Few objects in Nordic literature have intrigued scholars as much as the Sampo, a machine that made wealth out of nothing. It is the centre of one of the best-known stories in the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland.

A poem put together

The Kalevala is not an old text written by a single author. The physician and philologist Elias Lönnrot travelled through Finland and Karelia in the 19th century, wrote down poems sung by ordinary people and joined them into one continuous story, with linking verses of his own. The first version came out in 1835, and the expanded edition, of 50 cantos, in 1849. For that reason the tale of the Sampo is a folk tradition arranged by an editor, and not a myth of an ancient religion documented in manuscripts.

The price of a bride

According to the poem, Louhi, the mistress of Pohjola, the northern land, demands a price for her daughter’s hand: an object called the Sampo. The smith Ilmarinen, who forged even the sky, accepts the job. He gathers the tip of a swan’s feather, a grain of barley, a strand of wool and the milk of a barren cow, and works for days at the forge. When the Sampo comes out, it has a colourful lid and grinds, each day, flour to eat, to sell and to store. In some translations the three products are grain, salt and gold.

Louhi keeps the Sampo inside a mountain, held by deep roots.

The theft

Years later, the old Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen, together with Lemminkäinen, sail to Pohjola to steal the Sampo. Väinämöinen plays his kantele, the wooden harp, and puts the whole household to sleep. The heroes pull the Sampo out of the mountain and flee by boat.

Louhi wakes, gathers an army and chases the thieves, even changing herself into a great bird. In the fight over the sea, the Sampo falls from the vessel and breaks. Väinämöinen gathers the splinters that the waves carry to the shore, and they bring fertility to Finland. Louhi manages to take home only a piece of the lid, and Pohjola falls into hardship.

In the poem she takes further revenge: she hides the sun and the moon, which the heroes must free.

What was the Sampo?

The poem does not explain what the Sampo was, and scholars disagree. Some see a mill, a pillar of the world, a symbol of fortune, a sacred object. No interpretation is accepted by all, and the folk songs Lönnrot collected varied among themselves.

The image marked Finnish art. The painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela made the canvas The Defense of the Sampo in 1896. February 28, a date tied to the preface of the first edition of the Kalevala, is remembered as Kalevala Day and as Finnish Culture Day.

To put the pieces of the Sampo back together before time runs out, play The shards of the Sampo.

Sources.

• Elias Lönnrot, *Kalevala* (first edition 1835, expanded edition 1849)
• Philological studies of the Finnish and Karelian oral poetry on which the *Kalevala* was based