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finn_mythIn this post, I wish to tell you about some of the most important but also the most mysterious figures of Finnish and Estonian mythology, the Sons of Kalev(a).
Who the hell is Kaleva, Kalehva, Kalevi, Kalev? Who knows. Theories say that he was an ancient giant or king. Some kind of original ancestor figure. Many things have been named after him, like Kalevan miekka ("Kaleva's sword", Orion constellation). He himself doesn't actually appear in Finnish mythology or do anything - the ones who do are his sons, Kalevanpojat.
This also appears in Estonian mythology, where Sons of Kalev are important. Ancient castles in Estonian are called "Beds of a Son of Kalev". Clearly, the concept is so old in mythology that it goes back to a time before the different Baltic Finnic ethnic groups had split off from each other. They all have their own things later attributed to these figures, however. In this post, I am talking about Finland specifically. Not Estonia, not Ingria, not Karelia. Please make a note of this. Other versions of these mythological figures exist in other regions. This is about Finland only.
It has been said in older writing that there were 12 sons of Kaleva. However, no list of all of them exists. There is one old list, listing six, and the rest are speculation. Of course, this also kind of goes into the area of regional differences: Couldn't a Son of Kaleva be anyone the local community decides to make so?
The divinity of these figures is also interesting. They are not normal humans, as they have supernatural abilities. But they are not worshipped gods either...right? But some of them are very respected to the extent that they might as well be gods, or semi-divine at least. While others are simply regarded as giants, even troublesome ones at that! There is even a possibility that a god got kind of... downgraded to a Son of Kaleva eventually. But is it really downgrading when these sons can still be so respected, even seen as the original ancestors? Who is more respected, gods who are prayed and sacrificed to, who are truly nothing but personifications of natural phenomena? Or legendary giants who are respected and their deeds told forwards in heroic stories, as actual persons instead of personifications?
The arrival of Christianity adds its own twist to the mix. Maybe... they were gods who were "downgraded" to giants due to outside influence? Although I am personally a bit sceptical of this since it would imply being a personification is somehow superior to being a person. Historian Aulis Oja theorized that the term, Son of Kaleva, itself could've originally meant a high class warrior. If that's the case, and even if it wasn't, no wonder it's difficult to draw a line between an ancient king, warrior, giant or god.
So, who are these Sons of Kaleva then? The ones we know the names of, even in theories? I will thoroughly explain!
Generally
The oldest written mention of the Sons of Kaleva is in the writings of Mikael Agricola in 1551, the man who invented written Finnish. He wrote: "Caleuanpoiat / Nijttut ja muudh löit". This means that the Sons of Kaleva created natural formations, such as meadows, which is specifically mentioned here ("nijttut"). Agricola was a Christian bishop and a student of Martin Luther, and by the time of his writings and the reformation, the Catholic Church had had a presense in Finland for a few centuries. It did, however, live side-by-side with paganism. Hence, Agricola's writings can truly be reliable, but one has to remember that he does have a Christian bias (in the full text, he does refer to the gods he lists as "false gods", for instance).
The stories of giants are not rare in Europe, nor in the Nordics. Even though Finnish tradition comes from a different place compared to the other Nordic countries, there are still places where they overlap. The idea of giants building churches is one of them. Giants are: 1) The ones who lived here before the arrival of humans, and 2) Potentially scary creatures that might cause havoc with their superhuman strength. While as giants, some Sons of Kaleva share features with this general idea of giants, many of them also have special features and respect that would never be granted to any ordinary giant.
In the 1700s, Kristfrid Ganander created the Mythologia Fennica, a Swedish-language book explaining Finnish and Sámi folk beliefs. As a source, this one is very hazardous. The traditional poems he collected are real, true and historically valuable. They can be trusted. However, the conclusions and explanations he came to... less so. It seems that he had a goal of making Finnish tradition seem a bit more like the Greek one; including creating weird relations between different divine characters that have no basis in any other research or sources. I have browsed through this book once, and quickly deemed it to be a useless source for accurate mythological description. But as I said, the situation is different with the poems he collected.
