- <strong>This is part of my "Kalevala series" in which I tell the epic folklore poetry of Finns as a series of short stories, one rune at a time. </strong>

- <strong>Don't know what <em>Kalevala</em> is? Check my introduction post of it: [Kaleva: An epic folklore of Finns - A source of inspiration for Tolkien's mythology](https://steemit.com/poetry/@celestal/kalevala-an-epic-folklore-of-finns-a-source-of-inspiration-for-tolkien-s-mythology)</strong>

- <strong>Want to start from the beginning? Go to Part 1: [The birth of Väinämöinen](https://steemit.com/poetry/@celestal/kalevala-shortly-1-the-birth-of-vaeinaemoeinen)</strong>

- <b>Previous part: [Lemminkäinen's quest for a wife](https://steemit.com/mythology/@celestal/kalevala-shortly-11-lemminkaeinen-s-quest-for-a-wife)</b>

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<em>Lemminkäinen</em> lived his life with his beautiful wife, Kyllikki, on his side.

But their peaceful living was disrupted when one night <em>Lemminkäinen</em> didn't come back home for the night from his fishing trip; <em>Kyllikki</em> thought he had already broken their wedding vowel, and went back to her home village for the frolics with other maidens.

When <em>Lemminkäinen</em> heard she had gone to the village and broken their vowel, he got mad and broke his side of the vowel of not going to war:

>"O' mother prepare my armor, wash my shirt, clean it with hurry; 
>I'm about to go to a war, go to the cabins of the North, 
>distant fields of the Laplanders."  

 

<em>Kyllikki</em> tried to warn him for her dream in which she saw destruction and despair.

<b><em>Lemminkäinen</em> dismissed her warning.</b>

Her mother tried to stop him from going to war:
she pleaded to their drinks in their barrels which he could drink all day,
to their becoming harvest worth gold and silver,
and to his beautiful wife.

<b>But <em>Lemminkäinen</em> wanted to drink the nectar of war rather than beer from their barrels,
would rather earn a penny from fighting than be content on his own harvest,
and for a wife he wouldn't care a frolics stroller, instead, he wanted to find a new maiden among the famous beautiful virgins in the North. </b> 

The mother still feared for his son getting into the merciless grip of North, to its witches and their conjures, leading to his destruction. But <em>Lemminkäinen</em> wasn't helpless in his abilities:

>"Already I was conjured by witches, swored to me by devious vipers. "

>"Three Laplanders threatened onto me, encircled me onto a rock, 
wished to push me into a swamp, sink my head, drown into the sludge."

>"But such son of a bitch I was: Did not rush, carefully dialected, 
by myself conjured upon them; sang the witches with their arrows, 
enchanted the wizards' power, hexed the sa'ages with their steel, 
into a rapid of the Underworld; where they shall lye, sleep on their death, 
until hey grows through their bodies."



He put on his iron shirt and steel belt with the fiery sword - forged in an altar of gods in a shade of holy grove - in sheath by his side, and prepared his stallion to began his campaign to the North.

<img src="http://blogs.helsinki.fi/welcometouh/files/2013/02/kaleva8.jpg">

Upon arriving to the North he peeked into the highest of cabin, full of great singers, witches and conjurers, including <em>Louhi</em>, the Mistress of the North, who asked upon <em>Lemminkäinen</em>:

>"What is a man of your quality, where do you come disturbing my house; 
>you went past the hound, the barker, without its notice, without noise."

<b><em>Lemminkäinen</em> wasn't born to be slain by a puny dog, he was raised as a sage for every road, singer with a craft for every language, conjurer for every spell.</b>

He lifted his word with his fur's lapels on fire, with a glow in his eyes:

He sang all the conjurers, the masters of singing, all the men from young to old: which one onto a root of furnace, which one into a damp swamp, into a fishless dead lake, uncultivated dry land, into a rapids fierce roaring, to its bottom as a rock. 
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<br/>But one man he spared, because of <em>Lemminkäinen</em>'s despise on him who he didn't even dare to touch: a farmer who had gone into his sister and ruined onto animals. He fleed to the back of the Underworld river where he waited for absentminded <em>Lemminkäinen</em> to leave.

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<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NyTG2BsAncc/WbwrSNmUVvI/AAAAAAAAAm8/8c06AhiPFxUlq_1FCgKndQntu6xIO60mwCLcBGAs/s1000/kkkalevala.jpg"> 

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- <b>Part 13: [The hunt for the Moose of Hiisi](https://steemit.com/mythology/@celestal/the-hunt-for-the-moose-of-hiisi)</b>

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Pics: [1](http://blogs.helsinki.fi/welcometouh/files/2013/02/kaleva8.jpg), [2](http://www.lyra.fi/kalevala/kkkalevala.jpg)