Norwegian Woods (OT)

In the expanded second version of the poem, the Sampo is forged by Ilmarinen, a legendary smith, as a task set by the Mistress of Pohjola in return for her daughter's hand.

"Ilmarinen, worthy brother,
Thou the only skilful blacksmith,
Go and see her wondrous beauty,
See her gold and silver garments,
See her robed in finest raiment,
See her sitting on the rainbow,
Walking on the clouds of purple.
Forge for her the magic Sampo,
Forge the lid in many colors,
Thy reward shall be the virgin,
Thou shalt win this bride of beauty;
Go and bring the lovely maiden
To thy home in Kalevala."

Ilmarinen works for several days at a mighty forge until finally the Sampo is created:

On one side the flour is grinding,
On another salt is making,
On a third is money forging,
And the lid is many-colored.
Well the Sampo grinds when finished,
To and fro the lid in rocking,
Grinds one measure at the day-break,
Grinds a measure fit for eating,
Grinds a second for the market,
Grinds a third one for the store-house.

In Finnish mythology, the Sampo or Sammas was a magical artifact of indeterminate type constructed by Ilmarinen that brought good fortune to its holder. When the Sampo was stolen, it is said that Ilmarinen's homeland fell upon hard times and he sent an expedition to retrieve it, but in the ensuing battle it was smashed and lost at sea.

The Sampo has been interpreted in many ways: a world pillar or world tree, a compass or astrolabe, a chest containing a treasure, a Byzantine coin die, a decorated Vendel period shield, a Christian relic, etc. In the Kalevala, compiler Lönnrot interpreted it to be a quern or mill of some sort that made flour, salt, and gold out of thin air. The world pillar hypothesis, originally developed by historian of religions Uno Harva and the linguist Eemil Nestor Setälä in the early 20th century, is the most widely accepted one.

According to Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the history of science at MIT, and student of mythology, the sampo and the world pillar both refer to the precession of the equinox. In Hamlet's Mill, co-authored with Hertha von Dechend, the authors find that the sampo or precession process was believed to grind out different world ages, from dark age to golden age and back again over the long precession cycle.

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And now the firm is moving from clothing to bikes, with the expected launch of its first new bike, the Model X Reloaded, a design inspired by the legendary Model X originally built over 80 years ago. Reloaded has been designed by renowned industry stalwart Franco Malenotti, along with the Matchless design team.

Education and early life
Lönnrot was born in Sammatti, in the province of Uusimaa, Finland, which was then part of Sweden. He studied medicine at the Academy of Turku. The Great Fire of Turku coincided with his first academic year. As the university was destroyed in the fire, it was moved to Helsinki, the newly established administrative center of the Grand Duchy and the present capital city of Finland. Lönnrot followed and graduated in 1832.

Early medical career
Lönnrot got a job as district doctor of Kajaani in Eastern Finland during a time of famine and pestilence in the district. The famine had prompted the previous doctor to resign, making it possible for a very young doctor to get such a position. Several consecutive years of crop failure resulted in losses of population and livestock. In addition, lack of a hospital further complicated Lönnrot's work. He was the sole doctor for 4,000 or so people, most of whom lived in small rural communities scattered across the district. As physicians and novel drugs were expensive at the time, most people relied on their village healers and locally available remedies. Lönnrot himself was keen on traditional remedies and also administered them. However, he believed strongly that preventive measures such as good hygiene, breastfeeding of babies and vaccination were the most effective cures for most of his patients.

Travels and writing
His true passion lay in his native Finnish language. He began writing about the early Finnish language in 1827 and began collecting folk tales from rural people about that time. In 1831, the Finnish Literature Society was founded, and Lönnrot, being one of the founder members, received financial support from the society for his collecting efforts.

Lönnrot went on extended leaves of absence from his doctor's office; he toured the countryside of Finland, Sapmi (Lapland), and nearby portions of Russian Karelia. This led to a series of books: Kantele, 1829–1831 (the kantele is a Finnish traditional instrument); Kalevala, 1835–1836 (the "old" Kalevala); Kanteletar, 1840; Sananlaskuja, 1842 (Proverbs); an expanded second edition of Kalevala, 1849 (the "new" Kalevala). Lönnrot was recognised for his part in preserving Finland's oral traditions by appointment to the Chair of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki in 1853.

He also undertook the task of compiling the first Finnish-Swedish dictionary (Finsk-Svenskt lexikon, 1866–1880). The result comprised over 200,000 entries, and many of the Finnish translations were coined by Lönnrot himself. His vast knowledge of traditional Finnish poetry made him a definite authority in Finland and many of his inventions have stuck. Finnish scientific terminology was in particular influenced by Lönnrot's work and therefore many abstract terms that have a Latin or Greek etymology in mainstream European languages appear as native neologisms in Finnish. Examples from linguistics and medicine include kielioppi (grammar), kirjallisuus (literature), laskimo (vein) and valtimo (artery). This may be well contrasted with the so-called inkhorn debate of English, in which proponents of Saxon-based words were largely defeated.

