252 



KNOWLEDGE 



[March 27, 1885. 



Meanwhile Waitiamoinen, weeping day and night for 

 bis vanished love, made vain search for her, tdl, on a clue 

 p;iven him, he went fishing, and hooked a salmon so fair 

 that he had never seen its equal. But as he made ready to 

 rip it open it sprang back into the water, and revealed 

 itself to him as the metamorphosed Aino ; nor could fresh 

 cast of net or words of his, " charm he never so wisely," 

 recover the lost and mourned for prize. Then from the 

 ocean depths his now aged mother rose, and, telling him 

 that there are as good fish in the sea as ever yet were 

 ciught (or lost), counselled him to seek a wife in Pohjola. 



Joukabainen's hatred towards Wainamoinen for van- 

 quishing and humiliatiug him had not abated, and he set 

 out to entrap him on his way thither. As VVaii amoinen 

 rode across the sea Joukahaiuen shot at and missed him, 

 but the poisoned arrow struck his horse, whereby Wilina- 

 moinen was thrown into the water, but saved from sinking 

 by a storm, which curried him to and fro on the surface of 

 the waves. Borne upon their crests for many days, he was 

 at last rescued by the eagle which he had befriended when 

 he left the birch-tree standing ; and, carried on the grateful 

 bird's back, he was, after escaping further peril.s, landed 

 on the Northland shore. There, sorely bruised, with a 

 thousand buflfets on his body, with locks wildly tossing in 

 the wind, with wild sobs, and bewildered which way to 

 tike, the " old and stiadfast " was at last found by Louhi 

 the Toothless, mistress of Pohjola, mother of Louhetar, its 

 fairest maiden. She took him into her house, and gave 

 him food and shelter ; but, wearied of eating the bread of 

 strangers, he sighed for the meadows of Wainola, and 

 would fain depart, only Louhi would not let him, neither 

 would she give him Louhetar in marriage until he forged 

 the Sampo. 



This mysterious thing, which is introduced in the 

 seventh rune and disappears only in the forty third, rules 

 the fortunes of its possessors, and its identification is as 

 great a crii,x to commentators on the Kalevala as that of 

 the little Horn in Daniel and the number of the Beast in 

 the Apocalypse is to commentators on those books. It has 

 been variously interpreted as an image of Jumala, as a 

 Jumala temple, the culture and progress of the human race, 

 as a Laplander's magic-drum, as a merchant vessel, a well, 

 the earth, a cloud, the rainbow, and, of course, as both the 

 dawn and the snn. Of this last theory 0. Donner and A. 

 Schiefner are the most authoritative defenders, and there 

 are descriptions in the Kalevala which snpi)ort it — e.r/., 



It is well to dwell in Pohja, 

 For ill Pobja there is S.am]io. 

 There is ploughing, there is sowing, 

 There is every plant and seed-grain, 

 There is everlasting gladness. 



But when, as will be seen, the Sampo ia carried oft" : 

 There is sorrow now in Pohja, 

 And a breadless life in Lapland. 



And of the fragments, which, when the Sampois broken, are 

 washed to the shores of Kalevala, it is said — 



They bear every seed within them 

 And eternal joys beginning; 

 They will make the moon to ln-ightcn, 

 Sun of joy to shine for ever. 



The Sampo grinds corn, salt, and treasure, like the famous 

 quern of Norse myth in the well-known story " Why the 

 Sea is Salt;" and Ca><troD, in his Finnish Mythology," 

 refers to the relationship between the Swedish stamp — a 

 handmill — and its Finnish form tamppu. In that language 

 a word cannot begin with two consonants ; and, therefore, 

 in adopting stamp, the t is rejected.* This luck-bringing 



* The name .S'aiiijo docs not occur either in the Esthonian or l.n\>- 

 and myth. 



Sampo was many-coloured, witl: ornamental lid or cover, 

 and was made of the following unique fetichistic materials 

 - — a swan's feather, a grain of corn, a bit of wool, two lamb 

 bones, a drop of milk, and piece of a spindle. It is also 

 described as having three roots, in which some correspon- 

 dence between it and the tree Iggdra,--!! of Norse myth, 

 with its three roots, are perhaps traceable.* At any rate, 

 such foreign elements as may have been imported into the 

 Kalevala are to be looked for in that direction, although 

 Herr Olcenius, in an elaborate essay on the subject, has 

 brought together a number of ingenious similarities in 

 detail between the voyage of the Finnish heroes to capture 

 the Sampo, and the voyage of the Argonauts to recover the 

 Golden Fleece. The independent invention of stories of 

 like adventures to secure coveted treasure from hostile pos- 

 sessors is a more probable explanation of the correspon- 

 dences than the assumption of migration of Greek myth to 

 Finland. 



Wainiimoinen, although described in some variants of 

 the Kalevala as a smith, was no skilled artificer, and, since 

 he could not make the Sampo, he undertook to send his 

 brother Ilmarinen, the Vulcan of the epic, the mighty 

 metal-worker, who, like Ilmarine in the Kalevipoeg, 

 fashioned the steel vault of heaven. The references to 

 metal-work is one of many proofs of relatively modern 

 elements in the Kalevala. 



On this promise Louhi gave him a horse and sledge to 

 take him home, and as he journeyed he saw the lovely North- 

 land daughter sitting on a rainbow and weaving golden 

 threads, for to such, or to webs, were the slanting sun-rays 

 likened in primitive myth. She, the red-stockinged (the 

 colour of the stockings worn by the women in the epic is 

 an amusingly recurring detail) accepted hisoflfer of a seat in 

 his sledge if he would, after the manner familiar to wooers of 

 maidens in folk-tales, do certain wonderful ta.sks. He must 

 split a horsehair with a knife which has no edge ; he must cut 

 an egg in two without leaving a mark ; he must build a boat 

 of the shivers of her spindle, and get it to the water with- 

 out moving it. He performed the first two feats, but in 

 the third wounded himself in the knee with his axe, and 

 could not be healed through forgetting the only words of 

 the ppell which could cure him. To find these, he limped 

 to an old sorcerer and sang to him a quaint legend, which 

 has no apparent connection with the thread of events, of 

 the birth of iron and steel from maiden's milk. 



Faltering they began their journey, 



From the cloud-rim stepping downward, 



And their bounteous breasts were swollen, 

 , , So that all their nipples pained them. 

 _r Then, on earth their milk down-pouring, 



"'"■■ Flowed the fulness of their bosoms. 



Through the earth and through the marshes. 



Aye, and through' the drowsy billows. 



Black the milk that one produceth — 



She, the eUK'st of the virgins; 



White the milk the second spilleth — ■ 



She that was the next begotten; 



Red the milk the last outpoureth — ■ 



She, the youngest of the maidens. 



Whereso'er the black milk trickled, 



There soft iron sprang to being ; 



Where the white milk came down-pouring, 



There w.as hardened steel created; 



Where the red milk ran in rivers, 



There did brittle iron follow. 



The sorcerer then cursed the iron as a living thing for 

 its evil nature, and prayed to Ukko, " in whose bands is 



* " One of them extends to the ,Esir, another to the Frost-giants 

 in that very place where was for nei'y Ciinnnng igap, and the third 

 stands over NiBhoim, and under tl ia root, w lich is constantly 

 gnawed by Nidhiigg, is Hvergelrair.' Mallet's "Northern Anti- 

 quitiis," Prose Edda, p. tH. ■ ■■ . ■• .. ... 



