Lemminkainen and Nasshut

Lemminkainen and Nasshut are joined by a sharp reversal: the one man spared when Lemminkainen enchants others becomes his avenger. Nasshut first appears as a poor, defenseless shepherd, old, blind, and lame; later, at the river of death, he takes up a bow and sends a serpent toward Lemminkainen. The episode turns apparent helplessness into the means of retaliation.

The Sole Exception

Lemminkainen’s enchantment reaches people of different ages: the eldest, the youngest, and those in middle age all lose their senses. Nasshut alone is left unaffected. The narrative singles him out not as a celebrated warrior but as an impoverished shepherd, describing him as defenseless, blind, lame, and wretched. His exception to the spell makes him the surviving witness to Lemminkainen’s power—and the only one able to confront him in speech.

Nasshut addresses Lemminkainen by naming the scale of what has happened: young and old have been enchanted, and the heroes have been banished. His words frame the event as more than a display of magical skill; they present it as an injury to the community. The contrast is stark: Lemminkainen has subdued others through song, while the one man still able to answer him is socially marginal and physically impaired.

A Vow of Vengeance

The exchange turns into a personal feud when Nasshut grows angry and swears vengeance. The account gives no further explanation for why he alone escaped the enchantment, nor does it describe a reconciliation or withdrawal of his vow. Instead, it carries the threat forward to a later, more dangerous setting. Nasshut’s anger becomes an intention that survives the initial confrontation.

His circumstances sharpen the reversal without erasing his agency. The narrative repeatedly calls him a wretched, blind, crippled shepherd, but it also gives him deliberate actions: he speaks against Lemminkainen, vows revenge, and later arms himself. His disability is part of how the poem identifies him; it is not presented as preventing him from acting on his grievance.

The River of Death

At the death-land river, Nasshut stands with a bow on his shoulder, a quiver, and one arrow. From beside the sacred stream and its whirlpool, he sends a serpent out of the death-water, describing its flight through the image of an arrow loosed from a crossbow. The scene converts his earlier vow into an attack: the bow and single arrow establish the moment as purposeful, while the serpent makes the river itself seem to furnish the weapon.

The later encounter returns Nasshut to the same identifying terms—blind, crippled, wretched shepherd—but places him beside a threshold associated with death. The contrast between his meagre equipment and the force of the serpent’s launch gives the act its concentrated violence. The account establishes the attack and its source; it does not, in these passages, describe its outcome.

Narrative Significance

The relation is structured as a delayed reversal. Lemminkainen’s magic first leaves Nasshut as the lone exception among the enchanted, but that exception does not signify safety or submission: it preserves a voice that can accuse him and a figure who can swear revenge. The movement from speech to vow to the river attack gives the feud a clear progression without making Nasshut’s physical description the whole of his role.

The scene also sets two kinds of power against one another. Lemminkainen’s enchantment acts broadly upon a community, whereas Nasshut’s response is solitary and precise: he waits at the death-land river with one arrow and sends a serpent from its waters. The episode’s tension lies in that change of scale, from mass enchantment to an individual counterstroke, and in the uncertainty left around what the attack will bring.