LALLI

'Lalli' is an apocryphal character from Finnish history. According to legend, he killed Bishop Henry on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi in Finland on January 20 1156.

Contents

Legend

Cultural significance

Controversy

Legend

According to the legend, Lalli was a rich Finnish man who resisted a bishop's attempts to convert his family to Christianity. The story tells that when Lalli returned home one day, his wife informed him that the bishop recently visited their house, but lied saying that he had departed without paying for his food, drink, or fodder. When Lalli heard of this, he became enraged and left to pursue the bishop. At Bishop Henry's bidding, his entourage fled and hid in a nearby forest while Lalli cut the his head off with an axe.
The legend is enshrined in a famous Finnish folk poem called ''Henrikin surma'' ("The Slaying of Henry"). The details of the poem follow a pattern typical to the era's folktales. Lalli took the bishop's hat from his decapitated head and cut off the bishop's finger to take his ring. The hat became fused to Lalli's head and when he tried to remove it, it tore his scalp off with it. When Lalli tried to remove the bishop's ring from his finger, it likewise tore his finger off. Afterward, Lalli drowned in the lake Köyliönjärvi. Per the bishop's last wish, his body parts were collected by his servants and transported with oxen. Where the oxen stopped became the site of the first church in Finland.
The Lalli poem makes use of characters such as a talking statue of Christ and a lying spouse. She sealed Henry's fate with her false accusation that Bishop Henry left Lalli's house without paying. This negligence was probably seen as criminal at the time of the story's setting, but the poem also presents Lalli as a violent madman. This poem is found in the Kanteletar, a collection of old Finnish folk poetry.

Cultural significance

Lalli is a well-known figure in Finnish folklore whose name is not common in Finland and may be a form of "Laurentius". He has been depicted as a figure prostrated at the feet of the Bishop Henry in wooden statues. More recently, Lalli has been seen as representing a positive rebellion against oppressive authority. He is a hero for many present day pagans, since his story reflects the battle between the earlier pagan Finnish beliefs, and Christianity. As a character, he has probably influenced Eino Leino's cruel and power-hungry Pagan figures of Helkavirsiä.
In the the television series Suuret suomalaiset, the Finnish version of Greatest Britons, Lalli was elected as the 14th greatest Finn.

Controversy

In 2005, Tuomas Heikkilä, ''pro tempore'' professor of history at the University of Helsinki, claimed that Bishop Henry was a completely fictional character. Heikkilä claims that Bishop Henry's name cannot be located anywhere in the archives of the Catholic Church, nor can the legend itself be substantiated. The local administration of Köyliönjärvi became angry with Heikkilä's statements, and insisted that the slaying of Bishop Henry was a historical event; they claimed that Bishop Henry's name can be found in the Vatican's records.