Ilmarinen vs Louhi

The eternal smith of Finnish tradition, who forged the vault of the sky and, in the Kalevala, the Sampo for Louhi of Pohjola; named by Agricola in 1551 as the maker of calm and storm who carried travelers on their way.

In folk poetry, and in the Kalevala's charm of the origin of iron, he is born on a hill of charcoal with a copper hammer in his hand.

Agricola's list of 1551 says Ilmarinen 'made peace and weather and carried travelers forward', a role as a god of the air and winds that matches his name, from *ilma*, 'air, weather'. In the runo-songs he is above all the smith (*seppo*), the one 'who forged the sky, who hammered out the lid of the air', so skilled that no trace of hammer or tongs can be seen on his work.

The powerful, gap-toothed mistress of Pohjola, the dark North, who demands the forging of the Sampo in exchange for her daughter, pursues the heroes as a giant eagle when they steal it, and hides the sun and moon in a mountain.

No origin is told; she is simply the mistress of Pohjola.

In Finnish folk poetry the Old Woman of the North, *Pohjan akka*, rules Pohjola, a cold, dark, hostile land somewhere to the north, and is a formidable sorceress; in charms the related *Louhiatar* or *Loviatar* is the mother of diseases. The Kalevala makes Louhi the chief antagonist of the Kalevala heroes, though an ambivalent one: she rescues the shipwrecked Väinämöinen and bargains fairly for her daughter's marriage.