This is Ira Jean Belmont’s interpretation of Jean Sibelius’ tone poem, “The Swan of Tuonela.”  I came across it in a classical music magazine.

        Many of you know how THE HAWKE OF TUONELA got her name, but for those who don’t, in 1983 when I was in England looking to buy a boat, my final decision came down to a first generation Swan 37 and a She 36, both Olin Stevens designs.  Happily I ended up with the She, which I named RESURGAM; but I thought that a perfect name for a Swan would be simply ‘Of Tuonela,’ particularly since both music and boat come from Finland.

        The first owners of my present boat raced her for a year or so before donating her to the U.S. Naval Academy where she was renamed HAWKE after an early sloop of war.  When I bought her, she became not the swan, but the hawk(e) of Tuonela.

        Of his composition, Sibelius wrote, “Tuonela, the land of death, the hell of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a large river with black waters and a rapid current on which the Swan of Tuonela floats majestically, singing.”