Kettu and Miss Pussy lived many years and, when they died, were both buried at the foot of Sipuri Mountain.
And the three trolls? Oh, yes. Well, there is a big crows' nest at Allis Farm, in which live three crows. They can give you news of the trolls, if any one can; but people say, you know, that crows are not to be relied upon in the least.
—Z. Topelius.
SAMPO LAPPELIL
There was once a Lapp and a Lapp woman. The Lapps are a people who live north of the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Finns, far, far up in the north. They have neither fields, nor real forests, nor regular houses, but only great barren bogs and high mountains, and small huts, which they crawl into through a hole. The country of the Lapps is strange. Half the year it is light most of the time, for the sun never sets in the middle of summer, and the other half of the year it is dark most of the time, and the stars shine all day in winter.
Ten months of the year it is winter, and then the little Lapp men and the little Lapp women drive over the snow in small boats, which are called pulks. There is no horse harnessed before the pulk, but a reindeer. Have you ever seen a reindeer? It is as large as a little horse, is gray in color, has high branching horns, a stooping neck, and a pretty little head with great clear eyes. When it runs at full speed, it goes flying over mountains and hills like a rushing wild wind, and its hoofs snap as it dashes along.
There was, as I have said, a Lapp and a Lapp woman. They lived far up in Lapland, in Aimio, which lies near Tenojoki or the Tana River. (You can see it on the map of Finland, where Lapland can be found like a great nightcap on Finland's high head.) The place was barren and wild, but the Lapp and his wife felt sure that nowhere on the whole earth could you see such white snow, such clear stars, and such beautiful Northern Lights as at Aimio. There they had built themselves a hut such as Lapps usually live in. No large trees grew in that region,—only slender birches, that were more like bushes than trees—so where could they get wood for a house? Instead, they took long, thin sticks, stuck them into the snow, in a circle, tied the upper ends together, hung reindeer skins over the sticks, so that altogether it looked like a gray sugar-loaf, and then the hut was finished. In the top of the sugar-loaf they left a hole, through which the smoke could escape if they lighted a fire, and there was another hole in the southern side through which they could crawl in and out. The Lapps thought it was pretty and warm and were very happy in it, though they had no other bed and no other floor than the white snow.
The man and the woman had a little boy whose name was Sampo, and that means "luck" in Lapland. But Sampo had two names. Once some strange gentlemen in great fur coats had come and stayed in the hut. They had with them little hard, white pieces of snow, such as the Lapp woman had never seen before, which they called "sugar." They gave Sampo a few pieces of the sweet snow, and they patted him on the cheek and said: "Lappelil! Lappelil!" which means "little Lapp." They could not say anything else, for they could not talk Lapp. And then they traveled away farther north, to the Arctic Ocean and the northernmost point of Europe which is called the North Cape. The Lapp woman liked the strange gentlemen and their sweet snow, and she began from that time to call her boy "Lappelil."