When a Mermaid Fake Crawled on a Tv-Screen

NORDI S K MU S EOLO G I 1997•1 , S . 10 7- 116 AN EVENT OF CURIOSITY: WHEN A MERMAID FAKE CRAWLED ON A TV-SCREEN Pilvi Vainonen Curious things can happen when we put together two mysterious mermaid fakes from the South Sea, two imaginary American FBI agents, and an ordinary Finnish museum worka In an extraordinary way, this combination gave rise to some clues which led to some detective work concerning the origins ofthe two mermaid fakes in the National Museum ofFinland. Once upon a time Sea Captain O.W. Lind Japan .. » (Accounts 1863). And even holm was sailing along the Australian sho though it is not mentioned separately, it is re and in one coastal village he was shown known, that among these specimens was a a strange creature, half anthropomorphic, 35 cm long fake mermaid. half fish. He was told that it had drifted In 1867 the Zoological Museum moved dying to the beach some time ago. the mermaid Lindholm had brought to Although he had never seen such a mon the University's ethnographical collections ster before he knew immediately what it and a labelled it artificial. There this ugly was: a small but terrifying mermaid. He but impressive «sea animal» with long bought it and kept it as a horrible souve pointed nails and sharp teeth in its gaping nlf. jaws, set in a floating posture, was thought All this is fantasy. What we really know to be a fetish. The humanoid head and about Captain Lindholm is that he was an arms were presumed to be the upper body amateur naturalist and used to collect spe of a monkey, while the lower part is cimens for the Zoological Museum of the undoubtedly fish. The whole body is hard Alexander University of Helsinki. Some and dark brown. The ribs, the vertebrae of time between the years 1860-63, probably the backbone and the shape of the skull in 1860, he returned to Finland and dona can clearly be seen under the stretched, ted a large number of specimens to the dried skin. Zoological Museum. The collection inclu The ethnographical collections of the ded «... 28 sp. snakes and lizards, 44 sp. University moved in to the new National fish, a broader collection of lower animals Museum of Finland in 1912. And finally, including shells from different regions, having spent over 65 years alone in stora especially from the South Sea Islands and ge, far from home, the mermaid received a ,CRlf/R. .'l: I. St·ct. ll/. 108 ,'"ho(.' +L . p Mermaid and fishes in a copper engravingfi'om Francois Valentijn's 011d en Niew Oost-Indien, 1724-26. companion: in 1925 another fake mer said Kaisa Granholm from the Exotica maid sailed in. It was moved from the collections of the National Museum. In Helsinki City Museum along with 92 the summer 1996 there was an opportuni other articles. Its route and when it arri ty to spook a wider public, since Exotica ved in Finland are unknown. Its appearan participated in an exhibition of curiosities ce greatly resembles the floating mermaid, in Helsinki. Curious and furious as they except that there are some differences in are, it was decided to put the the mer teeth, nails and skull, and it has slender maids on display. I worked in Exotica at tufts of hair on its skin. The posture is that time and was also introduced to also different: this one seems to be craw them. At first I was stunned, then overjoy ling as if it had been desperately trying to ed. Irrationally, it was difficult to believe escape at the moment of its death. that they were really man-made. ·· But the real shock came a few weeks later. THE OPENING OF THE X-FILE I was watching The X-Files on TV - an American cult series which I hadn't seen Indeed today the mermaid couple still before - and suddenly a drawing portraying look incredibly wild. «When we wanted to a crawling mermaid fake appeared on the spook somebody we show it to them», screen. It seemed to be very similar to the Fishes, a sq11id and a mermaid in a copper engraving datingfi'om 1710 PILV! VA!NONEN 110 two mermaids in the National Museum. MONKEY BUSINESS The main characters, FBI agents Scully and Mulder, were told (and I also was listening P.T. Barnum relates in his autobiography most carefully) that it was a mermaid fake that he had hired the Fidzi or «Feejee» made of a mummified monkey and a fish, mermaid from a man, who in turn had and a certain Barnum Circus had displayed bought it from a poor sailor. The father of it in the USA in the 19th century. It was this sailor had been a sea captain - just called the «Fidzi mermaid». like O.W. Lindholm - and had bought A mummified monkey? This was already the mermaid in