Kalevala: Encyclopedia - Kalevala

Kalevala

The Kalevala is an epic poem which Elias Lönnrot claimed to have compiled from Finnish folk sources in the 19th century. It is commonly called the Finnish national epic and is one of the most significant works of Finnish-language literature. The Kalevala is credited with inspiring the nationalism that ultimately led to Finnish independence from Russia in 1917.

The name means "land of Kaleva" (derived from the Finish suffix -la/lä meaning land). The text of the Kalevala consists of 22,795 verses, divided into 50 poems or chapters (finnish runot, singular runo, from Germanic rune).

Kalevala - Writing the Kalevala

Lönnrot was a physician by profession but his passion for the traditional oral stories of his native Finland led him to travel extensively to acquire new material. He collected most of the poems from the region of Karelia. He believed that the small poems he collected were fragments of a once-continuous epic. He published the first Kalevala, the "old" Kalevala, in two volumes in 1835-1836. The old Kalevala consisted of thirty-two poems first collected by Lönnrot from about 1829, which he then edited and expanded with connecting material to make a continuous story. Lönnrot continued to collect new material, which he integrated into a second edition of the Kalevala, published in 1849. This "new" Kalevala contained fifty poems, and is the standard text of the Kalevala read today. A subsequent translation was produced by Keith Bosley, and is widely recognised as the leading version of the epic in English.

Kalevala - Characters

The main character of the Kalevala is Väinämöinen, a shamanistic hero with the magical power of songs and music. He is born of the primal Maiden of the Air and contributes to the creation of the world. Many of his travels resemble shamanistic journeys, especially the one where he visits the belly of a ground-giant, Antero Vipunen, to find the words of boat generation. He plays the kantele, a Finnish string instrument that is played like a zither. One of his kanteles is made of the jawbone of a giant pike. His search for a wife is a central element in many stories; he never finds one, though. For example one of the brides, Joukahainen's sister Aino, drowns herself instead of marrying him. He is also part of the group who steals the Sampo, a magical mill, from the people of the north.

Other characters, some of whom have their own chapters, are Seppo Ilmarinen, a heroic artificer-smith (comparable to the Germanic Weyland) who crafted the sky dome, the Sampo and more; Louhi the Hag of the North, a shamanistic matriarch of a people rivaling those of Kalevala who at one stage pulls the sun and the moon from the sky; Väinämöinen's young rival, Joukahainen, who promises his sister Aino to him when he loses a singing contest; vengeful, self-destructive Kullervo who is born as a slave, goes into berserk rage and commits suicide; and handsome but arrogant Lemminkäinen, whose mother has to rescue his corpse from the river of Death which runs through Tuonela, and bring him to life, echoing the myth of Osiris.

Some of the chapters describe ancient creation myths, a long wedding ceremony, and the right words for magical spells of healing and craftsmanship.

Kalevala - Influence of the Kalevala

The effect of the Kalevala upon later art in Finland has been tremendous, inspiring composer Jean Sibelius, modern poet Paavo Haavikko, painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and many others.

Besides the local Estonian legends, Kalevala was a major source of inspiration for, and shares several analogous characters with, the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg (compiled and written by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, first version completed 1853).

There are several English translations of the Kalevala. The older translations e.g. by John Martin Crawford (1888) and W.F. Kirby (1907), as well as the Eino Friberg translation (1988), follow the original rhythm (Kalevala meter) of the poems (may sound cumbersome to English ears). Poet Keith Bosley has written another version (1989) in a more fluid linguistic style.

Finnish rock band Amorphis based several concept albums on the Kalevala using the original translation as lyrics.

J.R.R. Tolkien claimed the Kalevala as one of his sources for the writings which became the Silmarillion. For example the story of Kullervo has been extensively used in Silmarillion (including the sword that speaks when the (anti)-hero uses it for a suicide) as basis of Turin Turambar in Narn i Chîn Húrin. Echoes of Kalevalan characters, Väinämöinen in particular, can also be found in the wizards of The Lord of the Rings. The epic was an inspiration for Longfellow's 1855 poem, The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in the same metre (trochaic tetrameter), and also inspired the British science fiction writer Ian Watson to write the Books of Mana duology: Lucky's Harvest and The Fallen Moon.

The Finnish cartoonist Mauri Kunnas drew a children's cartoon version of the Kalevala, called Koirien Kalevala (The Canine Kalevala). This, in turn, inspired the American cartoonist Keno Don Rosa (who enjoys widespread popularity in Finland) to draw a Donald Duck story about Kalevala, called The Quest for Kalevala.

In 2003, the Finnish Progressive Rock ("Prog") quarterly Colossus and Musea Records convinced 30 prog groups from all over the world to compose musical pieces based on assigned parts of the Kalevala. The result was a three-disc, multilingual, four-hour epic of the same name, and is doubtless one of the most ambitious musical projects ever.

Kalevala - The quest for Kalevala

Some parts of the epic may be based on perceived ancient conflicts between Finnics and Samis. In that context, the country of Kalevala could be understood as Southern Finland and Pohjola as Lapland. However, the place names in Kalevala seem to transfer the Kalevala further south, which have been interpreted as support for theories of a Finnic migration from the South that came to push the Samis further to the north, while some scholars locate the country of Kalevala to East Karelia, where most of the Kalevala stories were written down. In 1961 a small town of Uhtua in East Karelia was renamed to "Kalevala", perhaps to promote that theory.

Proponents of a Southern Kalevala argue, that the name Kaleva probably was first recorded in an atlas of al Idrisi of year 1154, where a town of qlwny (or tlwny) is recorded. This is probably present day Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, known in old East Slavic sources as Kolyvan. The Finnish word Kalevan ("of Kaleva") has almost the same meaning as Kalevala. The Saari (literally "the island") might be the island of Saaremaa in Estonia, while the people of Väinölä has strong resemblance with the Livonian tribe of Veinalensis in present-day Latvia, that is mentioned in the 13th century chronicle connected to Henry of Livonia. The ancient Finns, Estonians and Livonians spoke similar Finnic dialects and share common ancestry.

See also

• Finnish mythology
• Pohjola

Kalevala - Sample

• Download recording - "Vaka vanha Väinämöinen" Finnish poetry from the Kalevala from the Library of Congress' California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collection; performed by John Soininen on November 5, 1939 in Berkeley, California

Kalevala - Books

• The Kalevala by Keith Bosley (Introduction) and translations by Albert B. Lord, A contemporary English translation: ISBN 019283570X
• The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People, translations by Eino Friberg, Björn Landström, George C. Schoolfield, ISBN 9511101374
• The Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland translations by John Martin Crawford, ISBN 0766189384

Kalevala - Movies

• The Day the Earth Froze (1959). (Finish title: Sampo). [1]

Categories: Epics | Nordic folklore | Finnish mythology | Finnish literature

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Kalevala", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki