Väinämöinen, old and steadfast,
Deeply pondered and reflected:
"While he seems a man in semblance,
And a hero in appearance,
Yet his height is but a thumb-length,
Scarce as lofty as an ox-hoof."130
Then he spoke the words which follow,
And expressed himself in this wise:
"Who are you, my little fellow,
Most contemptible of heroes,
Than a dead man scarcely stronger;
And your beauty all has vanished."
Then the puny man from ocean,
Hero of the floods, made answer:
"I'm a man as you behold me,
Small, but mighty water-hero,140
I have come to fell the oak-tree,
And to splinter it to fragments."
Väinämöinen, old and steadfast,
Answered in the words which follow:
"You have hardly been created,
Neither made, nor so proportioned,
As to fell this mighty oak-tree,
Overthrow the tree stupendous."
Scarcely had the words been spoken,
While his gaze was fixed upon him,150
When the man transformed before him,
And became a mighty hero.
While his feet the earth were stamping,
To the clouds his head he lifted,
To his knees his beard was flowing,
To his spurs his locks descended.
Fathom-wide his eyes were parted,
Fathom-wide his trousers measured;
Round his knee the girth was greater,
And around his hip 'twas doubled.160
Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade,
Brought the polished blade to sharpness;
Six the stones on which he ground it,
Seven the stones on which he whet it.
Then the man stepped forward lightly,
Hastened on to do his mission;
Wide his trousers, and they fluttered
Round his legs as onward strode he,
And the first step taken, brought him
To the shore so soft and sandy;170
With the second stride he landed
On the dun ground further inland,
And the third step brought him quickly,
Where the oak itself was rooted.
With his axe he smote the oak-tree,
With his sharpened blade he hewed it;
Once he smote it, twice he smote it,
And the third stroke wholly cleft it.
From the axe the flame was flashing,
Flame was bursting from the oak-tree,180
As he strove to fell the oak-tree,
Overthrow the tree stupendous.
Thus the third blow was delivered,
And the oak-tree fell before him,
For the mighty tree was shattered,
And the hundred boughs had fallen,
And the trunk extended eastward,
And the summit to the north-west,
And the leaves were scattered southwards,
And the branches to the northward.190
He who took a branch from off it,
Took prosperity unceasing,
What was broken from the summit,
Gave unending skill in magic;
He who broke a leafy branchlet,
Gathered with it love unending.
What remained of fragments scattered,
Chips of wood, and broken splinters,
On the bright expanse of ocean,
On the far-extending billows,200
In the breeze were gently rocking,
On the waves were lightly drifted.
Like the boats on ocean's surface,
Like the ships amid the sea-waves.
Northward drove the wind the fragments,
Where the little maid of Pohja,
Stood on beach, and washed her head-dress,
And she washed her clothes and rinsed them,
On the shingle by the ocean,
On a tongue of land projecting.210
On the waves she saw the fragments,
Put them in her birchbark wallet,
In her wallet took them homeward;
In the well-closed yard she stored them,
For the arrows of the sorcerer,
For the chase to furnish weapons.