So, clearly Ganander's work needs to be approached with a good chunk of skepticism. Ganander did talk about the Sons of Kaleva, as well as giants in general. He did, for instance, deem the region of Cajania a "Land of Giants". This does have a layer of truth to it, but can easily be exaggerated. Ganander lists six Sons of Kalewa and their places of dwelling: Hiisi (from Paltamo), Ilmarinen (from Tavastia), Wäinämöinen (from Southwestern Finland), Liekiöinen (from Savonia), Soini (from Liminka), and Kihawanskoinen (no dwelling place listed). Out of these places, Paltamo is in aforementioned Cajania, and Liminka in North Ostrobothnia region.
This does indeed make up of most of the figures generally considered Sons of Kaleva, bar two. Joukahainen (plus other similar names) does not exactly appear as a Kalevanpoika in poetry, but he does appear as a brother of Wäinämöinen. And if you put two and two together, it's not particularly surprising he is often considered a part of this band of brothers as well.
There is still Lemminkäinen. Oh, what is he? A heroic Kalevanpoika or just your regular hero? In poems, he does appear alongside characters such as Väinämöinen and Joukahainen. However, I was personally not able to find a poem which would actually refer to him as a Kalevanpoika. It is mentioned that he has relatives, such as sisters and a mother, and the latter one is very present in his story. In popular understanding, the "Lemminkäinen" people think of is actually a combination of three different characters from mythology. True Lemminkäinen tries to marry a girl from a foreign land (maybe even the underworld), kills a swan (a sacred bird) and gets dismembered as a result. Other tales attributed to Lemminkäinen actually belong to separate heroes: Kaukamoinen and Ahti Saarelainen. I did not find any mention about Kaukamoinen as a Kalevanpoika either. Ahti Saarelainen belongs to Ingrian and Karelian mythology, but does not appear in Finnish poems as far as I know.
Alright, a bit of a lie there. I did find a few Karelian poems calling Lemminkäinen a Kalevanpoika (that didn't just have random lines lifted from a different poem because those exist too and don't count). But I also discovered something else. Lemminkäinen is also referred to as Son of Vipunen (a kind of shaman giant), although this is probably also random lines lifted from a different poem. And then I discovered poems putting Lemminkäinen on the place of another character, Tuuretuinen, and came to the conclusion that all of this should be ignored since it's clearly cases of his name being randomly used to replace other names in random poems.
So, personally I am not opposed to leaving Lemminkäinen on the bench for this post. For more info, see the section on Liekiöinen. Sorry man, let's talk about your epic story some other time.
Finally, I'd like to mention one thing which is stated in 1700s books about the Sons of Kaleva: With the help of the Sons of Kaleva, the King of Finland conquered all of Russia (granted, "all of Russia" was a much smaller area at the time than now). It is also written than only one of these sons moved out of Finland.
Hiisi/Halli
First, we have this giant simply called "Hiisi". The word hiisi refers to a sacred place, but with the arrival of Christianity, they started using the word to refer to a very vague kind of a supernatural creature, often malicious. So it is said about Hiisi in Cajanian folklore: Once, there was Hiisi, a giant. He wanted to walk from Kajaani to Oulu, but unfortunately, the big lake Oulujärvi was in his way. As a solution, he grabbed a piece of land from Paltamo and threw it into the lake, creating the Manamansalo island. The place where he had grabbed the land from became the Kivesjärvi lake. So it was said in the old times: "seiten seitentä soarta, seiten seitentä lampie". This means that there were 67 island in the Kivesjärvi lake, and 67 ponds on the Manamansalo island.
It was also written that he built a tall castle for himself east of Kajaani in a swamp.
Then where does this other name, Halli, come from? It's a bit of a case of me uniting things that could as well be unrelated. However, the connections are too juicy for me not to make. From completely other side of the country, Pomarkku, comes a poem which states: "Halli kauhia jättiläinen, / Hiisi hirmun suuri, / Asui ahon sydämessä, / Konna korven koskelossa." This translates to: "Halli, horrible giant, / a very massive hiisi / lived in the heart of a clearing, / a villain in the wilderness rapids." The poem describes how: his voice is so loud even if he whispered, it would echo far and wide and topple down trees. Him hitting a rock would split it in half. Him drinking from a river would drain it dry. The poem is in the family of Western Finnish poems about the horrible and mean giants. However, it has a connection in its lines to another Kalevanpoika, the one I'm going to talk about in the next segment. This is the reason why I like including it in here.
