Jumi

Jumi is a mysterious god whose role has remained a bit uncertain. Many traditions related to Jumi have some connections to sexuality. Northern Ostrobothnian tradition Jumin häät (Jumi's wedding) was a carnival of the youth filled with "inappropriate" games, dancing, card games and food, as pastor J. Wegelius described them in 1758. He also said that this event was held to honour the god of marriage, Jumi, and to ensure good luck in marriage. After the party, everyone would go to sleep on the ground next to their potential partner, to "lie in jumi". Generally immoral acts in this situation were frowned upon by the group, but sometimes people got away with it. Once in Muhos, a girl had become pregnant in Jumin häät and had killed the child. She got the death penalty for this.

In Savonia, the youth "valvoi jumia", which meant spending the evening together peacefully and joking around, not getting further than timid looks from one another.

Jumi might have a connection to some phallic figures, such as the stones which were set in the middle of the fields in Western Finland, often called tonttu stones or dick stones, or Juminkeko (Jumi's pile) or Jumin kurikka. However, Juminkeko might have also meant other things or places belonging to Jumi and might not always have referred to these stones. Still, this has resulted in the hypothesis that Jumi is related to an old fertility cult. If this hypothesis is true, after the arrival of Christianity, Jumi had been demonized. To the Forest Finns (Savonians who moved to Sweden), jumi or jummi was one of the names of the Devil.

The name "Jumi" has been speculated to be of the same origin as the word "jumala", meaning "god". The phrase "olla jumissa" (to be in jumi) means "to be stuck", but in the past, is has also had the meaning of having sex, at least in Western Finland. The Latvian word jumis means double ear (of a grain plant), but it has also meant anything that's grown attached to each other. The word jumi still exists in some bug names: tupajumit (Anobium punctatum) and especially kuolemankellot ("Bells of death", Hadrobregmus pertinax) make a ticking noise, which was believed to be an omen of death. In reality, the sound is produced when the bug hits his head on wood in order to attract females.