SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

218 Saga-Book oj the Viking Society
Tales of Lapland sorcerers were not confined to mediaeval
Scandinavia. They also formed part of later folk-lore in
both Norway and Sweden. There existed, for example,
a belief in what is calledfinnskot or lappskot, the power of
the inhabitants of Finnmark to harm cattle far to their
south by shooting at them small projectiles (finnkula)
carried by the wind.P Hence the recorded prayer: For
Nordenvind og Finskud bevar os milde Herre Cud. Thus
the Scandinavian farmer explained the sudden onset of
cattle diseases whose symptoms included lumps or
swellings under the skin. A remedy against attack of this
kind was to throw a knife into the wind, for this would
kill the sender of the shot. In Osterbotten a sudden
whirlwind was called lappkvidan or lappilin, presumably
controlled by Lapps. Belief in the magical powers of the
Finnar spread overseas, at any rate to the Orkneys.
Orkney folk-lore records semi-amphibious creatures called
Fin-folk or Fin-men. H. Marwick connects them with
the Finnar, with the cautious comment, "These Fin-men
were regarded in Orkney as somewhat supernatural
beings."13 As a literary figure the Lapland sorcerer with
his baleful influence is not confined to the mediaeval phase
of Scandinavian writing. He appears in modern texts:
in, for example, Jonas Lie's folk-type tale Jo i Sjeholmene
(in the first series of Trold), and as a background figure of
popular suspicion in the same writer's Finneblod (in
F ortcellinger og Skildringer [ra Norge). More recently
Knut Hamsun has suggested the mystery and perhaps the
evil which gather round the figure of the wandering Lapp.
For example, a Lapp is the apparent cause of the first
dramatic incident of M arkens Grode. Inger, the harelipped
wife of the peasant Isak, is with child. The
Lapp, Os-Anders, comes to her house, apparently sent by
12 N. Lid, 'Urn finnskot og alvskot', Mua! og Minne (1921), 39; also the
same writer's Folketru (1935), 29.
13 H. Marwick, The Orkney Norn (1929), 41. There is, of course, the popular
etymology that these people are called Fin-folk "because they wear fins",
W. T. Dennison, Orkney Folklore and Traditions (196I), 17.