Meatbag Made
Sotkajärvi
Goldeneye Lake — seven tales out of the Kalevala
A village of six buildings stands at the other end of these stories, one building for each, and a seventh name for the duck the place is called after. The stories are here. The village is at the lake.
- The Sotka Rune 1 A goldeneye with nowhere to nest lands on the Water-mother’s raised knee. The eggs roll off and break, and the pieces become the earth, the sky, the sun and the moon.
- The Singing Match Rune 3 Väinämöinen out-sings the boy Joukahainen into a swamp up to his chin, and takes his sister as the price of letting him out.
- The Road North Rune 6 The sledge road to Pohjola, the dark country at the top of the world, and everything anyone has ever been talked into carrying along it.
- The Maiden on the Rainbow Rune 8 The Maiden of Pohjola sits on the arc of the sky weaving cloth of gold, and the work is admired long before anybody asks who is doing it.
- The Forging of the Sampo Rune 10 Ilmarinen builds a mill that grinds grain from one side, salt from another and gold from the third, and no one in the poem can say quite what it is.
- The First Kantele Rune 40 Väinämöinen makes an instrument out of the jawbone of the great pike and the hair of a girl who agreed to it, and every creature in the forest comes to sit down and weep.
- The Fire from the Sky Rune 47 Ukko strikes a new fire above the nine heavens. The spark gets away from the maiden minding it, falls the whole way down, and burns everything it lands on before anyone can catch it.