Soini/Kalkki/Kullervo
Many names for this dear child too. Soini and Sole are names listed by Ganander. According to him, the name "Kalkki" is but a nickname. At the same time, it's the most common name for him. The name Kullervo does not appear in Finnish poems that much, but is the name typical for him in places such as Finnish Karelia and Ingria; hence, why I included it for clarity. I have more about this later, so keep reading.
This guy is a Son of Kaleva with no doubt: first verse, and he's called Kalkki Son of Kaleva. When he was only three nights old, he was already so strong he was able to break his swaddling band. He was sold into slavery to (Russian) Karelia, to a smith named Köyrötyinen. He was made to look after their child, and so he gauged out the kid's eyes, killed the kid with an illness and burned the kid's cradle. Next, he was told to build a fence, which he proceeded make out of entire trees, snakes and lizards. Next, he was told to be a shepherd. The smith's wife gave Kalkki a piece of bread and said he's only allowed to eat it when the cattle is coming back home. When Kalkki tried to cut the bread, his knife hit a rock the wife had baked into the bread. Enraged, Kalkki feeds the cattle to bears. Out of the horn of a bull, he creates a horn instrument he plays while marching back home with the bears in tow. The slave owners wonder where their slave got this horn from, until Kalkki arrives with bears and wolves which he had "chained". He told the bears and wolves to attack the smith's wife and rip off her thigh. And thus, one of the bears does so. This poem is "The Revenge of a Son of Kaleva".
So, what is up with the names? In modern Finnish, kalkki means chalk, but I'm sure this is not about that. In Swedish and many other Germanic languages, the word skalk refers to a rogue, a scoundrel, a villain of some sort. However, in its earlier form, in Old High German, it means a serf, servant, disciple or slave.
Another poem states: Kullervo was defeated, the son of Kaleva fell, on the giant war lea, on the killing fields of men. However, as he died, he said that he has impregnated a woman that now carries his child. Indeed, poems from Cajania state that this beautiful Son of Kaleva went to war with a careless mindset, excited more like, and clearly this became his death. This is where it gets confusing. In Ingrian poems, "Kullervo" is a son of a man named Kalervo, who was thusly killed by the head of a rivalling family (they tried to exterminate each other). So this Kalervo is saying, as he dies, that he still has a child in the making, so he won't be the last of his family; and that child is, of course, Kullervo. But in the Finnish poem, it surely is Kullervo Son of Kaleva who dies and says this about having a child. Make something out of that.
Finally, there are poems from multiple regions like Cajania and South Karelia which state that the meadows of Liminka were created by this same beautiful Son of Kaleva. His yell was so loud, however far it could be heard, there did the trees topple down. He also managed to row upstream a rapid on his way to visit Hiisi. It is said that Soini built a castle for himself in the middle of a sea, to the location in which now lies the church of Liminka.
Liekiöinen/Lieköinen
This boy is a big, big mystery. No information, any at all. However, there is the concept of "liekkiö"... Which means the soul of a murdered child. However, Agricola does say about Liekkiö that he "controlled grass, roots, trees and other such things". However, there is also a big possibility that Liekiöinen is in fact, drum roll. Lemminkäinen! If it is truly so, I will not go deep into his story right now, like I said, I'll do it another time. But in that case, I guess he truly is a Son of Kaleva then.
I wanted to dig a bit deeper, and thus ended up reading Latin books from the 1700s because of course. Henrik Gabriel Porthan in his book "De superstitione veterum Fennorum theoretica et practica" (1782) mentions Liekkiö as the grass and tree creature from above, and then states that Liekkiö is likely the same as Liekiöinen. Ganander claims his information on Liekiöinen is coming from Johan Cajanus (1660s), and Cajanus never wrote down any stories about this guy. Therefore, there's two ways we can really go about it. Either he is Lemminkäinen, or he isn't and we have lost all information on him. After all, it's very unlikely that he is actually in any way the same as the liekkiö ghosts.
