What with the current unrest in north-eastern Europe, I thought a quick look at how REH viewed the Finns might be in order.

Robert E. Howard had very little to say about the Finnish people--known in their native language as Suomi. What he did say, you can find below, quoted from his letters and yarns.

Personally, I've known a few Finns, since the college town I lived in talked about twenty or thirty of them to attend back around 2000. Most were fairly engaging. A couple were kind of quiet, but then talked your ear off once they got going. One of them I partied with was a big fan of Yngvie Malmsteen and Led Zeppelin. I sold him a couple of Jimmy Page shirts I’d had made. I hope he still has 'em. Another one was really big on not using guns to hunt bears. He said in the "old times", men would go out and hunt bears with a knife. I told him that sounded very beneficial to the bear population.

What more than one search engine has suggested is a ‘typical Finn’. That’s fairly accurate, from my experience.

Of course, the Finns have shown themselves to be great defenders of their homeland. They gave the Red Army a very hard time. Anyway, I've found the Finns to be good people--I also have a friend who's proud of his Finnish heritage.

Robert E. Howard seems to have held a favorable opinion of the Suomi and their land. In a letter to H.P. Lovecraft in 1932, Robert E. Howard writes this:

"Speaking of Mongol stocks, I notice the Finns seem to be somewhat divided among themselves, even to the point of violence. But as you say, they and the Hungarians have adapted themselves to western civilization surprizingly well for Mongolians."
"If we justify Italy's grabbing of Ethiopia, how can we condemn Japan's seizing of Manchuria, China, Australia and India? What objection could we offer against Germany's grabbing Austria, Finland, Poland, Scandinavia? Or Russia's grabbing all the weaker countries about her?" (Feb., 1936)

The two quotes are interesting. In the first, we see REH being adamant about the "Mongolian" heritage--I believe he was using it in the wider sense of "Finno-Ugric" or "Uralic"--of the Finns. He also pointed out how well the Finns--whom he considered ethnic outsiders to Western civilization--had assimilated culturally to general European norms. Having never met any Finns, REH very likely thought they closely resembled their less intermingled/Europeanized cousins, the Lapps/Saami.

Very likely, Howard envisioned Finns as looking something like this.

The second quote shows that, far from looking upon the Finns as some sort of powerful, imperialist nation , he saw them as being the prey of other nations. In contrast, we see him forecasting that Russia would try to gobble up her neighbors. Howard predicted the events of the decade after his death fairly accurately.

Finally, here is a quote from "The Shadow of the Hun" fragment, wherein Turlogh Dubh, the Gaelic Irish hero, talks about being ship-wrecked in Finland after fighting Vikings in 1016 AD:

"I awaked in the hut of a strange people. (...) Well, these folks were Finns -- kindly people who treated me well."

Right there is Robert E. Howard's opinion of Finns during the medieval period. Turlogh, a pure-blooded descendant of the Hyborian Age Cimmerians, thinks the Finns are "kindly people" who live in huts and who treat defenseless strangers well.

All in all, Robert E. Howard seems to have considered Finns to be a good, kindly people of "Mongolian" heritage who happened to have powerful neighbors. A people who were/are kind to helpless strangers. That’s a pretty glowing assessment from REH. He was usually harder on just about every other ethnic group—even his own. That's something the Finns can be proud of.

One of the silly ‘Hyperborean’ Witch-Men from *Conan of Aquilonia*. Bring out the Gimp!

In no way, shape or form does Howard's conception of the Finns/Suomi resemble the 'Hyperboreans' that de Camp/Carter came up with. REH's Hyborian Age Hyperboreans are a powerful, ruthless, imperialistic people who engage in slavery and are constantly seeking to extend their frontiers.

De Camp and Carter assigning Finnish culture to the Hyperboreans is almost criminal when REH's opinions are factored in. The Finns in the real world suffered from the raids of Crimean Tatar slavers, along with Swedish and Russian imperialism. De Camp made them wielders of blackest sorcery. Carter burdened them with his cartoonish 'Witch-Men'; vile, faceless minions of Vammatar who would be better suited to a pulp 'Spider' novel or the pages of a superhero comic book.

About the only other Finnish reference that REH ever made was to 'Il-marinen' in "The Children of the Night":

Il-marinen! I remember the god I called upon, the ancient, ancient god who worked in metals—in bronze then. For Il-marinen was one of the base gods of the Aryans from whom many gods grew; and he was Wieland and Vulcan in the ages of iron. But to Aryara he was Il-marinen.

However, it is pretty obvious to me that REH took that directly from Jack London's The Star-Rover. In his novel, London--no philologist, mythologist or anthropologist--states that:

"I remember the lame god of the Greeks, the master-smith. But their Vulcan was the Germanic Wieland, the master-smith captured and hamstrung lame of a leg by Nidung, the king of the Nids. But before that he was our master-smith, our forger and hammerer, whom we named Il-marinen. And him we begat of our fancy, giving him the bearded sun-god for father, and nursing him by the stars of the bear. For, he, Vulcan, or Wieland, or Il-marinen, was born under the pine tree, from the hair of the wolf, and was called also the bear-father ere ever the Germans and Greeks purloined and worshipped him."

London would seem to have read the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. However, Jack was--apparently--under the impression that the Finns/Suomi were members of the Indo-European language family. They are not. The Finnish language is part of the Finno-Ugric family of languages. Philologists and linguists have long asserted that the Finno-Ugrics are the closest 'cousins' to the Indo-Europeans and there are numerous borrowings from the Indo-European languages into the Finno-Ugric tongues, arguing a long association going back into the deeps of prehistory. Close, but no cigar, Jack.

Il-marinen, the Eternal Hammerer and forger of the Sampo.

While I can't prove it, I would theorize that, subsequent to Howard writing that mention in CotN, he did a little research and realised that Il-marinen was actually a Finnish deity--i.e., not Indo-European--and quietly let him fade away. Aryara in "The Children of the Night" is plainly stated to be an Indo-European. Both letters where Howard mentions the Finns are from after the writing of “The Children of the Night”. To summarize, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that REH ever read the Kalevala. Did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? Yes. Jack London? Yes. J.R.R. Tolkien? Yes. Robert E. Howard? No, other than that mention in “The Children of the Night” that could’ve very easily been derived from London.

It is not that far-fetched to envision an alternate timeline where Howard did not do the research and Il-marinen became the paramount god of the Hyborians—instead of Mitra. I think things turned out for the best for several reasons, but that is the topic of a future blog entry.