ATU 973 Man as Sacrifice to the Storm (previously Placating the Storm)
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The tale in brief
A ship is stopped at sea, or caught in a storm; lots are cast to find the sinner on board, and when the lot falls on one man he is thrown overboard and the sea grows calm. In the one Finnish song the lot falls on Herr Petter, who confesses that he has burnt castles and drowned three mothers with their children, and lets himself be thrown into the waves.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
Possibly related: the songs of these types tell this tale (as judged by a language model).
- Herra Petterin laulu Song of Master Peter · SKVR · 1 poem
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Man Thrown Overboard to Placate Storm S264.1
Sources
Tale-type number, title, classification, related types and the Finnic sources: Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales (FF Communications 284–286, Helsinki 2004). · Uther 2004, part I (FF Communications 284), free online ↗
Possibly related runosong types: a reading of the song types by a language model (Claude Opus 5.5, 2 November 2026); only links it rated high or medium in confidence are shown.
Motifs and combinations with other tale types: the Trilogy dataset, from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the ATU catalogue.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.