Ukko

Louhi carried away the moon and the sun. She hid the moon inside a rock with mottled sides and placed the sun in a steel hill. She ordered them not to rise or shine unless she released them herself. She also took fire from the houses in Väinämöinen’s district. Darkness covered the Kaleva District. Night remained in the heavens and across the earth.

The young and the middle-aged considered how people could live without the moon and the sun. Maidens went to Ilmarinen’s smithy and asked him to forge a new moon and a new disk of the sun. Ilmarinen rose and began the work. He made the moon from gold and the sun from silver. He placed the forged bodies in the sky, but they gave no light. They did not gleam or shine, and the northern lands remained dark.

Ukko found the darkness strange in the heavens. He struck fire to make a new sun and moon. The fire fell from the sky towards the earth. Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen went to find it. An air maiden told them that it had entered Lake Alue. The attempt to restore light with the forged bodies had failed. The hidden moon and sun remained inside the hill at North Farm.

Ukko struck a fiery spark in the sky with his sharp sword and made the flame flash from his fingernail, high among the constellations. In another telling, he rubbed the fiery spark together in the sky. He placed the spark in a golden pouch and a silver setting. He gave it to a maiden of the air, who rocked it on a long cloud in a golden cradle hung from silver cords. He meant the light to begin a new moon and a new sun.

The maiden rocked the fire and guarded the flame with her fingers. The clouds moved, the heavens cried, and the vault of heaven bent as the golden cradle swung. Then the fire fell from the maiden’s careless hands. The spark dropped from the heavens through the clouds and passed through eight heavenly spheres and the ninth heaven. It fell towards the earth and brought the first fire with it.

Vainamoinen found the fire inside a red clew that fell from a blue clew. He loosened the red clew and took out the drop of fire that came from the heavens. As he considered what he could use to carry it to the fireless houses and dark cabins, the spark bounced from the hand of the Sun’s son. It burned Vainamoinen’s beard, scorched his cheekbones, and burned his hands. Then it sped over Lake Alue, crossed a juniper grove, and burned a heath and a stand of fir. It travelled farther and burned across half the northern country, the frontier of Savo, and two thirds of Karelia.

Vainamoinen followed the fierce fire. Ilmarinen later quenched the flame with cold and icy water, and the craftsman recovered from his burns. When the fire reached the earth, it became the first earthly flame. Ukko’s spark from the sky brought fire to the ground.