Lemminkäinen and Tiera's Northern Expedition

Lemminkäinen and Tiera's Northern Expedition is the action of Rune XXX, identified as The Frost-fiend. It begins as a venture into hostile territory, driven by Lemminkäinen’s desire for revenge, but becomes a struggle against the cold Louhi sends over the waters of Pohyola. When the heroes’ vessel is trapped in Northland ice, Tiera follows Lemminkäinen onto the frozen plain. The episode’s defining reversal is from an intended expedition by boat to a hazardous northward march on foot.

Causes and Decision

Lemminkäinen is introduced in the rune as a reckless minstrel and handsome hero, also called Kaukomieli. His resolve to go to the hostile fields of Pohyola is specifically tied to revenge: the shameful insult has fired his spirit, and he declares himself determined to avenge it. The destination is therefore not incidental. He is choosing a confrontation in enemy country because he regards retribution as a compelling purpose.

The warning that death and destruction await him establishes the risk before he departs. Lemminkäinen gives it little weight. Instead, he asks where he can secure a swordsman, turning his resolve into a practical search for a companion suited to battle. His response makes the danger part of the venture rather than a reason to abandon it: the warning does not alter his purpose, and the question of who will accompany him becomes the next problem to solve.

Louhi’s Frost and the Frozen Vessel

Lemminkäinen sails toward Pohyola, but Louhi intervenes against the expedition by sending the black frost of the heavens to Pohyola’s waters. The hostile force is thus not limited to opponents waiting on shore. The journey itself becomes a site of conflict, with the water route exposed to a supernatural attack before the company can reach its destination.

The frost leaves Lemminkäinen’s vessel frozen in the ice of Northland. The change in their circumstances is sharply material: the boat that carried him toward Pohyola no longer provides a way forward. Lemminkäinen imagines the prospect of remaining a prisoner and never regaining his freedom. His fear marks a point where his earlier confidence meets an obstacle that cannot simply be answered by reaching the battlefield.

The confrontation also turns on Lemminkäinen’s command of magic. When the hostile power demands his life-blood, ears, feet, and fingers, he grows angry and fills himself with magic, then hurls the black frost toward the fire-god. The episode sets the bodily threat of injury and dismemberment against an active magical counterstroke. It does not, in the supplied account, establish that this action frees the vessel; the boat remains the immediate condition that forces the expedition to change course.

Tiera and the March Across the Ice

Rather than stay aboard the frozen vessel, Lemminkäinen leaves it in the ocean’s ice. Tiera follows in the tracks of his companion, making the departure a joint undertaking. The narration emphasizes that they travel northward on the ice plain, walking briskly for one day and then a second. Their progress is measured in consecutive days on foot, not in the swift passage by sea that Lemminkäinen’s original voyage had promised.

Tiera’s decision gives the expedition a companion after Lemminkäinen’s search for a swordsman. The account identifies him as the one who follows Lemminkäinen’s tracks, confirming their movement together without detailing a separate motive or a specific act of combat by Tiera. The frozen landscape also changes the terms of the journey: the men advance across the very ice that has stopped their vessel, converting an obstacle to their passage into the ground on which they continue.

Magic, Suffering, and the Episode’s Direction

Later, Lemminkäinen makes the fleetest racers from cares and sable racers from sorrows. The image turns inward burdens into means of motion: the episode’s poetry gives form to speed through the very cares and sorrows associated with the hero. It recalls the earlier transformation of the expedition, in which a thwarted sea passage gives way to travel by another means. The passage supports a change in the story’s mode of movement, though it does not by itself specify the racers’ destination or confirm the expedition’s final outcome.

The action therefore holds together two kinds of resolve. Lemminkäinen’s first is the deliberate, revenge-driven choice to enter hostile Pohyola; the second is the practical persistence required once Louhi’s frost has made the planned passage impossible. His magic answers the threat, and Tiera’s companionship sustains the journey, but the supplied episode ends without reporting a victory over Louhi or a completed revenge. Its force lies in the reversal from an anticipated battle to a northward ordeal shaped by frost, ice, and the continuing effort to move.