Finnish Lion

By Vzb83, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=560472

The Finnish ice hockey team just brought us medal from Moscow from the IIHF ice hockey WM. Yes, it is silver and we lost to Canada, so we Finns did not celebrate it as much as we would have celebrated gold. But hey, there are almost 5,5 million inhabitants in Finland and a bit over 35 million in Canada. The WM gold we have won twice, first time in 1995 and second in 2011. Canada has won gold 26 times. From the WMs we have also 8 silver medals and 3 bronze medals. Canada has 11 silver medals and 7 bronze medals.

But this post is not about our success - or Canada’s - in ice hockey, it is about the name of the team. The Finns have called the national men’s ice hockey team Lions (Leijonat) so long I can remember, which of course is only about 35 - 40 years. Watching the games played in Saint Petersburg and in Moscow I got curious about our team’s name. How long have they played with our coat of arms’ lion on their jerseys? Is this a genuine tradition?

The team played for the first time with the lion that appears in the coat of arms of Finland on their jerseys in the 1948 against Czechoslovakia. Leijonat was born. The ice hockey team had played its first international match already in 1928 and lost to Sweden, but back then jersey didn’t have the lion on it.

But why then lion in the coat of arms of Finland? Finland is situated in the northern parts of Europe and the polar circle crosses our country. In these latitudes we only see lions in the zoo. Yet we still have it on our coat of arms.

The reason why we have it there is still pure speculation. But first time it was officially seen marking Finland in the 1580s on the burial monument of Swedish king Gustav Vasa, when the monument was revealed in the Uppsala cathedral in Sweden. After that the kings and queens of Sweden used it to describe Finland as part of Sweden until 1809, when Finland became a grand duchy of the Russian Empire. Even during the Russian regime Finland was referred to with this emblem and the new nation took it as her national arms in 1917, when declaring her independence. 

It is thought that lion comes from the ancient kings of Sweden. Those, who belonged to the Folkunga family. One of the members of that family, Valdemar Magnusson, was a duke of Finland in the beginning of 1300s and he used the first version of the Finnish lion in his coat of arms. We also should remember that the first demarcation between Sweden and Russia (or Novgorod), being also the first time to identify Finland’s eastern borderline, was drawn in the peace of Pähkinäsaari in 1323. But why a lion? Why not a bear or a wolf to describe the eastern parts of Sweden back then?

Lion is an animal used in heraldry since ancient times. It has been a mark of power and very much used in the coat of arms of nobels during medieval times and even before. That would explain the Folkunga family part. The sculptor or maker of Gustav Vasa’s monument was Willem Boy. He was from Flander in Belgium and Flander’s emblem is also lion.

I think we will never find out the actual reason to use lion to describe Finland. I personally suspect that it comes from many different occasions. Still it has been used as the symbol of Finland for centuries. We can be proud of it and also of our ice hockey team, Leijonat!

http://leijonat.fi/

By MiRoWaLTTeRi - I made this picture from scratch using Adobe Photoshop.Previously published: http://s1272.beta.photobucket.com/user/MiRoWaLTTeRi/media/Finland-National-Ice-Hockey-Team-Jersey.png.html, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22965224