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St. Urho’s Day, March 16th
The untrue story of Saint Urho.
In 1956 in the small town of Virginia, Minnesota, Richard L. Mattson and his coworker at the local department store Gene McCavic, both Finnish Americans, decided it was high time the Finns had their own holiday honoring a saint. Since the popular legend says that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, they decided to come up with a colorful saint of their own.
Together they cooked up a tall tale about “Saint Urho,” a larger-than-life man who acquired a booming voice by drinking feelia sour (sour milk) and eating kala mojakka (fish soup). With his commanding howl, he drove a plague of poisonous frogs out of Finland, thus saving the grape crop — and the vineyards.
Urho means “hero” or “brave” in Finnish. Mattson and McCavic likely chose that name because Urho Kaleva Kekkone was elected president of Finland that year. Joining in the fun, McCavic’s wife wrote a poem in “Finglish’’ (best read aloud), which starts out:
Ooksie kooksie coolama vee, Saint Urho iss ta poy for me! He sase out ta rogs so pig unt kreen, prafest Finn I effer seen!
The plot thickens.
And the silliness went on. They soon filled in the details of Urho’s made-up life, saying he was given a parish in a rural area in Finland, where a…
