Lemminkäinen and Kyllikki

At a Glance

• Central figures: Lemminkäinen, the reckless young hero and singer of Kalevala; Kyllikki, the proud maiden of Saari, who refused every suitor who came to her island.
• Setting: The island village of Saari and the lands of Kalevala, in the world of the Finnish Kalevala tradition.
• The turn: After failing to win Kyllikki through courtship, Lemminkäinen seizes her by force from a village dance and carries her off in his sledge.
• The outcome: Each swears an oath to the other - Kyllikki will not go to the village dances, Lemminkäinen will not ride to war - and both break their oaths, severing the marriage.
• The legacy: Lemminkäinen’s departure from Kyllikki sets him on the road to Pohjola, where his courtship of Louhi’s daughter leads to his death and resurrection in the river of Tuonela.

Lemminkäinen had been to Saari three times already. Three summers he had rowed across the strait, put on his best shirt, walked into the village, and tried to court the women there. He was handsome. He could sing. He told them so himself. The married women laughed with him and the unmarried women turned away, and Kyllikki - the one he wanted, the flower of Saari, the girl every man on the island had asked and every man on the island had been refused - Kyllikki would not even look at him.

He went home each time angrier than the last. His mother told him to forget Saari. His mother told him the women there were proud and the strait was wide and there were girls closer to home who would have him. Lemminkäinen did not listen. He had never listened to his mother about anything, and he was not going to start with this.

The Sledge on the Ice

The fourth time, he did not row. He waited for winter. When the ice on the strait was thick enough for a horse and sledge, he drove across at speed, the runners hissing on the frozen surface, and arrived at Saari in the evening when the village was holding a dance.

He walked into the firelit circle where the young people were dancing and he sang. Not a courting song this time. He sang the other men’s boots off their feet. He sang their belts loose. He sang them stumbling and confused, tripping over their own hems, and while they were picking themselves up he grabbed Kyllikki by the wrist and pulled her to the sledge.

She fought him. She shouted. She called him a dog and a cattle-thief and worse. The village came running but Lemminkäinen was already whipping the horse forward across the ice, and the sledge was fast, and the dark swallowed them.

Kyllikki’s Tears

Kyllikki wept in the sledge. She wept for a long time, her face turned away from him, the wind cutting across the frozen strait. Lemminkäinen let her weep. He was pleased with himself. He had the girl no one else could get.

After a while, Kyllikki stopped crying and spoke.

Why did you take me? You could have had any of the loose women in the village. Why the one who didn’t want you?

Lemminkäinen said he had heard of her beauty across the water and he wanted her for his wife, not for a night.

Then swear me an oath, Kyllikki said. Swear you will never ride to war. Swear you will not go looking for battles and leave me sitting in a house waiting to hear whether you are dead.

Lemminkäinen swore it. The words came easily - he was young and the night was cold and Kyllikki’s face in the moonlight off the ice was worth any promise.

Now swear me one in return, he said. Swear you will never go to the village dances. Swear you will stay home and not go walking where other men can see you and talk to you and put their hands on your waist.

Kyllikki swore it. Perhaps she meant it. Perhaps she was only tired and cold and far from home with no way back. The horse ran on.

The House by the Lake

They lived together. Lemminkäinen’s mother received Kyllikki and treated her well, combed her hair, gave her good cloth to work with. For a time the arrangement held. Lemminkäinen fished. He hunted. He stayed home. Kyllikki cooked and wove and stayed home. Neither of them was happy, exactly, but neither of them broke their word.

The days were short and dark in winter, long and bright in summer, and the seasons turned, and the restlessness that lived in Lemminkäinen like a second heartbeat grew louder. He took the boat out farther. He stayed on the water longer. He came home smelling of distances.

Kyllikki’s restlessness was quieter but no less real. She missed the sound of other voices, the firelight, the music. She missed being the girl everyone wanted and no one could have. In Lemminkäinen’s house she was just a wife.

The Broken Oaths

One evening Lemminkäinen came home late from fishing. His mother was sitting by the fire alone.

Where is Kyllikki?

His mother did not want to say. He asked again. She told him: Kyllikki had gone to the village. She had gone to the dance.

Lemminkäinen stood still for a long moment. Then the stillness broke and the old wildness flooded back, and it was almost a relief. She had broken her oath. That meant his oath was nothing. He was free.

He told his mother he was going to Pohjola. He was going to court the daughter of Louhi, the Mistress of the North, because if Kyllikki could not keep her word then he would find a woman worth keeping. His mother begged him not to go. She told him Pohjola was death. She told him Louhi would set him impossible tasks and he would die trying to complete them.

Lemminkäinen was already packing his sledge.

You will die there, his mother said.

He kissed her forehead. He took his sword and his skis and his singing voice, and he drove north.

The Empty House

Kyllikki came back from the dance. The house was cold. His mother sat by the ashes and would not speak to her. Lemminkäinen’s fishing gear hung on the wall but his sword was gone, his skis were gone, and the tracks of his sledge ran north across the snow toward Pohjola, where the dark was thicker and the cold was deeper and Louhi sat in her stone hall waiting for foolish young men to come courting.

Kyllikki stood in the doorway and looked at the tracks until the wind filled them in.

She had broken her oath first. She knew that. But she also knew that Lemminkäinen had been waiting for her to break it - that the promise had been a cage he’d built around her so that when she tore free he could tear free too, and ride toward the thing he had always wanted more than her: the next impossible thing, the next fight, the next woman who would say no.

The fire was dead. His mother would not look at her. Outside, the wind kept filling in the tracks, and by morning there was nothing to show he had ever been there at all.