» Graphic Narrative

The Mother, the Bee, the River’s Edge: A Story from The Kalevala

There was a mother... who had a son named Lemminkäinen, who completed many tasks to win a bride.

Louhi, the Witch of the North, promised him her daughter in return for the impossible: a journey to the underworld to capture the Swan of Tuonela.

Lemminkäinen's mother, fearing for her son's life, was given a brush that dripped blood when he was in danger. Many days passed until one day blood poured forth from the magic brush.

So she searched and searched until she learned her son's fate, killed and spread across the Tuonela River.

The mother went to Ilmarinen, the legendary blacksmith, and demanded a copper rake to recover her son.

She returned to Tuonela and gathered his remains. She stitched his body back together, but Lemminkäinen would not come back to life.

She beseeched sky-god Ukko, but he did not answer.

So she asked a bee to fly to heaven and retrieve honey from Ukko's halls.

He was revivied. With his second chance, Lemminkäinen set out on many more adventures.

This comic strip is an adaptation of part of the first Lemminkäinen cycle in the Finnish epic, The Kalevala. The Kalevala is an adaptation of the oral folklore of Karelia and Finland written by Elias Lönnrot and is considered a major cornerstone of Finnish identity and culture. I started reading The Kalevala to get a better context for some of the metal music I listened to and found myself drawn to the women in these narratives. To me, they were as interesting (if not more so) than the male heroes. Lemminkäinen’s mother, in particular, is my favorite character, despite not being given a name herself. In this comic, I hoped to capture her own heroic journey and how her son’s happy ending did not necessarily lead to her own.

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Ashely Adams

Ashely Adams is a swamp-adjacent writer whose work has appeared in Paper Darts, Fourth River, Permafrost, Apex Magazine, and other places. She is the nonfiction editor of the literary journal Lammergeier. Her Twitter account is @goosegloriosa.

The Mother, the Bee, the River’s Edge: A Story from The Kalevala

Ashely Adams

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