Some sub-traditions considered the bear to be a relative who had fled the community and been transmogrified by the power of the forest.
If a bear had to be killed, a sacred ritual of Peijainen (which some consider the source of the Odin and Wotan myths) was held and it's spirit in the form of its skull remained in a sacred clearing which was upkept, and people would bring expiatory and tributory gifts to it.
The circumlocutory forms "friend" and "brother" re-entered Finnish idiom with the Cold War era. The Soviets were often ironically referred to as brother Russian, or the Russian friend alluding to the non-friendship-friendship the Finnish people once cultivated with the spirit of the bear. And still it still lives on in Ice-hockey where the players refer to the opposing team as kaveri ("mate"), rather than naming the team directly.