Viper

Only three species of snake make mainland Finland their home, and only one of them is venomous: Vipera berus, the common European viper. It features prominently across various folklores, and no doubt many of the ideas we have of it are shared with other cultures.

Finland was the only Western European country that allowed unlimited killing of vipers, until a new law in 2023 finally declared them a protected species. Despite this, they have no actual protections.

The foul guts brought to life

To understand and control an outside force, be it of spiritual or biological origin, one must know how it came to be. To this end, Finnish folk magic placed great importance on "birth poems" or "poems of origin". By knowing the mythological birth of the targeted being, and reciting it aloud, one could impose their will over another. This was necessary in the process in curing viper bites, commanding them to leave, or to sic them onto others.

There are several stories as to how vipers wrestle birthed, but most of them suggest that they are the guts of other vile beings brought to live, to continue to spread their originator's evil. In most stories, this originator is Syöjätär.

Syöjätär (eng. 'the Eatress') is an evil feminine being, a man-eater and fouler of good creation, best recalled in Sámi stories. As far as her role as the source of vipers goes, they are the byproduct of her destruction, such as being borne from her guts, spilling out with her saliva, or reanimated from her other bodily remains.

vupes was a friend to vipers, he even kept them over winter in his potato cellar. once, when he had guests, he brought one in and said to it, "tell me, how many guests do i have" and the viper nodded its head as it counted his visitors.
— a recollection of the Vupes wiseman in Northern Savo.

Supernatural servants

The association between vipers and wisewomen and men is ancient, harkening back to the days of cave art. Vipers were one of the common animal shapes for a wiseman or woman to take upon "soul travel" to the realm of the spirits and of the dead. It was believed that while humans cannot as readily access these other realms, certain potent animals could, and vipers were especially associated with the realm of the dead and had the ability to swim across the river of the underworld.

It was not uncommon to keep a water snake in one's home as a protective being – and all the more mighty was the viper, which only "strong-blooded" individuals were thought to be able to keep tame in their home. In this way, the viper was a representative of the household's overall fortune, and any illness or injury to the viper would spell doom for its home as well. Beyond simply remaining in the home, they could also act as messengers or be assigned tasks, not too unlike familiars in other traditions of magic. Notably, the viper did not need to be a live one for it to be able to serve its master, as keeping either a whole dead snake or just its skin or head in a bag was enough to invoke its assistance. Hiding a dead viper into the foundations of one's home could also offer magical protection to the household.

black underworld soil,
you spiral under stone.
this is where i banish you:
to where no rooster call can be heard,
to where no foal will ever wander,
to where long daylight cannot reach.
— a spell to cure a viper's bite, recited by Anna Liisa Syrjälä in Humppila, 1829.

[ ... ]
black worm of the underworld / maggot of tuonela
come and know the results of your work / and heal the evil you have caused
before your mother rises / from the dark north
she will cut off your head / with a bloodied axe / with its goried edge
— exceprt of the origins of the viper to undo its bite, recited by Tahvo Hämäläini in Viena Karelia, 1894.

The snakes go to court

During spring, when the weather warms and the vipers end their hibernation, they gather to sunny and warm places and prepare to mate. It is the only time in the year where one would come across numerous vipers in one place, and so people interpreted this activity as the snakes gathering to form a yearly court to settle their personal matters. This date was sometimes known as the "Worm day" or "Worm-Pentti" if it happened to occur on Pentti's name day on the 21st of March.

The chief of the vipers was believed to hold a small, round and white stone, and this "snake court stone" (fin. käärmeenkäräjäkivi) was thought to be an especially potent magical artifact, if one managed to steal it and live to tell the tale. The vipers would protect their important stone fiercely, and were even said to bite each other in the tails to form a wheel formation to chase the thief faster.

In later tales, Syöjätär is sometimes replaced by Judas as the originator of vipers, where they are borne of his guts or saliva instead, as he dies a shameful death after his betrayal of Jesus. In some stories, Jesus is the one bringing the vipers to life. It goes without saying, that the Christian influence made the vipers all the more threatening due to their association with the first sin.

Some stories associate the zigzag pattern upon the vipers' backs as proof of their origin from lightning, but these ideas are rather brought on from comparative folklore and are rather rare in Finnish folklore itself.

* * *

Sources

• Hämäläis-Osakunta: Hämeen kansan vanhat loitsut (1916)

• Risto Pulkkinen: Suomalainen kansanusko (2014)

• SKVR Finnish folk poetry collections

• Yle: Kyykäärme rauhoitetaan ensimmäistä kertaa Suomessa (2023)