Kihovauhkonen
Kihovauhkonen, older spellings include Kihawanskoinen and Kihavaiconen. Johan Cajanus marked him down as a Son of Kaleva and an ancient ancestor in the Cajania region. Later stories mention him doing various things, like teaching how to burn tar. A giant as he may be, he is also an oracle figure as he makes a good amount of predictions about the signs of the end of the world. These signs he apparently told to people about in the Savonia region while wandering around. These predictions of the end of the world being near include:
Ilmarinen
This is one of the most troublesome on the list! "Ilma" means "air", but also "sky" in old language. It is generally accepted that Ilmarinen was originally a god. Of what exactly? Sky, wind, weather, maybe thunder as well. He is a smith who forged the arch of the sky. Related mythologies have similarly named figures: Udmurt sky god Inmar, and Sámi wind god Ilmaris and thunder god Ilmaričče. His position as both a wind god and a smith appears in the importance of bellows in forging.
It seems like he used to be an epic sky god and then got demoted to a cosmic smith. And he is not even the oldest of the Sons of Kaleva (that would be Väinämöinen). He was born during the night, and as the next day came, he was already making his way into his forge. He forged a maiden out of gold: it was not successful when his slaves worked on the bellows, only when he himself took control of them. However, this maiden had no mouth or "the needs of a woman". She was cold all over.
Fire came down to earth when, up there in the sky, Ilmarinen was forging and a spark fell down.
Väinämöinen
I usually like to describe this guy to foreigners thusly: Väinämöinen is a semi-divine bard. Even though he is not like a god-god, he is probably the most respected individual in Finnish folklore. First mentioned by Agricola in 1551, he was described as the smith of songs. His name means a slowly flowing river, and he is called in as divine help in countless of spells. This has caused some to speculate that his original role might've been some kind of a water god. He gave Finns many pieces of great advice and was a skilled smith too. He was a great sailor, and his sword was mightier than anyone else's. His singing was unparallelled, and it was as if he was immune to arrows.
The general myth of Väinämöinen goes thusly: He asked the Air Maiden Katrina to be his wife, but Katrina made him do multiple impossible tasks in order to get her. Väinämöinen succeeded in all of them, until Katrina told him to build a boat without using a hammer or an axe. On top of a hill, Väinämöinen worked on the boat, but accidentally wounded himself in the knee. He went to look for help with stopping the bleeding from the nearby houses. This succeeded, and he finished building the boat.
Totally forgot about the girl, though! The boat could be filled to the brim with boys and girls, young and old. After three days of rowing, they found themselves stuck on something: the jaws of a big pike. Out of it, Väinämöinen creates a kantele, a zither-like instrument. Every animal and creature stopped to listen to Väinämöinen play, including the forest and water goddesses themselves. And what are songs, exactly? They are spells. Väinämöinen needed some specific magic words from Antero Vipunen (a shaman, maybe also giant). However, Väinämöinen's younger brother Joukahainen tells him that Vipunen has already been dead for a good while. I'll stop this story here and talk about it hopefully in a future post about Vipunen specifically.
Joukahainen though, he challenges Väinämöinen to a magic battle! The young, rash and inexperienced Joukahainen is no match for the old and wise Väinämöinen, however, and Väinämöinen can make spells so mighty that the earth trembles and sky gets cracked. Once, Väinämöinen travelled to Pohjola (Northlands) and was challenged to a sword fight... obviously winning with ease. There are more stories, like how he released the Sun and the Moon when they had been captured, but I'll stop here. To sum it up: This man is a big chad.
Joukahainen
First of all, his name has a trillion different forms like Joukkavainen, Jouhkavainen, Joukkaha, Jompainen, etc. Descriptions of him aren't always very nice: He is even called an evil (maybe Sámi) shaman in some poems. It is thought that he attacks Väinämöinen out of hatred and jealousy. However, this really does not extend to all poems. He is often called Väinämöinen's younger brother, and once upon a time, they even teamed up to steal the magical device Sammas.
Though it is quite curious that there is also a poem in which he promises Väinämöinen his only sister as wife for losing in this magic battle. So clearly there are exceptions to their brotherhood in some areas.
Afterword
This is my big list on all our known Sons of Kaleva, whether they be giants, warriors or gods. It is also a different matter to talk about giants in general, as there are so many more stories and concepts. However, I think this is enough for now. It could be so that I discover more information later, in which case I will edit this post. I will mark all edits (except typo fixes). Thank you for reading!
