Michigan Mythology: The Finnish Sh*t Elves of the Upper Peninsula

Love a good old mythology from the Upper Peninsula? Me, too. Today, we are learning about elves. Shit elves, to be precise. The Finnish brought these mythological oddities over from EurAsia with the logging and mining trade. Legend has it, if you anger a shit elf, they will cover your house in feces.

Nowhere in the legend does it mention what angers them.

This presents a rather fun problem. Should we take it that these little wee beasties are a mythological symbol for not knowing the rules to life until shit hits the fan? Or did this detail fall out of the fairytale at one point? Ever the enthusiast of raunchy mythology, I set out to find out why the Finns brought part of a story over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Google and OpenAI have no answer to this question, though ChatGPT and Dall-e both kicked me out for requesting an illustration of what was deemed offensive terms-violating content. What did come up was a map: of 121 different places in Finland named Shit Pond, posted on Facebook by Very Finnish Problems (photo credit to VFP).

The plot thickens. Why was I researching elves in the first place? I had been digging for some Michigan mythology beyond dogman (but certainly not excluding him! more later on dogman stories) and found Anttimation on Youtube had posted a very entertaining video on Finnish mythology. My grandfather was Finnish and Baltic (Latvia, Lithuanian or Estonian), and I only found this out last year after taking a DNA test and finding his side of the family was exactly 0% as German as they said they were. I think they came over before the Nazis, so I'm not sure why this was. Another rabbit trail to follow another day. Regardless, we even had German beer steins in the family heirlooms, so I know next to nothing of my Finnish heritage.

What's Finnish About Me

So... what's Finnish about me? My family eats cinnamon sugar on buttered toast, which is, I just learned, a Finnish tradition specific to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where some unsavory winter bread gave rise to the tradition. Do you have this food in your breakfast lineup?

My grandfather looks almost unbelievably Finnish now that I think of it that way. The Travel Channel took a trip to the U.P. to taste Finnish food not too long ago (salted cod, Finnish bread, etc.), and the video left me gobsmacked: a full picnic table set for a dozen people, all of whom were a dead ringer for my grandpa. The prominent but friendly-looking chin, the narrow happy smile, the squinted puffy eyes and rounded apples of the cheeks. Same shade of blond. Maybe my blue-green eyes that lightened from golden hazel brown are Asian blue? My goodness.

Other than really gross fish the Catholics in my town ate around the holidays (pickled herring, you can keep it, what the heck?), I don't know any Finnish traditions. Reindeer herding seems to be central to the traditions, which came over to Michigan in the form of sleds and comfort living in harsh rural conditions in a cold climate. Michigan has a number of Finnish traditions kept alive by a winter Finnish festival called Heikinpäivä, celebrated in the U.P. Also Finnish is the "sauna belt" of the northern Great Lakes region. That came to me through the other side of the family: my aunt lived in the U.P. teaching Native Americans to track and preserving and documenting bird populations, and she once met our family at a cabin when we visited her up north, where we ran from steaming hot sauna into cold lake at night until we couldn't anymore. Finnish.

Also on the list are wife carrying (!) and kick sledding. So, you are getting the gist along with me what this heritage implies. My grandfather's mischievous sense of humor seems rightly aligned with shit elves, to be sure. He used to eat candy he bought for our grandchildren visits, saying he was worried it was going to get stale. He taught me poker, probably let me beat him, and followed every sly joke with the innocent, "Who? Me?" and that big grin plastered across his face. I wish I had known him when he was young enough to sail Lake Huron, which he did with my Grandma in early retirement (you know, back when steady jobs were a thing).

So, where were we? Finnish shit elves. There is precious little information out there about them, to be honest. I have looked, and I have asked around. The nearest I can figure is that the Finnish shit elf is a petulant house elf, which many European traditions and Asian traditions share in common to explain the spoiling of the milk and so on. If you've ever seen one of these beasties or have the full story in your family lore, please let us know how this one ends. It has something to do with being buried alive. Lovely sense of humor, the Finns. Sisu (that is Finnish/Yooper for "grit").