Kantele- Finnish ArtifactArtifact

The First Kantele

During the voyage to steal the Sampo from Pohjola, the heroes' ship ran aground on what the sailors mistook for a reef. It was a giant pike, a creature of immense size that had haunted the deep waters for ages. Väinämöinen killed it with his fire-steel sword, and examining its remains on the shore, was struck by the shape of its jawbone. It resembled the frame of a stringed instrument. From the jaw he fashioned the body of the kantele, using the creature's teeth as tuning pegs and stringing it with hair from the stallion of Hiisi. From a monster of the deep, he had made something that could silence the world.

No one could play this strange instrument at first. The heroes tried one by one, but the kantele produced only discordant noise under their fingers. Old men tried and young men tried, maidens and married women alike. Only when Väinämöinen himself placed his aged fingers upon the strings did the kantele yield its true voice.

The Enchantment of All Things

When Väinämöinen played the pike-bone kantele, its music enchanted every living thing within hearing. Wolves and bears settled side by side in peace. The moon itself drew closer, bending down from the heavens to hear the notes that rose from the pike-bone strings.

Väinämöinen himself wept as he played, his tears flowing so freely that they ran down his body and into the sea, sinking through seven layers of water to the ocean floor. The tears became pearls, tiny blue pearls that only a duck could retrieve from such depths.

The Sleep of Pohjola

The kantele's power proved decisive in the theft of the Sampo. When the heroes arrived in the North, Väinämöinen played until Louhi and all her people fell into an enchanted sleep so deep that no dream troubled them. The music drifted through the halls of Pohjola, and one by one every inhabitant succumbed. The heroes entered the copper mountain, retrieved the Sampo, and carried it to their ship before anyone stirred. Only the cry of a crane, disturbed from its roost, broke the spell and awakened Louhi.

The Loss and the Second Kantele

In the violent battle that followed, Louhi transforming into a giant eagle and seizing the Sampo in her claws, the kantele was tossed overboard and swallowed by the waves. Despite all efforts, Väinämöinen could not recover it from the depths. The pike-bone kantele was gone, claimed by the waters from whose creature it had been fashioned.

Unable to accept the loss, Väinämöinen crafted a second instrument from birchwood. He found a weeping birch tree and asked why it wept; the tree told him of its suffering through harsh winters and cruel winds, its bark stripped by travelers, its branches broken by storms. No one had ever asked about its pain before. Väinämöinen told the birch that what had caused it pain would now cause beauty. From the tree he carved the frame and strung it with the hair of a willing maiden. The birchwood kantele proved as powerful as the first.

When Väinämöinen departed Finland in his copper boat, he left the kantele behind for the Finnish people, along with his songs and his promise to return.