Who the hell is Kaleva, Kalehva, Kalevi, Kalev? Who knows. Theories say that he was an ancient giant or king. Some kind of original ancestor figure. Many things have been named after him, like Kalevan miekka ("Kaleva's sword", Orion constellation). He himself doesn't actually appear in Finnish mythology or do anything - the ones who do are his sons, Kalevanpojat.
This also appears in Estonian mythology, where Sons of Kalev are important. Ancient castles in Estonian are called "Beds of a Son of Kalev". Clearly, the concept is so old in mythology that it goes back to a time before the different Baltic Finnic ethnic groups had split off from each other. They all have their own things later attributed to these figures, however. In this post, I am talking about Finland specifically. Not Estonia, not Ingria, not Karelia. Please make a note of this. Other versions of these mythological figures exist in other regions. This is about Finland only.
It has been said in older writing that there were 12 sons of Kaleva. However, no list of all of them exists. There is one old list, listing six, and the rest are speculation. Of course, this also kind of goes into the area of regional differences: Couldn't a Son of Kaleva be anyone the local community decides to make so?
The divinity of these figures is also interesting. They are not normal humans, as they have supernatural abilities. But they are not worshipped gods either...right? But some of them are very respected to the extent that they might as well be gods, or semi-divine at least. While others are simply regarded as giants, even troublesome ones at that! There is even a possibility that a god got kind of... downgraded to a Son of Kaleva eventually. But is it really downgrading when these sons can still be so respected, even seen as the original ancestors? Who is more respected, gods who are prayed and sacrificed to, who are truly nothing but personifications of natural phenomena? Or legendary giants who are respected and their deeds told forwards in heroic stories, as actual persons instead of personifications?
The arrival of Christianity adds its own twist to the mix. Maybe... they were gods who were "downgraded" to giants due to outside influence? Although I am personally a bit sceptical of this since it would imply being a personification is somehow superior to being a person. Historian Aulis Oja theorized that the term, Son of Kaleva, itself could've originally meant a high class warrior. If that's the case, and even if it wasn't, no wonder it's difficult to draw a line between an ancient king, warrior, giant or god.
So, who are these Sons of Kaleva then? The ones we know the names of, even in theories? I will thoroughly explain!
Generally
The oldest written mention of the Sons of Kaleva is in the writings of Mikael Agricola in 1551, the man who invented written Finnish. He wrote: "Caleuanpoiat / Nijttut ja muudh löit". This means that the Sons of Kaleva created natural formations, such as meadows, which is specifically mentioned here ("nijttut"). Agricola was a Christian bishop and a student of Martin Luther, and by the time of his writings and the reformation, the Catholic Church had had a presense in Finland for a few centuries. It did, however, live side-by-side with paganism. Hence, Agricola's writings can truly be reliable, but one has to remember that he does have a Christian bias (in the full text, he does refer to the gods he lists as "false gods", for instance).
The stories of giants are not rare in Europe, nor in the Nordics. Even though Finnish tradition comes from a different place compared to the other Nordic countries, there are still places where they overlap. The idea of giants building churches is one of them. Giants are: 1) The ones who lived here before the arrival of humans, and 2) Potentially scary creatures that might cause havoc with their superhuman strength. While as giants, some Sons of Kaleva share features with this general idea of giants, many of them also have special features and respect that would never be granted to any ordinary giant.
In the 1700s, Kristfrid Ganander created the Mythologia Fennica, a Swedish-language book explaining Finnish and Sámi folk beliefs. As a source, this one is very hazardous. The traditional poems he collected are real, true and historically valuable. They can be trusted. However, the conclusions and explanations he came to... less so. It seems that he had a goal of making Finnish tradition seem a bit more like the Greek one; including creating weird relations between different divine characters that have no basis in any other research or sources. I have browsed through this book once, and quickly deemed it to be a useless source for accurate mythological description. But as I said, the situation is different with the poems he collected.
So, clearly Ganander's work needs to be approached with a good chunk of skepticism. Ganander did talk about the Sons of Kaleva, as well as giants in general. He did, for instance, deem the region of Cajania a "Land of Giants". This does have a layer of truth to it, but can easily be exaggerated. Ganander lists six Sons of Kalewa and their places of dwelling: Hiisi (from Paltamo), Ilmarinen (from Tavastia), Wäinämöinen (from Southwestern Finland), Liekiöinen (from Savonia), Soini (from Liminka), and Kihawanskoinen (no dwelling place listed). Out of these places, Paltamo is in aforementioned Cajania, and Liminka in North Ostrobothnia region.
