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But he grows homesick, and complains, almost in Dante's words, of the bitter bread of exile. Loutri will only grant him her daughter's hand on condition that he gives her a sampo. A sampo is a mysterious engine that grinds meal, salt, and money. In fact, it is the mill in the well-known fairy tale, 'Why the Sea is Salt.
Suddenly the waves are cloven asunder, and the mother of Nature and of Wainamoinen appears, to comfort her son, like Thetis from the deep. She bids him go and seek, in the land of Pohjola, a bride alien to his race. After many a wild adventure, Wainamoinen reaches Pohjola and is kindly entreated by Loutri, the mother of the maiden of the land.
Returning to Kalevala, Wainamoinen sends Ilmarinen to Pohjola to make the sampo, 'a mill for corn one day, for salt the next, for money the next. The fatal treasure is concealed by Loutri, and is obviously to play the part of the fairy hoard in the 'Nibelungen Lied. With the eleventh canto a new hero, Ahti, or Lemminkainen, and a new cycle of adventures, is abruptly introduced.
In the war with Pohjola the heroes were victorious, but the sampo was broken in the fight, and lost in the sea, and that, perhaps, is 'why the sea is salt. Fragments were collected, however, and Loutri, furious at the success of the heroes of Kalevala, sent against them a bear, destructive as the boar of Calydon.