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Updated: May 20, 2025
Then Lemminkainen remembered a huge ox that he had seen out in the fields, with horns seven fathoms long, and he went after it and hitched it to the biggest plough he could find, and began to plough all around the roots which held the Sampo down. And in a very short while the roots became loosened, and they were able to pick up the magic Sampo and carry it on board their vessel.
'All is in God's hands, said Father Mikko reverently, 'and we must take both good and ill as they come to us it is not for us to say what we would wish. Let us be thankful that even a part of the Sampo floated hither, he added, smiling. There was a few moments' silence, and then Mimi asked what Wainamoinen had done about his lost kantele, so Father Mikko went on.
So she called up the goddess of the fogs, and sent her out to delay Wainamoinen's vessel. And then she called on Iko-Turso a wicked monster living in the depths of the sea to swim to the ship and sink it, and to eat the men in it, but to bring back the Sampo to Pohjola once more.
Quickly he took it out and placed it on his anvil, and taking a huge hammer the wonderful smith forged the luck-bringing Sampo. From one side it grinds out flour, and from the other salt, and from the third it coins out money. And the lid is all the colours of the rainbow, and as it rocks back and forth it grinds one measure for the day, and one for the market and one for the storehouse.
Ilmarinen is a wondrous smith; he it was who forged the heavens, and so perfectly did he do it that we cannot see a single mark of the hammer on them. Louhi replied: 'Only to him who can forge the magic Sampo for me will I give my daughter. Then she harnessed up her sledge and put Wainamoinen in it and made him all ready for his journey home.
Now, tell me truly, O Louhi, whither thou hast sent my son, or I will destroy all thy storehouses and even thy magic Sampo. And then Louhi said that she had given him a copper boat, and he had floated off on the river; perhaps he had perished in the rapids below. But Lemminkainen's mother answered: 'Thou art still speaking falsely.
Louhi grew more and more angry and envious when she heard how prosperous and happy all the folk of Kalevala were, since the fragments of the Sampo had floated to their shore. So she pondered long in her evil heart, how she might send them sorrow and misfortune.
Then he ceased playing, and cast a powerful spell over them, so that they should not awake. When all the Pohjola folk were sound asleep the three great heroes went to the mountains to seek the magic Sampo. And as they went Wainamoinen played such wonderful music that the great cliffs opened before them, and left them an open road to where the Sampo lay hid.
Ilmarinen seeks a new wife in Pohja, and endeavours with Wainamoinen's help to recover the mystic sampo. On the voyage, the Runoia makes a harp out of the bones of a monstrous fish, so strange a harp that none may play it but himself.
Wainamoinen and Ilmarinen now go together to Pohjola, but the fickle maiden of the land prefers the young forger of the sampo to his elder and imperturbable companion. Like a northern Medea, or like the Master-maid in Dr. Dasent's 'Tales from the Norse, or like the hero of the Algonquin tale and the Samoan ballad, she aids her alien lover to accomplish the tasks assigned to him.
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