This does indeed make up of most of the figures generally considered Sons of Kaleva, bar two. Joukahainen (plus other similar names) does not exactly appear as a Kalevanpoika in poetry, but he does appear as a brother of Wäinämöinen. And if you put two and two together, it's not particularly surprising he is often considered a part of this band of brothers as well.
There is still Lemminkäinen. Oh, what is he? A heroic Kalevanpoika or just your regular hero? In poems, he does appear alongside characters such as Väinämöinen and Joukahainen. However, I was personally not able to find a poem which would actually refer to him as a Kalevanpoika. It is mentioned that he has relatives, such as sisters and a mother, and the latter one is very present in his story. In popular understanding, the "Lemminkäinen" people think of is actually a combination of three different characters from mythology. True Lemminkäinen tries to marry a girl from a foreign land (maybe even the underworld), kills a swan (a sacred bird) and gets dismembered as a result. Other tales attributed to Lemminkäinen actually belong to separate heroes: Kaukamoinen and Ahti Saarelainen. I did not find any mention about Kaukamoinen as a Kalevanpoika either. Ahti Saarelainen belongs to Ingrian and Karelian mythology, but does not appear in Finnish poems as far as I know.
Alright, a bit of a lie there. I did find a few Karelian poems calling Lemminkäinen a Kalevanpoika (that didn't just have random lines lifted from a different poem because those exist too and don't count). But I also discovered something else. Lemminkäinen is also referred to as Son of Vipunen (a kind of shaman giant), although this is probably also random lines lifted from a different poem. And then I discovered poems putting Lemminkäinen on the place of another character, Tuuretuinen, and came to the conclusion that all of this should be ignored since it's clearly cases of his name being randomly used to replace other names in random poems.
So, personally I am not opposed to leaving Lemminkäinen on the bench for this post. For more info, see the section on Liekiöinen. Sorry man, let's talk about your epic story some other time.
Finally, I'd like to mention one thing which is stated in 1700s books about the Sons of Kaleva: With the help of the Sons of Kaleva, the King of Finland conquered all of Russia (granted, "all of Russia" was a much smaller area at the time than now). It is also written than only one of these sons moved out of Finland.
Hiisi/Halli
First, we have this giant simply called "Hiisi". The word hiisi refers to a sacred place, but with the arrival of Christianity, they started using the word to refer to a very vague kind of a supernatural creature, often malicious. So it is said about Hiisi in Cajanian folklore: Once, there was Hiisi, a giant. He wanted to walk from Kajaani to Oulu, but unfortunately, the big lake Oulujärvi was in his way. As a solution, he grabbed a piece of land from Paltamo and threw it into the lake, creating the Manamansalo island. The place where he had grabbed the land from became the Kivesjärvi lake. So it was said in the old times: "seiten seitentä soarta, seiten seitentä lampie". This means that there were 67 island in the Kivesjärvi lake, and 67 ponds on the Manamansalo island.
It was also written that he built a tall castle for himself east of Kajaani in a swamp.
Then where does this other name, Halli, come from? It's a bit of a case of me uniting things that could as well be unrelated. However, the connections are too juicy for me not to make. From completely other side of the country, Pomarkku, comes a poem which states: "Halli kauhia jättiläinen, / Hiisi hirmun suuri, / Asui ahon sydämessä, / Konna korven koskelossa." This translates to: "Halli, horrible giant, / a very massive hiisi / lived in the heart of a clearing, / a villain in the wilderness rapids." The poem describes how: his voice is so loud even if he whispered, it would echo far and wide and topple down trees. Him hitting a rock would split it in half. Him drinking from a river would drain it dry. The poem is in the family of Western Finnish poems about the horrible and mean giants. However, it has a connection in its lines to another Kalevanpoika, the one I'm going to talk about in the next segment. This is the reason why I like including it in here.
Soini/Kalkki/Kullervo
Many names for this dear child too. Soini and Sole are names listed by Ganander. According to him, the name "Kalkki" is but a nickname. At the same time, it's the most common name for him. The name Kullervo does not appear in Finnish poems that much, but is the name typical for him in places such as Finnish Karelia and Ingria; hence, why I included it for clarity. I have more about this later, so keep reading.
