Retold from: Zacharias Topelius

Zacharias Topelius was a Finnish writer who wrote in Swedish, the author of tales and stories for children.

He was born in 1818 at Kuddnäs near Nykarleby (Uusikaarlepyy in Finnish). He worked as a journalist, novelist and poet, and later became a professor of history at the University of Helsinki. Topelius died in 1898.

His children’s books “Läsning för barn” (“Reading for Children”), eight volumes that began to appear in 1865, were read by generations of Finnish and Swedish children. “Sampo Lappelill” was first printed in 1860 in the magazine Eos and later joined “Reading for Children”. The tale is set among the Sámi of Lapland.

Here you can read “Sampo the Little Lapp”: about a Sámi boy who sets out at night for the Mountain King’s peak and boldly tells the giant that the sun will surely return.