Birth of the Second Kantele

Birth of the Second Kantele is the making of a new instrument after the sea has taken Wainamoinen’s first harp. The replacement does not undo the loss: it is fashioned from sacred birch and given strings by a forest-maiden. In Rune XLIV, grief becomes music again through a different instrument, made from materials gathered in the forest and brought into song by Wainamoinen.

The loss of the first harp

The second instrument follows a first harp that had become a public source of pleasure. Wainamoinen let the aged try its strings and gave it to young magicians; its music carried gladness across hills and mountains. Yet it could move its maker as well as its listeners: while playing, Wainamoinen wept, his tears falling like pearls. The harp was thus both a treasured possession and a means of gathering feeling into music.

That instrument was made of fish-bone, and a storm finally swept it away. The winds roared and lashed the waters until the waves were white with fury; the war-ship was tossed high, and the magic harp was carried off. The loss is more than a change in equipment. Wainamoinen laments that he will never regain it, that Ahto will not return it, and that joy and music are gone forever. The force of the declaration lies in its finality: the old harp’s particular materials, sound, and history cannot simply be recovered.

From lament to a new search

Wainamoinen’s words of despair are followed by action. He takes a rake of magic metals and travels a little distance; the surrounding lament connects this effort with the vanished harp and the waters where it has been lost. The object is not restored. The episode therefore turns away from retrieving the first instrument and toward making another, while keeping the earlier loss present as the reason a new one is needed.

Afterward, the ancient singer wanders lamenting through the forest and among the pine-woods. There the loss meets another kind of grief. A sacred birch laments its exposure and helplessness, fearing that it will be left naked on the mountain. Wainamoinen addresses it as a friend and brother and tells it not to mourn. He promises to turn its grief to joy and make it laugh and sing. The shift is decisive: instead of treating the tree merely as material, the poem gives it a voice and makes its distress part of the work’s emotional action.

Making the birchwood harp

Wainamoinen fashions the new harp from the sacred birch in summer. Its making begins with a practical problem as well as a promise: he needs five strings and asks where they can be found. He then travels through fen and forest, and on a hillock encounters a maiden. The forest-maiden gives him her tresses and golden ringlets; in the sequence of the making, her gift supplies what the harp lacks. The instrument is therefore formed through more than the singer’s craft: birchwood, the maiden’s hair, and Wainamoinen’s skill all contribute to its completion.

The change of materials marks the new harp as a distinct answer to the old one. The first was fashioned from fish-bone and lost to the storm-tossed sea; the second comes from a sacred tree in the summer forest. Rather than repeat the attempt to possess what the sea has taken, Wainamoinen creates a new instrument from what is available around him. The episode’s renewal is concrete, not a denial of grief: the old harp remains lost, but the capacity to make and play music survives.

Music restored

Once the harp is finished, Wainamoinen sits upon the rock of joyance and runs his fingers over its strings. Pleasure follows the notes. The closing act answers the earlier image of music gone forever, while the harp’s construction also fulfills his promise to the grieving birch: its wood now has a voice in song. The forest-maiden’s gift, too, is carried into a sound intended not only for its maker but for others.

The song is described as a source of enduring pleasure for the people of Wainola. That communal consequence gives the harp’s birth its importance beyond personal consolation. Wainamoinen does not regain the fish-bone instrument or reverse the storm’s loss; he restores music by making something new and playing it for his people. The second kantele thus joins craft, natural materials, and performance in a movement from bereavement toward shared gladness.