Calcutta from some the second hint that monkeys were invol Japanese sailors in 1822. The captain had ved. Whose fantastic idea had it been to believed so firmly in the authenticity of join together a mummified monkey and a the mermaid that he had paid 6000 US fish? Who had made these mermaids? All dollars for it. Unfortunately, the money kinds of questions arose in my mind. belonged to the shipping company, which Luckily, Phineas T. Barnum, the late direc was not equally sure about the mermaid. tor of the American Museum in New York, The poor captain had to work without was able to answer some of them. wages for the rest of his life, and when he The halfhuman, half bird Sirens of Greek mythology are close relatives to mermaids. A merman ji-om India. The Matsya or «fish» is an incarnation ofthe Hindu god Vishnu. died he left his sailor son nothing but the pie lined up to see it, and after this success dried-up mermaid. But in Barnum'.s in New York it set out on a tour in USA. hands the creature turned into a goldmi Barnum was the leading clue in my ne. In 1842, in conjunction with the grea investigations. More than a hundred years test and the most crooked advertising after his death he helped to tame our two campaign ever seen, he put it on display as mermaids. Apart from his autobiography, a real mermaid in the New York Concert Barnum led me to a number of other Hall for one week, and then in his own sources, including P.F. von Siebold' s American Museum. For several weeks peo- important book which describes life in PILVI VAINONEN 112 Japan at the beginning of the 19th centu mense. Either this composite animal ry. Von Siebold tells a story he had heard (made by the fisherman), or another, the about a clever fisherman, who neatly uni offspring of the success of the first, was ted the upper half of a monkey to the sold to the Dutch factory (in Japan) and lower half of a fish. The man had told transmitted to Batavia, where it fell into people that he had himself caught the crea the hands of a shrewd American, who ture alive in his net, but that it had died brought it to Europe, and there, in the shortly after being taken out of its natural years 1822-3, exhibited his purchase as a element. The most elaborated detail in the real mermaid at every capital, to the admi story is that this half-human fish had ration of the ignorant, the perplexity of made a religious prediction before it died. the learned, and the filling of his own pur This Japanese fisherman also made a lot se.» (Von Siebold 1981, 185.) of money out of his monster, so we must conclude that the Americans were not the only ones clever at humbug. It is known ANATOMICAL INVESTIGATIONS that these kinds of mermaid fakes were manufactured in other parts of East Asia, Exhibiting 'real mermaids', or at least frag Melanesia and western Polynesia as well, ments of real mermaids, is however an even but perhaps Japan was the cradle: «The older phenomenon. In his book a Baroque sale of these pictured mermaids was im- literate, Athanasius Kircher, discusses the A N EVE N T OF C URI OS ITY 113 These two mermaid fakes belong to the collections ofth e National M useum ofFinl and. Photo: Ritva Backman 1996 role of mermaids in Noah's ark, and writes reason these fakes are calledI Jenny that many museums exhibit the tails and Hanivers, and they were probably manu bones of these amphibians. It was said that factured in Europe. Sometimes they are the bones had a marvellous power to called, paradoxically, «Sea Bishops», staunch bleeding. (Goodman 1983, 43.) because the pectoral wings of the fish have The curiosity cabinets flourished in the been variously manipulated to give the middle of the 16th century and in this ear appearance of an ecclesiastical garment. ly period exotic, odd and monstrous exam (Jones et al. 1990, 85-6.) ples were collected as illustrations of God's But all bubbles burst sooner or later. warning to pious people through the creati While the Fidzi mermaid was on tour in on of such unnatural beings. 1843, discussion concerning its originality But it is certain that the motives of the grew louder. In general, the atmosphere manufacturers of the mermaid fakes were was propitious for this kind of debate, sin not at all so pious. Apparently older than ce the supporters of black slavery stood up the monkey-fish combinations are the for the divine plan and argued that diffe fakes made of rays, skates and other carti rent races had been created at separate laginous fish, which have been manipula times and formed distinctive species.

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