Lemminkäinen vs Louhi

The reckless, handsome adventurer of the Kalevala, who is killed at the river of Tuonela while trying to shoot its swan and cut to pieces, and whom his mother rakes from the river and restores to life.

Son of a devoted, unnamed mother, the 'islander' raised on the headland; the Kalevala gives no divine parentage.

In Finnish folk poetry Lemminkäinen, Ahti Saarelainen ('Ahti the Islander'), and Kaukomieli were related but partly separate figures, heroes of songs about uninvited guests at feasts, sea raids, and duels of magic. Lönnrot combined them into one character, which is why the Kalevala calls him by all three names.

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.