Lalli

Lalli is an apocryphal character from Finnish history and one of the most well-known figures in Finnish medieval legend. According to tradition, he was a prosperous yeoman farmer who killed Bishop Henry, who was spreading Christianity to then pagan Finland, on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi on 20 January in the late 1150s.

In medieval church art, Lalli became a central attribute in the iconography of Saint Henry, typically depicted being trampled underfoot by the bishop as a symbol of his sanctity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a fennomanist reinterpretation cast him as a symbol of Finnish resistance against Swedish dominance, and in some circles even as a folk hero.