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Updated: June 1, 2025
When all was ready Ilmarinen prayed to great Ukko to send snow that it might cover all the country and let his sledge glide easily to Pohjola. And the snow came, and Ilmarinen wrapped himself up warmly in bear-skins, and drove off like the wind, first invoking Ukko's blessing on his journey.
Then there was nothing but black night in the world, and great Ukko himself did not know what to do without the light of the Sun and Moon. Ukko wandered all over the clouds to find out what had become of the Sun and Moon, and at last he whirled his fire-sword round his head so that the lightning flashed over the whole sky.
He sang the origin of witchcraft, the source of good and evil and how by the will of Ukko the water was first divided from the ether. And next he sang of how the moon and sun were made, and whence the colours of the rainbow came, and how the stars were sprinkled in the sky.
Beneath the breath and touch of wind and tide, she conceived a child; but nine ages of man passed before his birth, while the mother floated on 'the formless and the multiform waters. Then Ukko, the supreme God, sent an eagle, which laid her eggs in the maiden's bosom, and from these eggs grew earth and sky, sun and moon, star and cloud.
It made one circle round the heavens, and then lit upon the mast of Wainamoinen's vessel, almost overturning it by its weight. Wainamoinen first prayed to Ukko for aid, and then he asked Louhi if she would consent now to divide the Sampo between them. But she scorned his offer, and the eagle made a swoop downward to pick up the Sampo in its talons.
The wizard then solemnly curses the iron, as a living thing, and invokes the aid of the supreme God Ukko, thus bringing together in one prayer the extremes of early religion. Then the hero is healed, and gives thanks to the Creator, 'in whose hands is the end of a matter.
And she prayed, moreover, to great Ukko that if the sea-monster should not succeed, that Ukko himself would send a fearful tempest to wreck the vessel. First came the goddess of the fog, and wrapped them in such a thick mist that they could not move.
Ukko, the creator, rubbed his hands upon his left knee, and there arose thence three lovely maidens, who were the mothers of iron and steel. These three maidens walked forth on the clouds, and from their bosoms ran the milk of iron, down unto the clouds and thence down upon the earth.
Ilmarinen quickly forged a magic rake, and she hurried off with it to the gloomy river Tuoni, praying as she went: 'O Sun, whom Ukko hath created, shine for me now with magic power into the kingdom of death, into dark Manala, and lull all the evil spirits there to sleep.
O all ye people of Kalevala, both those now living and those to come, boast not of the work that ye have done but give to God the praise, for the great Ukko alone can make all things perfect, Ukko is the one master! There was a moment's pause, and then little Mimi said that she was so glad Wainamoinen was well again, and asked Father Mikko to tell them what happened to him next.
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