Lemminkäinen was the warrior-hero of the Kalevala, third of its central trio after Väinämöinen the sage and Ilmarinen the smith, and quite different from them in character: where they were old, deliberate, and patient, Lemminkäinen was young, reckless, vain, prone to amorous adventures and ill-judged escapades. His mother — the principal female figure of his cycle — was the great anxious caretaker who repeatedly worried over her son's safety and repeatedly proved correct in her worry.
His central narrative is his death and resurrection. Sent on an impossible quest to Pohjola (to shoot the swan of Tuonela, the river of the dead), he was killed by a poisoned dart from the blind shepherd of Pohjola, his body cut into pieces and thrown into the river of Tuonela. His mother, sensing his death (a hairbrush of his that she had kept began to bleed, the agreed-upon sign), came searching for him; she went to the smith Ilmarinen, who forged her a great copper rake; she dragged the river of Tuonela with the rake and drew up her son's pieces, one by one. She then sang the great resurrection-charm, calling upon the Bee to fetch her honey from the gods' country, and with the divine honey she pieced her son back together and returned his soul to him. He returned to life — chastened, but not enough to learn lasting prudence; his subsequent adventures continued in much the same heedless mode.
The mother-of-Lemminkäinen episode is the most famous of the Kalevala's emotional moments; the image of the mother gathering her son's pieces from the river has had an extensive modern artistic reception (Akseli Gallen-Kallela's painting Lemminkäisen äiti, "Lemminkäinen's Mother," 1897, is the iconic Finnish national-artistic treatment, hanging in the Ateneum in Helsinki).
