A Land of Heroes: There's One in Every Myth Cycle.

The Myth:  The Mythic History of Finland. Gods! Goddesses! Culture heroes who are not exactly gods but are certainly impressive and sing very well indeed! Magic duels! Magic fish! Magic ... whatever the Sampo is!
The Book: Kalevala, The Land of Heroes (technically, volume 1 of 2)
The Author: Elias Lönnrot (1835)
This text: etext of a 1907 translation by W. F. Kirby.
Price: nothin' (Kindle Free Library)

Lemminkainen's main literary role is to demonstrate the importance of listening to your mother.

I mentioned the domestic scale of this epic. Lemminkainen lives with his mum in a homestead in Kaleva, and occasionally goes to war with Pohjola, much against her advice. Pohjola has a single house of note: Mistress Louhi's homestead.  It is full of wizards and bards and sorcerers and musicians and soothsayers, but in Mythic Finland pretty much everyone is some level of wizard or bard or sorcerer or musician or soothsayer, so it's really just a house full of folk.

Lemminkainen's first assault on Pohjola goes well for a while - he drives everyone out of Mistress Louhi's house by singing at them - but just as he's finishing off an impossible quest for the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola, he's ambushed and dismembered. His mother puts him back together with the most mythic of all magics, and tells him there will be no more of this Maiden of Pohjola nonsense.

Said Maiden eventually marries Ilmarinen the smith - who wins at impossible questing because she cheats on his behalf - and everyone in Kaleva and Pohjola is invited to the wedding.

Except Lemminkainen, because Pohjola thinks he's a jerk.

This leads to Lemminkainen's second assault on Pohjola, once again against his mother's advice. He is not so much pissed off at losing the Maiden of Pohjola to Ilmarinen so much as missing a drinking party. The homestead is Not Impressed when he shows up several days after the wedding demanding beer, and the Master of Pohjola challenges him to a duel. Lemminkainen wins by technical decapitation, and Mistress Louhi sings up an army of swordsmen to chase him home.

"Ah, mum, I might need some help."
"Did you do something stupid?"
"I may have accidentally decapitated the Master of Pohjola and started a war."
"Honestly, you're just like your father."

His mum sends him off to an island where his father also used to hide out from stupid wars. Lemminkainen spends three years singing and cavorting with maidens, before heading back home just as he is about to be murdered by angry menfolk.

He returns to Kaleva to find his homestead in ruins, his treasure stolen and his mother in hiding. Once he's reassured that she's ok, he recruits a former fighting buddy Tiera for a third venture into Pohjola.

“Have you literally not learned one damned thing? I should have married for brains instead of looks.”

Halfway across the lake, Mistress Louhi sends the demon Frost against them, who freezes the lake before Lemminkainen insults it into submission. Lemminkainen and Teira make it to shore and wander about aimlessly for a bit before giving up the whole thing as a bad job.

"You know, I really think that went pretty well."
"Shut up, Lemminkainen."

 --

At this point I'm about two thirds through the Kalevala and I'm still loving it. I love the rhythm, the magic, the personal nature of the thing. I love that to brew for an epic wedding, you need the mythic history of beer. I love that a giant begins an epic series of curses with "I'll tell your mother on you!" And I'm even fond of Lemminkainen, vicious little murder-punk that he is.

Next: The theft of the Sampo.