turns herself into a singing fish (which then ends up killing the fishing industry for anyone living in the vicinity of that lake).
Not anyone:
But in all the rest of their living days, neither Joukahainen nor Väinämöinen ever caught a fish again. Whether they used nets or hooks or gleaming spears, the fish always managed to slip through their grasp.
I didn't mind that the ending was melancholy - some stories are. But I did find it ... unsatisfying, somehow. For instance, after that duel and its outcome, Joukahainen was suddenly able to fling Väinämöinen to the door of the northern witch so that he never came back? Where did that come from?
Also, I would have liked to see some kind of growth in at least one of the characters. Even though their
circumstances changed (for some of them), none of them seemed to learn anything or change in any meaningful way:
- Aino is still stubborn and willful (not that I blame her especially, but as many trickster stories have shown, she - and her sister - might have done better if she'd appeared to capitulate and then bided her time to get her own back),
- Joukahainen is self-centred and unwilling to look to himself as the source of his own (and and many of his family's) problems,
- Väinämöinen (I infer, from the spells above the lake) is still self-centred and vain (though in some fairness, he was promised a wife, however much I may disapprove of using a sister as a barter item, even for one's life),
- Noora is given super powers (sort of) but there's no indication that she's any different for the experience. (It would be weird if she - or the parents - were the ones to experience growth or change, though, since they're only ancillary characters).
On the up side, there were a few good chuckles from some of the lines, like Aino rolling her eyes as a fish. Aside from the unsatisfying ending, I did quite enjoy this story.