Loviatar- Finnish DemonDemon"Mother of the Nine Diseases"

Birth and the Wind's Seed

Loviatar was born in Tuonela, the Finnish realm of the dead, the blind daughter of Tuoni and Tuonetar. Among the grim children of that household, she alone carried suffering outward, into the world of the living.

No god or mortal fathered her children. The east wind found the blind maiden in the wasteland between the realms. It entered her and planted the seeds of nine terrible offspring.

The Nine Diseases

Loviatar retreated north, to a barren heath battered by cold wind, and there she labored alone. She gave birth to nine children, each a disease. The Kalevala names them in Runo 45: Syöjä, "the Eater," who devoured flesh from within, and Rutto, plague, who emptied villages in days. The ninth child was left unnamed. A wordless horror too terrible to speak aloud.

Louhi's Weapon

Loviatar's children did not enter the world by accident. After Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen stole the Sampo from Pohjola and the artifact shattered at sea, the witch-queen Louhi turned to insidious vengeance.

She called the nine diseases from their hiding places in the dark caverns of the North and sent them southward into Kalevala. Plague swept through villages. Cancer began its slow work. Even Väinämöinen himself fell ill.

Väinämöinen's Healing

But Väinämöinen recognized the diseases as Loviatar's children. He heated a great sauna and prepared salves from herbs he sang into potency. He called upon Ukko to send healing honey, carried by bees from the heavens. Then he sang the great healing spells, reciting the genealogy of each disease: Loviatar as mother, the east wind as father, Tuonela as homeland. By speaking these truths aloud, he commanded the diseases to depart.

The tietäjät who came after him used the same weapon. A healer would address the disease directly: "I know where you were born. I know your mother, blind Loviatar, daughter of Tuoni. Return now to Tuonela, to the place of your origin." A tietäjä who knew more origins than the diseases they faced could command illness to depart.