Pellervo- Finnish GodDeity"Sower of the World"
Also known as: Sampsa Pellervoinen and Sampsa
Description
After the world was formed from the cosmic egg but before it was green, Pellervo went across the bare earth sowing seeds of every kind. Among his plantings grew the great oak that blocked out the sun, so vast it required a miraculous hero from the sea to fell.
Mythology & Lore
The First Sower
After the earth was formed from the cosmic egg and Väinämöinen reached the barren shore, Pellervo went across the new world sowing seeds of every kind. He planted the forests that would cover Finland, birch and pine, the grasses that would feed animals. He scattered seeds on hills and in valleys, by the handful across a world that had never known green.
Among his plantings grew the great oak. It spread its branches wider and wider until they blotted out the sun and the moon. The sky vanished behind a canopy of leaves so thick that no light reached the ground. No one in the new world could fell it. Then from the sea came a tiny man, scarcely a thumb's height, carrying a golden axe on his shoulder. He grew to enormous size and struck the oak. The tree crashed down, its trunk spanning the horizon, and sunlight poured back over the earth Pellervo had planted. Those who took pieces of the fallen oak gained lasting fortune. Those who took its leaves gained lasting magic.
The Farmer's Prayer
Farmers prayed to Pellervo at planting time. They asked that the power of his original sowing flow into their fields. In a country where the growing season was short and the northern frost came early, his favor was the difference between a full storehouse and a hungry winter.