HANCOCK – Since it was first created in 1999, Heikinpäivä has become one of the most anticipated celebrations in the Copper Country.

The annual midwinter celebration of Finnish-American and Finnish culture has been hosted by the City of Hancock’s Finnish Theme Committee – now known as the Copper Country Finns and Friends – each year since 1999. While Heikinpäivä is a Hancock-born celebration of Finnish-Americans, its connections to Finnish culture, heritage and ancient mythology, are much stronger than many people probably realize.

Based on old Finnish folk sayings relative to winter and St. Henrik’s (Heikki’s) name day, the Finns of the Copper Country created a Finnish American festival – Heikinpäivä, David Maki, director of the Finnish American Heritage Center, in Hancock, says.

St. Henrik (Henry, in English) is the patron saint of Finland. Henrik’s Day is observed on January 19. According to several sources, King Erik of Sweden led a crusade in Finland, and brought Bishop Henrik with him as a representative of ecclesiastical power. Henrik was the English-born bishop of Uppsala, the most important diocese of Sweden at that time. Henrik was assassinated on January 20, 1156. He lays in Turku Cathedral, in Turku, Finland. Although considered the patron saint, there is no record of Henrik having been canonized.

While St. Henrik symbolizes Christianity in Finland, Heikinpäivä takes Finnish heritage and culture back further, to ancient mythology with Otso, linked to the bear that rolls over in its den.

Otso, much older than St. Henrik, is the name of the bear spirit and king of the forest. Generally, the spirit of the bear was referred to as friend, brother, uncle, or forest cousin, or other ways thought up that would bypass the need to refer to the spirit at all, even indirectly. Otso appears in the Kalavala.

The Kakevala, the national epic of Karelia and Finland, is a compilation of epic poems, telling the story of the creation of the earth, describing the controversies and voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola.

Related to the importance of the bear in Finnish culture and ancient mythology is a dance associated with community bear hunts. In Finnish culture, bear hunting i was a ritual that was part of a community’s hunting values and spirit. The bear was considered a sacred animal, and the hunt was more about the ritual than the food. The ritual was intended to ensure the bear’s rebirth in the afterlife.

During Heikinpäivä, this ancient custom is commemorated in the Bear Spiral dance, or Karhunpeijäiset.

During the second half of the 19th century, when Finns began to arrive in the Copper Country, they brought their culture and heritage with them.

They also brought with them skills that are integral to their culture, which are offered to the public during the Heikinpäivä celebrations.

These include enrichment classes for rag run weaving and making knife sheaths out of birch bark. Cultural enrichment classes offer introductions to stringed musical instruments ubiquitous in Finnish culture.

There are also event that showcase traditional Finnish music and dancing, as well as a “Hobby Horse Hoedown, which Maki said provides families and individuals folks of all ages, can get a sampling of the hobby horse craze that swept Finland in recent years.

As Maki has said, the annual midwinter celebration of Finnish-American and Finnish culture started as a day, then evolved to a weekend, eventually to a week.

Now, a quarter-century later, there’s so much going on for Heikinpäivä that it takes most of a month to fit it all in.