Kiputyttö

Kiputyttö ("Pain Girl") is a spirit in the Finnish mythology, who is known from spells meant to ease pain. Sometimes she is also called the goddess of pain and illness.

Kiputyttö lives in Tuonela and usually spends her time on a hill named Kipumäki, where three rivers meet. Kipu-tyttö creates pain by turning a pain stone. In some spells she is crying.

The pain stones had a hole or holes in them. In spells Kiputyttö was told to take pain to those holes, because "stone doesn't cry for pain". These pain stones could have meant Cup-marked rocks.

Kiputyttö has been referred to as a daughter of Tuoni. She and Kivutar are occasionally considered the same person, but Kivutar is usually said to boil pain in a pot, as opposed to Kiputyttö who causes pain with rocks.

According to one folk poem from Savonia, Kiputyttö was born at the same time as the three maidens who created the origin of iron:

Nousi tuuli tuuleman / Ilmarinta riehkimään / Tuuli tuuli kuusi vuota / Seuroo seisemän kesää / Tuopa taito tam̄en latvat / Rutaisi rutisen raajan / Tuohon meikoon mereen / Siitä syntyi 4 nuorta neittä / Yx lypsi mustan maijon / Toinen valkian valotti / Kolmas punaisen puotti / Neljäs kipunen neito / Kipu tyttö tuonen neity

A strong wind built up, it was windy for six years and seven summers, which caused an old tree trunk to be pulled out of the ground and into the sea. From there, four maidens were born. Three of them were involved with the creation of iron, as the story of the origin of iron goes. However, here it mentions a fourth maiden, the maiden of pains, Kiputyttö maiden of Tuoni.

In Kalevala

In Rune 45 of Kalevala, Kiputyttö is asked to take pain to somewhere where it can't be felt, like the bottom of an ocean.

Torture-daughter of Tuoni,

Sitting on the mount of anguish,

At the junction of three rivers,

Turning rocks of pain and torture,

Turn away these fell diseases

Through the virtues of the blue-stone;

Lead them to the water-channels,

Sink them in the deeps of ocean,

Where the winds can never find them,

Where the sunlight never enters.

Kiputyttö, Tuonen neiti,

joka istut kipukivellä

joen kolmen juoksevassa,

veen kolmen jaka'imessa

jauhaen kipukiveä, Kipuvuorta väännätellen!

Käy kivut kereämähän kitahan kiven sinisen,

tahi vieretä vetehen,

syytäise meren syvähän,

tuulen tuntumattomahan,

päivän paistamattomahan!