In the early 19th century, Finnish folklore was assembled
into a massive EPIC called the Kalevala
(Land of Heroes). Compilers from the universities
of Turku and Helsinki traveled throughout Finland
collecting these stories, called runes, which
had been transmitted orally for centuries, a task
deemed necessary before Finland’s oral traditions
were lost to modernization. Fifty runes consisting
of almost 23,000 lines of poetry had been collected
by 1849, and Elias Lönnrot, the Finnish
philologist who discovered the Kalevala, worked
to organize them into a cohesive whole. (An earlier
collection was published by Zacharius
Topelius in 1822.)
The Kalevala (pronounced Kah leh vah luh)
contains the songs and stories of the ancient
Finnish people and includes the beginnings of
Christianity in Finland. It has been compared to
other national mythologies, specifically Vedic
mythology from India. For example, in both traditions
the myths surrounding the origin of the
world—stating that it was hatched from an egg—
are very similar.
The ancient Finnish people were animists,
which means they worshipped nature and believed
that everything around them had an inner spirit.
Seers and shamans, key figures in Finnish mythology,
undertook visionary journeys, using the reindeer
as their animal spirit companion.Many of the
songs in the Kalevala come from shamanistic ceremonies,
and it was believed that some of these
songs, or chants, had healing powers.Other chants
were said to take shamans, in spirit, to the origins
of the world.
The three main characters of the Kalevala are
Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen, and Ilmarinen, all
sons of Kalevala. Väinämöinen is the primal first
shaman. He is the master word-weaver and musician
in the tales, offering counsel to his people.
Lemminkäinen is a young romantic adventurer
whose exploits are recounted in many of the runes.
Ilmarinen is the primeval smithy, the master architect
of the stellar dome and forger of the Sampo.
The Sampo is a central object in the Kalevala, described
as a spinning wheel and seen as a magic
mill that grinds out food, money, or gold. The
Sampo can also be seen as a cosmological image of
the spinning World Axis centered upon the Pole
Star. In Finland the Pole Star can be seen almost
straight ahead in the night sky.
The epic was originally written in the trochaic
tetrameter, which means each verse had four meters
written in the pattern of one accented (long)
syllable followed by one unaccented (short) syllable.
The following lines from Eino Friberg’s 1988
translation are a good example of the style and
philosophical subject matter of the runes:“Knowledge
cannot stay concealed, / Hidden in some secret
burrow; / Words of wisdom never vanish, /
Though the wise men pass away.”
The Kalevala’s words of wisdom remain vital to
the Finish people because it contains their traditions,
such as the Finnish wedding ceremony, as well as
magical incantations and ancient spells. It also gives
a specific spiritual outlook connected to the traditional
emphasis on nature.Most importantly, the
Kalevala provides the Finnish people with a connection
to their past and a sense of national pride. Pekka
Ervast describes the impact of this epic in his work
The Keys to the Kalevala: “From the rune stories of
the Kalevala arose a lively picture of the Finnish people’s
past, their religion, traditions, struggles, ideals,
and heroes.” Similarly, as Jaakko Ahohas states in A
History of Finnish Literature, the Kalevala “supported
[the Finns’] belief in the creative powers of the
Finnish nation and in this way contributed to the development
of Finnish literature. . . .”
An English Version of the Kalevala
The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People. Translated
by Eino Friberg.Helsinki: Otava Publishing, 1988.
Works about the Kalevala
Bosley,Keith. The Kalevala: An Epic after the Oral Tradition.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Ervast, Pekka. The Keys to the Kalevala. Nevada City,
Calif.: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1999.