Ilmarinen

Ilmarinen forged the heavens and pounded out the vault of the sky without a ground plan or a piece of string. He was an eternal smith, skilled enough to make the firmament. Later, the northern lands lost the moon’s pale light and the sun’s brightness. The young took counsel, the middle-aged considered how people could live without them, and the maidens went to Ilmarinen’s smithy. They asked him to rise and forge a new moon and a new sun.

Ilmarinen rose from the wall and from behind the stone stove. He forged a moon of gold and a sun, but neither body shone. The people remained in darkness. Through divination, Väinämöinen learned that the moon and sun were inside a hill at North Farm. He travelled there, fought the people of North Farm, and defeated them. He reached the hill but could not enter it or release the imprisoned bodies.

Väinämöinen returned home in a downcast state. Lemminkäinen said that, if Väinämöinen had taken him as a magician, the locks would have opened and the moon and sun would have been freed. Väinämöinen replied that charms, enchantment, touch, and force of arms could not break the bolts. He went to Ilmarinen and asked him to forge a three-tined cultivator hoe, twelve ice picks, a large set of keys, and spear points. Ilmarinen made the tools.

While working at the smithy, Ilmarinen said that he was forging a neck ring for the mistress of North Farm, so that she would be fastened to the lower slope of a great mountain. Louhi, the gat-toothed mistress of North Farm, sensed the coming trouble. She flew home, released the moon from the stone, and let the sun loose from the rock. She changed herself into a pigeon and flew to Ilmarinen’s smithy. The moon and sun were freed from the hill, while the new bodies Ilmarinen had made remained without light.

Ilmarinen wept over his dead wife every evening. He wept through the nights and during the days. For two months and then three, he mourned. In the fourth month, he gathered gold from the sea and silver from the waves. He collected thirty sled loads of logs, burned them to charcoal, and forced the coals into his forge.

He put the gold and silver into the furnace and set the slaves and hired men to work the bellows. They worked poorly, so Ilmarinen worked the bellows himself. A colt then emerged from the forge with a golden mane, a silver head, and a copper body. The others rejoiced, but Ilmarinen thrust the colt back into the fire. He said that he wanted a golden sweetheart and a silver spouse. He added more gold and silver and began again.

He hammered the image through the night and continued during the day. He made legs, but they did not rise. He shaped hands, but they did not turn to embrace him. He forged ears, but they heard nothing. He fashioned a mouth and eyes, but the figure could not speak or look at him. Ilmarinen said that it would have been a pretty girl if it had speech, a mind, and a tongue. He placed it beneath a gauzy net, on soft pillows and a silky bed. He prepared a bath, washed himself, and lay beside the golden bride. In the morning, he found the side against which he had slept cold.

Ilmarinen offered the golden bride to Väinämöinen. Väinämöinen rejected it and told him to pound it up for other uses or take it to other lands for suitors who wanted gold. Ilmarinen threw away the golden image. He then set out for North Farm to seek the younger sister of his dead wife. She answered him with abusive words, so he abducted her and set out for home. During the journey, she reviled him. His anger grew, and he sang her into a seagull. Ilmarinen returned home and told Väinämöinen about North Farm's carefree life through the Sampo and about his failed courtship.

Ilmarinen thrust the iron into the forge and set the winds to work. The east wind blew, the west wind blew, the south wind blew harder, and the north wind roared. The fire burned for one day, then a second, then a third. Flames and sparks burst from the forge, ashes rose towards heaven, and smoke gathered among the clouds.

Louhi, mistress of North Farm, had asked Ilmarinen to make the Sampo, promising him a bride from Pohjola in return. She dressed her younger daughter in fine clothes and ornaments, with copper and gold belts, and brought her into the house. Ilmarinen was the eternal smith, and he agreed to the task. He worked while the winds fed the fire.

At the end of the third day, Ilmarinen looked into the forge. The Sampo was taking shape, with a many-coloured lid. He hammered it quickly and skilfully. One side became a grain mill, another a salt mill, and the third a money mill. The finished Sampo turned its lid and ground out a binful at dawn. It produced grain, salt, and money.

The daughter of North Farm, however, spoke of the tasks and pleasures still before her. She could not leave her maidenhood, gather berries from the ground, tend the shores of the bay, walk the meadows, or play in the groves. Ilmarinen became downcast and wondered how he could return from gloomy North Farm to his own lands. Later, Väinämöinen met him at the smithy and heard about his stay in Pohjola. Väinämöinen urged him to return to North Farm and recover the Sampo. Ilmarinen agreed. They set out by boat, and Lemminkäinen joined them as their third companion. The Sampo had been carried to a rocky hill in North Farm, inside a copper mountain behind nine locks. Its roots reached nine fathoms deep, with one in solid ground, one in the shore, and one near the house.

Ilmarinen entered the room of the daughter of Pohjola at North Farm and asked her to come to him as an eternal companion. He reminded her of the oath she had made before God while he was working on the Sampo and shaping its many-coloured lid. Her mother, Louhi, would not grant him the girl unless he first ploughed an adder-infested field and turned over its snake-ridden soil.

The maiden of North Farm advised him how to prepare. She told the eternal smith to make a golden plough and decorate it with silver. Ilmarinen went to his forge. He placed gold in the fire and silver in the hearth, then fashioned the plough. He also forged iron footwear and steel leggings. He put these on before approaching the field.

The field was filled with venomous snakes. Ilmarinen entered it in his protective iron and steel clothing and used the plough he had made. He turned over the snake-ridden ground and completed the task. This was the first of the dangerous tasks Louhi set before she would promise her daughter to him.