This guy is a Son of Kaleva with no doubt: first verse, and he's called Kalkki Son of Kaleva. When he was only three nights old, he was already so strong he was able to break his swaddling band. He was sold into slavery to (Russian) Karelia, to a smith named Köyrötyinen. He was made to look after their child, and so he gauged out the kid's eyes, killed the kid with an illness and burned the kid's cradle. Next, he was told to build a fence, which he proceeded make out of entire trees, snakes and lizards. Next, he was told to be a shepherd. The smith's wife gave Kalkki a piece of bread and said he's only allowed to eat it when the cattle is coming back home. When Kalkki tried to cut the bread, his knife hit a rock the wife had baked into the bread. Enraged, Kalkki feeds the cattle to bears. Out of the horn of a bull, he creates a horn instrument he plays while marching back home with the bears in tow. The slave owners wonder where their slave got this horn from, until Kalkki arrives with bears and wolves which he had "chained". He told the bears and wolves to attack the smith's wife and rip off her thigh. And thus, one of the bears does so. This poem is "The Revenge of a Son of Kaleva".
So, what is up with the names? In modern Finnish, kalkki means chalk, but I'm sure this is not about that. In Swedish and many other Germanic languages, the word skalk refers to a rogue, a scoundrel, a villain of some sort. However, in its earlier form, in Old High German, it means a serf, servant, disciple or slave.
Another poem states: Kullervo was defeated, the son of Kaleva fell, on the giant war lea, on the killing fields of men. However, as he died, he said that he has impregnated a woman that now carries his child. Indeed, poems from Cajania state that this beautiful Son of Kaleva went to war with a careless mindset, excited more like, and clearly this became his death. This is where it gets confusing. In Ingrian poems, "Kullervo" is a son of a man named Kalervo, who was thusly killed by the head of a rivalling family (they tried to exterminate each other). So this Kalervo is saying, as he dies, that he still has a child in the making, so he won't be the last of his family; and that child is, of course, Kullervo. But in the Finnish poem, it surely is Kullervo Son of Kaleva who dies and says this about having a child. Make something out of that.
Finally, there are poems from multiple regions like Cajania and South Karelia which state that the meadows of Liminka were created by this same beautiful Son of Kaleva. His yell was so loud, however far it could be heard, there did the trees topple down. He also managed to row upstream a rapid on his way to visit Hiisi. It is said that Soini built a castle for himself in the middle of a sea, to the location in which now lies the church of Liminka.
Liekiöinen/Lieköinen
This boy is a big, big mystery. No information, any at all. However, there is the concept of "liekkiö"... Which means the soul of a murdered child. However, Agricola does say about Liekkiö that he "controlled grass, roots, trees and other such things". However, there is also a big possibility that Liekiöinen is in fact, drum roll. Lemminkäinen! If it is truly so, I will not go deep into his story right now, like I said, I'll do it another time. But in that case, I guess he truly is a Son of Kaleva then.
I wanted to dig a bit deeper, and thus ended up reading Latin books from the 1700s because of course. Henrik Gabriel Porthan in his book "De superstitione veterum Fennorum theoretica et practica" (1782) mentions Liekkiö as the grass and tree creature from above, and then states that Liekkiö is likely the same as Liekiöinen. Ganander claims his information on Liekiöinen is coming from Johan Cajanus (1660s), and Cajanus never wrote down any stories about this guy. Therefore, there's two ways we can really go about it. Either he is Lemminkäinen, or he isn't and we have lost all information on him. After all, it's very unlikely that he is actually in any way the same as the liekkiö ghosts.
Kihovauhkonen
Kihovauhkonen, older spellings include Kihawanskoinen and Kihavaiconen. Johan Cajanus marked him down as a Son of Kaleva and an ancient ancestor in the Cajania region. Later stories mention him doing various things, like teaching how to burn tar. A giant as he may be, he is also an oracle figure as he makes a good amount of predictions about the signs of the end of the world. These signs he apparently told to people about in the Savonia region while wandering around. These predictions of the end of the world being near include:
- The earth is tied with an iron belt, and on the roads, there are headless and tailless horses.
