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Updated: June 21, 2025
Old toothless Louhi saw him as he alighted, and asked him: 'Who art thou that comest through the air, riding on the storm-wind? Hast thou ever met the great smith Ilmarinen, for I have long been waiting for him to come and forge the magic Sampo for me. 'I do indeed know him well, he replied, 'for I myself am Ilmarinen.
The wound can only be healed by one who knows the mystic words that hold the secret of the birth of iron. The legend of this evil birth, how iron grew from the milk of a maiden, and was forged by the primeval smith, Ilmarinen, to be the bane of warlike men, is communicated by Wainamoinen to an old magician.
Louhi immediately recognised them both, and said to her daughter: 'Wilt thou have one of these suitors, dearest daughter? He that comes in the ship is good old Wainamoinen, bringing countless treasures for thee from Kalevala. The other in the sledge, with the singing birds, is the blacksmith Ilmarinen, who brings no presents save himself.
But as Ilmarinen advanced to enter the house, they found that he was too tall to pass through the doorway without stooping, which would have been very unlucky: so Louhi had to have the top beam taken away before he could enter. Inside the dwelling was so changed that no one would have recognised it.
And then by another spell he made the stars of the Great Bear fast in the tree-top, and then jumped into his sledge and drove on again to his home, with his cap set awry on his head, mourning because he had promised to send Ilmarinen back to the Northland, to forge the magic Sampo as his ransom. As he drove on he came to Ilmarinen's smithy, and he stopped and went in to him.
Wainamoinen reflected on what Ilmarinen had said of the prosperity of the Northland, and at length proposed that they should go and capture the Sampo and bring it back to Kalevala. But Ilmarinen said: 'It will be hard to carry off the Sampo, for Louhi has fastened it with nine great locks, and around it grow three roots, beneath the mountain and the waters and the sands.
He directed him to forge a whole set of skeleton-keys, so that some one of them would fit the lock of the door to the Sun's prison. Ilmarinen went to work and soon his anvil was ringing merrily to the blows of his hammer.
So Ilmarinen took her from the fire and forged unceasingly until feet and hands and ears were all completed, and the maiden was now the most beautiful that any one had ever seen, but yet she could not walk, nor talk, nor see, nor hear.
On the evening of the third day he took out of the furnace a magic heifer, with horns of gold and the most beautifully-shaped head. But she was ill-tempered and would not stay at home, but rushed through the forest and swamps and wasted all her milk on the ground. So Ilmarinen cut the magic heifer in pieces and threw them back into the furnace.
When she was dressed she looked, with her rosy red cheeks and bright sparkling eyes, more lovely than any other maiden in all the Northland, and then she hurried to the hall to meet Ilmarinen. Louhi went to Ilmarinen and led him into the house, where there was a feast spread ready for him.
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