Kullervo’s story

Kullervo is a fatherless, motherless boy, believing his parents have been slain. Kullervo is taken in by strangers. The woman is not his mother, the man is not his father. He doesn’t understand this and tries to please the man, he tries too much and fails. A woman bakes a stone into his bread. She is not a woman Kullervo can hold, she drowns in a swamp while coming to him.
On a winter road, Kullervo meets a girl on her way home. He sleeps with her and in the morning finds out that she is his sister.
And finally there is only one person in Kullervo’s murderous world, he finds himself: the judge, the victim and the executioner.
Kullervo is based on the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic, of which the story is a distinctive part. Kullervo has also been the subject of the Grand Prix winning TV drama Iron Age.