The most famous Lemminkainen episode is his death and restoration, one of the great scenes of Finnish poetry. Sent, in his reckless courting, to shoot the swan of Tuonela, the river of the land of the dead, he is himself killed there, cut to pieces and thrown into the black water. His mother, learning of it from a sign, rakes the river of death with a long copper rake, gathers the scattered fragments of his body, and by charms, salves and the sung word reassembles and revives him.
The pattern, descent to the realm of the dead, dismemberment, and reintegration by ritual power, is recognisably shamanic, and comparativists set it beside other myths of the torn-and-restored figure. Within the epic it also defines Lemminkainen against his companions: where Vainamoinen embodies grave wisdom and Ilmarinen patient craft, Lemminkainen is the reckless, boastful, endlessly reviving hero whose life is a series of headlong disasters survived.