Work in botany
Botanists remember him for writing the first Finnish-language Flora Fennica – Suomen Kasvisto in 1860; in its day it was famed throughout Scandinavia, as it was among the very first common-language scientific texts. The second, expanded version was co-authored by Th. Saelan and published in 1866. The Flora Fennica was the first scientific work published in Finnish (instead of Latin). In addition, Lönnrot's Flora Fennica includes many notes on plant uses in between descriptions of flower and leaf. The standard author abbreviation Lönnrot is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.

Wikipedia

Starting the creation of the ex-libris cycle on the basis of "Kalevala", the drawing master from Saint Petersburg, Yuri Konstantinovich Lukshin has reconstructed not only the drawing style, the manner, but also the techniques. Lukshin has conceived a series of fifty ex-librises covering the plots of all the 50 runos of the epos. An exhibition of Yuri Lukshins Kalevala art has been shown in Helsinki.

The Kalevala ex-librises of Lukshin have been addressed to one bibliophile, Pekka Heikkila, inhabitant of the small Finnish town of Tammela. Under the initiative of Heikkila, many outstanding artists from many countries have created book-marks on the basis of "Kalevala". Heikkila has managed to attract such masters-of-art-drawing as Evald Okas, Mihail Verholantsev, Vladislav Stanishevsky, Vladimir Vereshchagin, Konstantin Kalinovich, Gennady Vereshchagin and Yuri Lukshin...

Close to Femunden Water, the third-largest lake in Norway, lies Elgå, a tiny community that has always lived close to the forces of nature. The village was inaccessible by road until 1956, and the fifty people who live there enjoy harsh weather conditions, bitter cold, and fabulous natural surroundings. Domestic heating is provided by a full spectrum of woodstoves. The heart of the community is its one and only store, the well-stocked and well-run Peder Røsten. Fuel is dispensed from a battered old pump that still uses a mechanical counter.

Not far from the shop is a small, neat house with an equally neat woodshed. This is the home of Ole Haugen, born in 1926. Ole is a real firewood enthusiast and all the heating in the house comes from firewood he has prepared himself.
…
Ole has been a joiner and woodcutter all his life and has always cut his own firewood. In his childhood the usual thing was to burn dry pine, felled using a svans (a large two-man crosscut saw) and dragged back home to the village by horse. Heavy, time-consuming and exhausting work.

“The chain saw was a revolution when it came”, says Ole. “Those first saws could weigh anything up to twenty kilograms and a lot of people didn’t take to them, but to me they were a miracle to work with”.

In time, he says, foresters developed a real fondness for the chain saw. Elgå and the surrounding districts became typical “Husqvarna towns” – they didn’t think much of saws made by Stihl. Toward the end of his working life he switched brands and his last two saws – both of them now in his work shed and displaying all the signs of years of loving care and hard use – are Jonsereds, a 590 and a 2051.

Ole used to get all his firewood from a birch wood growing high up on a nearby hill. Because of the undulating terrain and the distance involved he usually leaf-felled the trees, leaving them unlimbed to make transportation easier. As the leaves continue to grow the moisture is drawn up out of the trunk, and after a few weeks the trees can be limbed and sawed up in the usual way. Because the logs are now much lighter, the method is especially suitable for places where the wood has to be transported over a distance.

With the trees felled, the timetable for the rest of the work is less critical. So if you are a little behind with the chopping and splitting and final drying, there is no great harm done. Woodcutting using the leaf-felling method also makes it easier to fit in around the other jobs.
….
Over the years Ole has observed how important it is to stack the wood so that the wind comes at it from the most advantageous angle.
“Wind blowing through the stack is what gets it really dry. Heat is important, but damp wood should be out in the sun and wind as much as possible.

Ole likes to try out new things and refine his understanding of the factors that influence the quality of the firewood. During his life he has experimented with a number of different designs for his woodshed. Now, just past his eightieth birthday, he has finally come up with one he thinks is satisfactory.

This shed is long and narrow, with a rear wall that can be removed. The four doors at the front run the full width of the shed, and when these are opened the wind blows through the entire stack. The shed is positioned so that the south wind strikes the open rear wall. Inside, the logs are stacked so that the wind blows along them lengthwise. The dark corrugated iron roof retains heat, which speeds up the drying. The removable rear wall means that the wood can be stacked from the front or back. As winter approaches the doors are closed or the back wall placed in a position so that the snow does not blow in. The design makes maximum use of all available space, and the wood is easy to get at. And, of course, the shed has its own permanent reserve for the extra cold winters.

We meet Ottar at the beginning of the book. He is a likeable, stoic neighbour in the small town of Elverum in south-eastern Norway, where Mytting had moved to, and the man who taught Mytting that "a wood fire is about so much more than heat". In Elverum, winter temperatures hang around the -30C mark. Ottar, retired with poor lungs, treats the annual arrival of his logs in spring and the subsequent time spent chopping, seasoning and stacking as a life-giving ritual. The book is a paean to all Norwegians who revere wood. These people know that without it man would never have been able to inhabit land so far north in the first place.

"Ottar spent a month on his woodpile," writes Mytting. "I've never seen a man change quite the way he did.

"Was it just the activity and the summer warmth that made him better? I don't think so. It was the wood. All his life he'd chopped his own firewood… He enjoyed the feel of each log in his hand, the smell that made him feel he was at work inside a poem, the sense of security in his stack, the pleasing thought of the winter that lay ahead, with all those hours of sitting contentedly in front of his woodburning stove."