RUNO XLIII
[37, 38.] This seems to be meant ironically.
[115-120.] This, or something similar, is a common device for impeding a pursuer in European fairy tales.
[177.] Pohjan eukko. Another epithet for Louhi.
[383, 384.] The Sampo being not only an unfailing corn, salt, and money-mill, but a palladium of general prosperity, Pohjola would naturally fall into famine and misery when nothing remained but an almost worthless fragment of the cover. It is possible that the story may refer to some great and permanent change for the worse of the climate of the North; either during the storms and earthquakes of the fourteenth century, which would connect it with the plague described in Runo XLV.; or perhaps to a much earlier period, when, as old Persian books tell us, the climate of some part of Asia (?) was changed from nine months summer and three months winter, to nine months winter and three months summer.
RUNO XLV
[41.] Loviatar represents the evil and destructive powers of Nature, as opposed to the beneficent powers, represented in the Kalevala under the twin aspects of Ilmatar and Marjatta.
[117.] This speech or invocation is not addressed to Loviatar, but apparently to some goddess similar to the Roman Lucina.
[168.] Dr. Russell says that the itch was more dreaded than the plague in Aleppo in the eighteenth century.