Every year, at the end of the summer, the Finnish town of Liminka organises a literature and illustration festival, in which the library plays an important role. The name of the festival is LemmiFest, which refers to the name of the giant Lemmi who, according to legend, founded the town thousands of years ago.

Since Oulu, 25 km from Leminka, is going to be the European Capital of Culture in 2026, the library wants to take the opportunity to organise a ‘Gathering for European giants’ in which the Sister Libraries can participate by contributing their own traditions, legends, stories, children’s drawings or anything else related to the mythology and folklore of giants.

Do you have any stories about giants? Would you like to contribute to this wonderful initiative and be part of the great gathering that will take place in Oulu in 2026?

For inspiration, our colleagues from Liminka Municipal Library have sent us this lovely story about the mythical founding of their town:

Limmi is said to have supported himself by hunting and fishing. For fishing, he dug out the current rivers and lakes. For hunting, he piled up the forests and hills, including Lapinkangas. He called the current Liminka Bay a sea, and to navigate it, he made himself a boat.

Once, during one of his fishing trips on the said sea, Limmi found a strange island in the middle of the sea. He landed on the island and decided to settle there, as it was very suitable for fishing. Soon he went to fetch wood and built a large hut. For a fireplace, he carried a large pile of stones to the center of the hut, on which he placed his big cooking pot.

After getting his home ready, Limmi went to the shore to look for some catch. Noticing a large burbot swimming near the shore, he quickly grabbed it by the neck and started pulling it ashore. The fish was enormous. When Limmi had dragged it around his hut three times, its tail still reached the sea.

But Limmi was not one to panic. He pulled the fish’s head inside the hut and put it in his pot, cooking a piece at a time until he finally got the tail into the pot. However, this took three whole months. After eating the large burbot, Limmi became thirsty, but he couldn’t drink the salty seawater. So he began to dig a well in the middle of the island. After digging for a while, the entire island started to move, swimming around the sea.

Now Limmi realized that his island was actually an extraordinarily large fish that had settled there. All his belongings rolled off the fish’s back into the sea, and the tall hut with its fireplace collapsed. The remains of these are the stones outside on the shore and the reef at the bottom of the bay, known as Isokova. In his distress, Limmi ran to his boat and began rowing north, never to be seen again. As he left, he shouted: Liminkala, Liminkala! (”kala” is fish in Finnish) That shout still echoed when the Finns came to these regions. This is why the Finns still call this place Liminka.

Text by Janne Nevala.

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