ABSTRACT
Lalli is described in the poem as a peasant from Koylio, who in anger killed the visiting bishop with an axe on the nearby frozen lake. Lalli then took the bishop’s cap, put it on his head and went home. Lalli became the arch-villain, the enemy of the crusaders and all the civilized Christians in Finland: “the worst of all the pagans, the cruellest in the midst of all the Judases”, in the words of the surmavirsi. However, later nationalistic history writing regarded Lalli also as the first Finn, who rose against oppression and fought against the taxation of the Church. The tenability of the accounts describing the First Crusade and the historicity of both Bishop Henry and Lalli has been questioned. In secular Finnish society, the martyrdom of Henry appears to have great relevance. St. Henry is a celebrated figure in both the Lutheran and the Catholic churches of Finland. His place of death is visited annually by pilgrims.
