the sampo (was got pynched yet?)

[MASCARO at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU]

For those of us wishing to pursue the question of the sampo in a more scholarly vein, it is 
the subject of a wonderful dubbed MST 3000 film (one of the really good ones--before Joel 
left the show!)  
I think its title is THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE and it's a classic narrative in any culture!  
All of the elements of the story Heikki mentions are in the film, and, curiously, you still 
can't figure out exactly--what--a sampo is.

john m
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<snip>

>
>(For those who want to hear more, here is one version of how 'sampo' came
>to being. The arch hero of Kalevala, Vainamoinen has got wounded and flees
>into the sea, where he strays for several years, performing various acts
>of creation on the side, until he gets washed ashore at Pohjola, whose
>mistress promises to let him go, given that he is willing to make her the
>'sampo'. When back home, V-nen asks his buddy Seppo Ilmarinen to forge the
>sampo; Seppo agrees. In return to it S.I. receives the daughter of the
>mistress of Pohjola. The sampo makes the Pohjola folks stinkingily rich,
>which makes V-nen and I-nen mad: they sail to Pohjola and steal the sampo.
>The Pohjoleans start pursuing them; a furious battle takes place at sea;
>mistress of Pohjola turns into a wyvern; the sampo is smashed and the
>fragments are lost in the sea, some of them being washed ashore.
>It's not all that sad, since these pieces bring fertility to the land
>and sea. It never becomes clear what exactly the sampo is. It is never
>implied, either, that there would come a Collection Day, as with those
>Broken Vessels of Kabbalism.)
>
>Heikki
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