- The times are so rich people travel on roads with massive speeds without horses. The Sun shines through the bottoms of people's shoes.
- Lands are distributed with iron weighs.
- Before the last days, trees and lands are eaten.
- The final war is fought between... Sweden and Turkey
Ilmarinen
This is one of the most troublesome on the list! "Ilma" means "air", but also "sky" in old language. It is generally accepted that Ilmarinen was originally a god. Of what exactly? Sky, wind, weather, maybe thunder as well. He is a smith who forged the arch of the sky. Related mythologies have similarly named figures: Udmurt sky god Inmar, and Sámi wind god Ilmaris and thunder god Ilmaričče. His position as both a wind god and a smith appears in the importance of bellows in forging.
It seems like he used to be an epic sky god and then got demoted to a cosmic smith. And he is not even the oldest of the Sons of Kaleva (that would be Väinämöinen). He was born during the night, and as the next day came, he was already making his way into his forge. He forged a maiden out of gold: it was not successful when his slaves worked on the bellows, only when he himself took control of them. However, this maiden had no mouth or "the needs of a woman". She was cold all over.
Fire came down to earth when, up there in the sky, Ilmarinen was forging and a spark fell down.
Väinämöinen
I usually like to describe this guy to foreigners thusly: Väinämöinen is a semi-divine bard. Even though he is not like a god-god, he is probably the most respected individual in Finnish folklore. First mentioned by Agricola in 1551, he was described as the smith of songs. His name means a slowly flowing river, and he is called in as divine help in countless of spells. This has caused some to speculate that his original role might've been some kind of a water god. He gave Finns many pieces of great advice and was a skilled smith too. He was a great sailor, and his sword was mightier than anyone else's. His singing was unparallelled, and it was as if he was immune to arrows.
The general myth of Väinämöinen goes thusly: He asked the Air Maiden Katrina to be his wife, but Katrina made him do multiple impossible tasks in order to get her. Väinämöinen succeeded in all of them, until Katrina told him to build a boat without using a hammer or an axe. On top of a hill, Väinämöinen worked on the boat, but accidentally wounded himself in the knee. He went to look for help with stopping the bleeding from the nearby houses. This succeeded, and he finished building the boat.
Totally forgot about the girl, though! The boat could be filled to the brim with boys and girls, young and old. After three days of rowing, they found themselves stuck on something: the jaws of a big pike. Out of it, Väinämöinen creates a kantele, a zither-like instrument. Every animal and creature stopped to listen to Väinämöinen play, including the forest and water goddesses themselves. And what are songs, exactly? They are spells. Väinämöinen needed some specific magic words from Antero Vipunen (a shaman, maybe also giant). However, Väinämöinen's younger brother Joukahainen tells him that Vipunen has already been dead for a good while. I'll stop this story here and talk about it hopefully in a future post about Vipunen specifically.
Joukahainen though, he challenges Väinämöinen to a magic battle! The young, rash and inexperienced Joukahainen is no match for the old and wise Väinämöinen, however, and Väinämöinen can make spells so mighty that the earth trembles and sky gets cracked. Once, Väinämöinen travelled to Pohjola (Northlands) and was challenged to a sword fight... obviously winning with ease. There are more stories, like how he released the Sun and the Moon when they had been captured, but I'll stop here. To sum it up: This man is a big chad.
Joukahainen
First of all, his name has a trillion different forms like Joukkavainen, Jouhkavainen, Joukkaha, Jompainen, etc. Descriptions of him aren't always very nice: He is even called an evil (maybe Sámi) shaman in some poems. It is thought that he attacks Väinämöinen out of hatred and jealousy. However, this really does not extend to all poems. He is often called Väinämöinen's younger brother, and once upon a time, they even teamed up to steal the magical device Sammas.
Though it is quite curious that there is also a poem in which he promises Väinämöinen his only sister as wife for losing in this magic battle. So clearly there are exceptions to their brotherhood in some areas.
Afterword
This is my big list on all our known Sons of Kaleva, whether they be giants, warriors or gods. It is also a different matter to talk about giants in general, as there are so many more stories and concepts. However, I think this is enough for now. It could be so that I discover more information later, in which case I will edit this post. I will mark all edits (except typo fixes). Thank you for reading!
