Kalervo- Finnish FigureMortal

The Feud

The quarrel between Kalervo and his brother Untamo began with things too small to kill over. Untamo laid his fishing nets in Kalervo's waters; Kalervo hauled up the nets and took the fish. Kalervo sowed oats behind Untamo's dwelling; Untamo's sheep browsed the crop to nothing; Kalervo's dog tore the sheep apart. Each slight demanded an answer, each answer demanded a larger one, until the brothers stood at the edge of something neither could walk back from.

Untamo crossed that edge. He gathered his men and fell upon Kalervo's homestead. Kalervo's clan was slaughtered to the last — men, women, children — his house burned to ashes and the ground left like a level field. Of his entire people, only one survived: a pregnant woman, taken back to Untamo's household as a slave.

What Survived

The enslaved woman gave birth to a son she named Kullervo. At three months old, the child was already rocking his cradle so violently he broke it apart, vowing revenge: "When these arms grow strong, then will I avenge the murder of Kalervo and his people." Untamo recognized the threat: "In him grows a new Kalervo."

Three times he tried to kill the infant. He sealed the child in a barrel and cast it into the sea; three days later the boy sat on the shore, a fishing line in his hands. He laid the child on a pyre; the next morning the boy sat in the ashes, raking coals with a copper rake, unburnt. He hanged the child from the tallest oak; the boy perched on a branch, drawing pictures in the bark. No force Untamo wielded could extinguish the line of Kalervo.

Unable to kill the boy, Untamo kept him as a slave and later sold him to the smith Ilmarinen. Kullervo survived every cruelty, and when his strength was grown he returned to Untamo's lands and burned them to the same ash Untamo had made of his father's.