Iso Sika (Big Pig)

I dug up an old song the other day that consistently cracks me up no matter how often I listen to it. It's called Iso Sika, which in Finnish means "big pig". It's by Da Yoopers, a band from Ishpeming - a city in the western portion of Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.). That side of the U.P. is overrun with people of Finnish descent and in the last hundred or so years since their immigration, they retained a remarkable amount of their culture - their Finnish names, the bland food, their love of vodka and hockey, a sauna in every backyard, a snowmobile in every garage, as well as their peculiar sense of humor as illustrated in this song. Da Yoopers get their name, incidentally from the term used (often in a derogatory fashion by outsiders) for the residents of the U.P. - "yoopers" or "U.P. -ers."



The song's more common name is "The Killing of the Big Pig", and its matronly-sounding singer, Bertha Hintsala, begins the tune in Finnish and then repeats the lyrics in English. Here are the first two verses:

For sixteen years we fed that pig
He looked just like a hippo
Then he broke into the root house
And ate up all the potatoes.

Ma got steaming mad and said,
"It's time to make some bacon."
The pig killers came to kill the pig
And so did all the neighbors.

And, of course, nothing goes right. Why write a song about killing a pig if things go smoothly, eh? I think that's what's so funny about this song is that it plays on rural stereotypes, especially the notion that these quirky yoopers are a simple folk and perhaps the only people who would go to the trouble of writing a song about killing an offending pig.

So, have a listen and enjoy.



Note: This song appeared on the 1987 Da Yoopers album "Culture Shock" along with the more popular songs "Second Week of Deer Camp" and "Rusty Chevrolet".


Note 2: Read up on the Yooper dialect HERE

Note 3: Find out about Yooper culture from Prof. Kate Remlinger with whom I shoveled snow, ate pasties, etc. in the Keweenaw. - Kate's BLOG, Kate's profile at Grand Valley State.