The Kalevala Has Weird Ideas About Iron

YES IT IS TIME
TIME FOR A MYTH
FROM A MYTHOS
CHOSEN BY MY PATREON BACKERS.
This month:
a quick just-so story from the Kalevala!

Ok so this story isn’t part of like
the main story of the Kalevala
which is mainly about wizards being assholes.
This is actually just a side-story
told by an asshole wizard named Wainamoinen
who has just lost literal boatload of blood
so take what he says with like a million grains of salt.
Like, get salt poisoning and die is what I’m saying.
It will protect you from believing wrong things.
It is hard to believe wrong things when you’re dead
this is why the phrase “dead wrong” is so bogus.

Anyway this story gets told
because when Wainamoinen goes to a dude for medical help
the dude instead asks Wainamoinen to tell him a story
about the origin of iron
so Wainamoinen is like “Uh ok
kinda going into shock here buddy
but here we go:

So back in the day there were these 3 chicks
they were the daughters of some god
which explains their nonsense behavior I guess.
What they do is they fly around everywhere
squeezing milk out of their tits
and only one of them has normal colored milk
one of them has red milk and one of them has black milk
which are not colors you want coming out of your body
like, ever.
But anyway they spray this bodyjuice all over the world
and it turns into iron
which, again
probably says bad things about their health prospects.

The different colored milk turns into different kinds of iron
but it doesn’t really matter in the end
because the iron all becomes one being
with like, a primitive hive mind
and the hive mind wakes up one day
and is like “Hm … pretty lonely down here on the earth
I’ma go visit my brother Fire.”

Fire is a terrible brother to have
because fire only interacts with things by setting them on fire
so Iron shows up at Fire’s place like hey bro
and Fire is like “ROARRRRR IMA EAT CHOO”
and Iron is like “oh shit this was a bad idea”
and runs away and hides in the ground
which is why iron is in the ground now
so thanks a lot, fire.

Iron isn’t super well hidden, though.
We know this because pretty soon
this blacksmith god Ilmarinen comes down
and builds a big forge
and just starts kidnapping iron and throwing it in his forge
and Iron is like “NOOO WHAT THE FUCK
I DON’T WANNA BE WEAPONS”
and Ilmarinen is like “TOUGH BRO, DUDES GOTTA DIE”

but the Iron isn’t cooperating
it’s soft and shitty, like a bag of worms
so Ilmarinen is frustrated, obviously
he needs to figure a way to make this iron better
and what he decides
is that it needs to be bribed with honey
so he finds a bee that can speak Finnish
(which, luckily, are more common in Finland than elsewhere)
and he’s like “I need a bunch of honey to rub on my swords”
and the bee is like “Sure dude
no questions asked as long as you pay me.”

But you know who’s eavesdropping on this conversation?
A motherfucking WASP.
And wasps just gotta fuck things up for everybody.
So this wasp gets up from his polished mahogany dinner table
climbs in his minivan
and goes to OSH and buys as much poison as he can find
and he brings it all back to Ilmarinen
like “Hey, here’s the honey you ordered”
and Ilmarinen can’t tell the difference between bees and wasps
because he is an insect racist
so he lets the wasp pour poison and violence all over his swords
and then the swords all wake up like “RAAAAA
FUCK PEACE
GONNA BE THE WORST THINGS EVER FROM NOW ON”
and that is why iron stabs people all the time now.

So yeah, Wainamoinen tells that whole story
and the dude he’s with is like “Wow, I had no idea
fuck Iron, am I right?”
and Wainamoinen is like “yeah seriously.
So can I get like a bandaid?”
and the dude is like “Oh yeah, whoops”
and everybody learns a valuable lesson
which is that iron is the worst
and it’s a good thing we invented safe weapons like atom bombs
because no bees were harmed in the making of those missiles.

The end.

2 thoughts on “The Kalevala Has Weird Ideas About Iron

  1. I just remembered, you should retell the story of Demeter and Erysichthon. Gruesome little tidbit of Greek lore that says something about the nature of the gods.

  2. That was fantastic! The Kalevala is probably my favorite epic, so this was a treat. Best part is the epic rap battle between Wainamoinen and Joukahainen. Shit got so real nature got involved

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