The Sampo of the Kalevala

Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, gathered from ancient sung poetry, turns on the Sampo: a magical mill forged by the smith Ilmarinen that grinds out grain, salt and gold endlessly, a machine of pure abundance. The wizard-singer Väinämöinen leads a raid to steal it back from the North, and in the sea-battle the Sampo shatters, its fragments washing ashore to give Finland its luck. It is the deep mythology of a whole people, sung in the forests of Karelia, and it shaped everything from Sibelius to Tolkien. Told as the treasured folklore it is.