Lemminkäinen's tasks

At a Glance

• Central figures: Lemminkäinen, the reckless singer and warrior; Louhi, the Mistress of Pohjola; and the unnamed daughter of Pohjola whose hand Lemminkäinen seeks.
• Setting: Pohjola, the dark northern land beyond the borders of Kalevala, in the world of the Finnish Kalevala tradition.
• The turn: Louhi sets Lemminkäinen three impossible tasks as bride-price for her daughter - to capture the Elk of Hiisi, to bridle the Fire-Horse of Hiisi, and to shoot the Swan of Tuonela.
• The outcome: Lemminkäinen accomplishes the first two tasks through song-magic and persistence, but at the black river of Tuonela he is struck down by a blind herdsman and cast into the waters of the dead.
• The legacy: Lemminkäinen’s mother drags the river of Tuonela with a copper rake and reassembles her son’s body, singing him back to life - one of the most vivid resurrection episodes in Finnish oral tradition, and an image of the power that outlasts even death in the underworld.

Lemminkäinen had already been told not to go. His mother had said it. She had listed the deaths waiting on the road to Pohjola - fire across the path, wolves at the narrows, a bear at the gate. He went anyway. He always went. He was young and he was handsome and he could sing men into swamps, and he wanted the daughter of Louhi.

He arrived at Pohjola in winter, walked into the feast-hall uninvited, and demanded the girl. Louhi looked at him across the long table. She did not refuse outright. She named a price.

The Elk of Hiisi

The first task: bring me the Elk of Hiisi. Not an ordinary elk. This was a creature of the spirit-wilds, the beast that ran between the trees of the sacred groves where no hunter’s arrow had ever landed. It did not tire. It did not stop. Its hooves barely touched the snow.

Lemminkäinen built skis. He carved them from birch and pine, one ski for speed and one for steering, and he greased the runners with elk fat. He asked the forest-spirits for help, praying to Tapio, the lord of the woods, and to Mielikki, Tapio’s wife, asking them to drive the elk toward him. He promised offerings. He promised gold on every stump, silver thread on every pine bough.

For days he skied. The elk ran ahead, always ahead, crashing through the birch stands, leaping frozen streams. Lemminkäinen’s skis split. He carved new ones. The elk ran on. The forest was silent except for the sound of hooves and the hiss of runners on ice.

Then the forest-spirits heard him, or they grew tired of the chase. The elk turned. It circled back. Lemminkäinen threw a lasso of braided sinew and caught the beast around the neck. It kicked. It dragged him thirty paces through the snow. He held on. He brought the Elk of Hiisi to Louhi’s hall and dropped the rope at her feet.

She looked at the elk. She looked at him.

Now bring me the Fire-Horse of Hiisi.

The Fire-Horse

The second beast was worse. The Horse of Hiisi breathed flame. Its mane was fire. It ran on a field of sparks, and the snow melted and boiled behind it. No man had ever sat on its back.

Lemminkäinen prayed to Ukko, the old god of the sky, the one who holds the thunder. He asked for a storm of hail - not rain, not snow, but hail, sharp and cold enough to cool the horse’s burning hide. Ukko listened, or the sky was ready. Hail came down in sheets. The horse stood shaking under the ice-fall, its flames beaten low, steam rising from its back in white columns.

Lemminkäinen approached through the hail with a golden bridle. He slipped it over the horse’s head. The bit was cold iron. The horse screamed but did not burn him. He led it back to Pohjola, hooves sizzling on the frozen ground, and left it steaming in Louhi’s yard.

Louhi came out. She looked at the horse. She did not smile.

One task remains. Go to the river of Tuonela. Shoot me the Swan that swims on the black water.

The Black River

Tuonela’s river is not a river anyone visits twice. It runs at the border of the land of the dead, and the Swan that glides on its surface sings between the worlds. No one hunts there. The water is dark and thick and it does not reflect the sky.

Lemminkäinen went. He took his bow.

He had been warned - his mother had told him, before he ever left for Pohjola, about the deaths on the road. He had sung his way past the fires and the wolves and the bear. But his mother had not known about the river, or she had known and he had not listened.

At the riverbank, a man was waiting. A herdsman, old and blind, named Soppy Hat - Märkähattu - a wet-hatted cattleman from the swamps of Pohjola. This was no warrior. He was a herder of serpents, a watcher at the water’s edge, and Louhi had placed him there. Lemminkäinen had insulted this man once, years ago, passed through his village and not bothered to sing the snakes away from his cattle. The herdsman had not forgotten.

Lemminkäinen did not see him. He was watching the Swan, fitting an arrow to his string. The herdsman drew a water-snake from the river - a poisoned reed of Tuoni, a blind serpent as long as a man’s arm - and drove it through Lemminkäinen’s chest.

Lemminkäinen fell into the river of Tuonela. The current took him. Tuoni’s son, the death-god’s own child, rose from the water with a sword and hacked the body apart - cut it into five pieces, into six, into eight - and scattered them in the black water.

The Swan went on singing.

The Copper Rake

At home, Lemminkäinen’s mother saw blood drip from a hairbrush he had left hanging on a nail. She had told him: If this brush bleeds, you are dead. It bled.

She went to Pohjola. She asked Louhi where her son had gone. Louhi lied, then told the truth when the mother would not leave. The mother went to the river of Tuonela.

She had Ilmarinen forge her a rake - a copper rake, long-handled, with teeth fine enough to catch bone. She waded into the black water up to her waist, up to her chest. She raked the riverbed. She raked against the current. She pulled up weeds, she pulled up mud, she pulled up river-stones. She raked again. A hand came up. A foot. A rib. A skull.

She laid the pieces on the bank and fitted them together - bone to bone, flesh to flesh, vein to vein. She sang over the body. She knew the origin-songs, the words that named how blood was first made, how bone was first set, how skin was first stretched over muscle. She sang and the seams closed. She sang and the color came back. A bee brought ointment from the fields of Ukko, honey that healed what song alone could not.

Lemminkäinen opened his eyes.

I was sleeping, he said.

You were dead, his mother said. And you would have stayed dead, if I had not come.

She brought him home. He did not get the daughter of Louhi. He had finished two tasks of three and failed the third by dying. His mother did not say she had warned him. She did not need to. The hairbrush still hung on its nail, and the blood on it had dried.