) …

“I’m plaguy glad o’ dat,” said the cook. “I was mighty ‘fraid he was a Fin. I tell you what, I been plaguy civil to that man all the voyage.” I asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possessed with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms.

I tried to reason with him about it, but he had the best of all arguments, that from experience, at hand, and was not to be moved. He had been to the Sandwich Islands in a vessel in which the sail-maker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to. This sail-maker kept a junk bottle in his berth, which was always just half full of rum, though he got drunk upon it nearly every day. He had seen him sit for hours together, talking to this bottle, which he stood up before him on the table. The same man cut his throat in his berth, and everybody said he was possessed. 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.

“Oh, no!” said he; “I’ve seen too much o’ dem men to want to see ’em ‘board a ship. If dey can’t have dare own way, they’ll play the d —— l with you.” As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called.

The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said hat he himself had been in a ship where they had a head wind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one of the men, with whom he had had same hard words a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn’t stop the head wind he would shut him down in the fore peak. The Fin would not give in, and the captain shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up. “Dar,” said the cook, “what you tink o’ dat?” I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin.

“O,” says he, “go ‘way! You tink, ‘cause you been to college, you know better dan anybody. You know better dan dem as ‘as seen it wid der own eyes. You wait till you’ve been to sea as long as I have, and den you’ll know.”

Dana, Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast; A Personal Narrative (1911): WITH A SUPPLEMENT BY THE AUTHOR AND INTRODUCTION AND ADDITIONAL CHAPTER BY HIS SON . Houghton Mifflin. Kindle Edition.

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My Finnish wife wrote these. Book 1 does include a journey on a sailing ship, including some magic.

The Kati of Terra Series

Go on a romantic adventure, a sort of spaceship and planet-side road trip, while escaping from dangerous slavers, with our gal Kati of Terra and her companion Mikal (and, of course her ever helpful but cantankerous Granda node):