Finley, Charles O(scar) (b. Feb. 22,1918, Ensley, Ala., U.S.—d. Feb. 19, 1996, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. baseball club owner. Bom on a farm in Ala¬ bama, Finley worked in a steel mill after his family moved to Gary, Ind. During a protracted illness Finley conceived of the insurance company that would make him a millionaire in two years. He became a wealthy executive and in 1960 acquired the Kansas City (later Oakland) Athlet¬ ics. Under Finley they achieved three consecutive World Series victories (1972-74), even as he constantly stirred controversy among players, man¬ agers, civic leaders, and baseball officials with his promotional ideas. He sold the team in 1980.
Finn MacCumhaill or Finn MacCool Vfin-mo-'kiiU Hero of the Irish Gaelic tales and ballads of the Fenian cycle. He was chief of a band of warriors, the Fianna Eireann, who were skilled in poetry, hunting, and warfare and supposedly flourished in the 3rd century ad. In time, the king and people turned against the Fianna, and they were defeated in the Battle of Gabhra, which Finn’s son Oisin survived.
Finnbogadottir, Vigdis (b. April 15, 1930, Reykjavik, Ice.) Teacher and president of Iceland (1980-96). After graduating from Reykjavik Col¬ lege in 1949, Finnbogadottir attended the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in France and the University of Uppsala in Sweden. She also studied in Denmark and at the University of Iceland, where she later taught. From 1972 to 1980, while serving as director of the Reykjavik Theatre Company, Finnbogadottir presented French lessons and cultural programming on Iceland State Television. In 1980 she was drafted as a
candidate for the presidency of Iceland and was narrowly elected, defeat¬ ing three male opponents, thereby becoming the first woman in the world to be elected head of state in a national election. She was reelected three times (1984, 1988, and 1992) before retiring from office in 1996.
Finney, Albert (b. May 9, 1936, Salford, Lancashire, Eng.) British actor. He established himself as a Shakespearean actor in the late 1950s. In 1960 he won praise as a working-class rebel in the play Billy Liar and the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He played the lead in Luther on Broadway and became an international star in the film Tom Jones (1963). He later starred in films such as Two for the Road (1967), The Dresser (1983), Under the Volcano (1984), Miller’s Crossing (1990), and Erin Brockovich (2000).
Finnish language Finno-Ugric language of Finland, spoken by some six million people worldwide, including perhaps 200,000 speakers in North America. Finnish was an unwritten language until the 16th century, when Mikael Agricola (1509-57) produced an alphabet book (1543) and a translation of the New Testament (1548); he is regarded as the founder of the Finnish literary language. Finnish was accorded official status in 1809, when Finland entered the Russian Empire after six centuries of Swedish domination. The publication in 1835 of the national folk epic, the Kalevala, created from folk songs collected by Elias Lonnrot, gave increased impetus to the movement to forge a common national language encompassing all dialect areas. Finnish shares with other Baltic Finnic languages a stock of ancient loanwords from Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and Sami.
Finno-Ugric \'yu-grik\ languages Branch of the Uralic language family spoken by about 25 million people in northeastern Europe, north¬ ern Asia, and (through immigration) North America. More than 20 mil¬ lion are accounted for by two languages, Finnish and Hungarian. The Ugric subbranch comprises Hungarian and Ob-Ugrian. The latter consists of two language complexes of western Siberia, Khanty and Mansi, spoken by fewer than 15,000 people. The Finnic branch comprises the Sami (Saami, Lappish) languages, the Baltic Finnic languages, Mordvin, Mari, and the Permic languages. Sami is spoken by some 20,000 people in northern Scandinavia and adjacent Russia. Baltic Finnic comprises Finnish, Esto¬ nian (with 1.1 million speakers worldwide), and a string of declining lan¬ guages in Latvia and Russia. Mordvin is spoken by 1.1 million people in scattered enclaves of central European Russia. Mari is also spoken in cen¬ tral Russia and in scattered areas east toward the Ural Mountains; its two major varieties have about 600,000 speakers. The Permic languages, spread over a broad swath of northeastern European Russia, comprise Udmurt (spoken by some 500,000 people) and Komi (spoken by fewer than 400,000 people but with two literary forms). Finno-Ugric languages written in Russia use variants of the Cyrillic alphabet, while those outside Russia use the Latin alphabet.
Finno-Ugric \ l fi-no- , yii-grik\ religion Pre-Christian belief systems of the Finno-Ugric peoples, who lived in northern Scandinavia, Siberia, the Baltic region, and central Europe. Surviving Finno-Ugric groups include the Sami (Lapps), Finns, Estonians, and Magyars. The geographic and cul¬ tural diversity of these peoples led to the evolution of varying religious beliefs. The most common Finno-Ugric creation myth is the earth-diver myth, in which the Devil is forced to dive into the sea and gather sand, from which God forms the earth. Another myth tells of the creation of the world from a cosmic egg. The chief deities usually included a sky god and an earth mother. While the major gods were remote, there were guard¬ ian spirits at hand to regulate daily life; they resided in households, natu¬ ral sites such as lakes and forests, and natural phenomena such as wind or fire. Ancestor worship was practiced. Religious functionaries included shamans, sacrificing priests, guardians of the sanctuary, professional weeping women, and performers of wedding ceremonies. Cult centres ranged from home sanctuaries to sacred groves and sacrificial stones.
Fionn cycle See Fenian cycle fiord See fjord
Fiordland Vfy6rd-,land\ National Park Park, southern South Island, New Zealand. Established in 1952, it is one of the largest national parks in the world, with an area of 4,834 sq mi (12,519 sq km). It is renowned for the grandeur of its fjords, mountains, forests, waterfalls, and lakes. The park is bordered by mountains on the east and by the Tasman Sea on all other sides. It is the site of Sutherland Falls, one of the highest water¬ falls in the world, which drops 1,904 ft (580 m) in three cascades.
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676 i fir ► First International
fir Properly, any of about 40 species of trees that make up the genus Abies, in the pine family. Many other evergreen conifers (e.g., Douglas fir, hemlock fir) are also commonly called firs. True firs are native to North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. They are distinguished from other genera in the pine family by their needlelike leaves, which grow directly from the branch and have bases, shaped like suction cups, that leave conspicuous circular scars when the leaves fall. North America boasts 10 native species of fir, found chiefly from the Rocky Mountains westward. The wood of most western North American firs is inferior to that of pine or spruce but is used for lumber and pulpwood. Of the two fir species that occur in the eastern U.S. and Canada, the better known is the balsam fir (A. balsamea ), a popular ornamental and Christmas tree.
Firdusi See FerdowsT
fire Rapid burning of combustible material, producing heat and usually accompanied by flame. For eons, lightning was the only source of fire. The earliest controlled use of fire seems to date to c. 1,420,000 years ago, but not until c. 7000 bc did Neolithic humans acquire reliable firemaking techniques, including friction from hardwood drills and sparks struck from flint against pyrites. Fire was used initially for warmth, light, and cooking; later it was used in fire drives in hunting and warfare, and for clearing forests of underbrush to facilitate hunting. The first agricultural¬ ists used fire to clear fields and produce ash for fertilizer; such “slash- and-burn” cultivation is still used widely today. Fire also came to be used for firing pottery and for smelting bronze (c. 3000 bc) and later iron (c. 1000 bc). Much of the modern history of technology and science can be characterized as a continual increase in the amount of energy available through fire and brought under human control.