Sampsa Pellervoinen

Sampsa Pellervoinen is a mythological person from Finnish mythology. He is credited in the second poem of the Kalevala as sowing all the forests during the land's creation. Sampsa is commonly described as a slender youth carrying either a bag or a basket around his neck. He appears as a god of fertility, who has to be ritually awakened every summer.

Karelian folklore has preserved possible earlier versions of Sampsa's awakening, where his character is directly connected to old fertility rites. In these poems he inseminates either his sister or his mother to be able to provide fertility for fields and orchards. Feast of Sampsa has been traditionally held in June 29. (at least in Ingermanland) in connection with the midsummer festivities.

Sampsa has been compared to other fertility deities like Greek Dionysos or Scandinavian Frey and Njord.