Sampo

Forged in the North

In the Kalevala, Louhi of Pohjola promises her daughter to whoever can forge the Sampo, and Ilmarinen does so after destroying four lesser creations. It has a many-colored lid (kirjokansi) and grinds on three sides: flour, salt, and money. Louhi locks it in the rock-mountain of Pohjola, where it takes root, and her land prospers.

Stolen and shattered

When Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen steal it, Louhi pursues them as a giant eagle and drags it overboard. It breaks in the sea: the large pieces make the sea rich, smaller pieces washed ashore bring prosperity to Kalevala, and Louhi carries home only the lid.

A famous riddle

The folk songs never say clearly what the Sampo is, and scholars have proposed more than thirty interpretations: a mill, a treasure chest, a decorated shield, a talisman, a world pillar, the starry sky turning on its axis, and others. The Finnish folklorist Uno Harva connected it with the world pillar of northern Eurasian cosmology; others read it as a symbol of prosperity or of the heavens. No interpretation is certain, and Lönnrot's mill is his own resolution of the ambiguity.