Despite this, the majority of Finnish poetry remained only in the oral tradition.įinnish born nationalist and linguist Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875) expressed his desire for a Finnish epic in a similar vein to the Iliad, Ossian and the Nibelungenlied compiled from the various poems and songs spread over most of Finland. Finnish folk poetry was first written down in the 17th century and collected by hobbyists and scholars through the following centuries. The statue of Väinämöinen by (1888) decorates the Old Student House in Helsinki History īefore the 18th century the Kalevala poetry was common throughout Finland and Karelia, but in the 18th century it began to disappear in Finland, first in western Finland, because European rhymed poetry became more common in Finland. Lönnrot's field trips and endeavours helped him to compile the Kalevala, and brought considerable enjoyment to the people he visited he would spend much time retelling what he had collected as well as learning new poems. Prior to the publication of the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot compiled several related works, including the three-part Kantele (1829–1831), the Old Kalevala (1835) and the Kanteletar (1840). Throughout his career Lönnrot made a total of eleven field trips within a period of fifteen years. In January 1833, he started as the district health officer of Kainuu and began his work on collecting poetry and compiling the Kalevala. Rather than continue this work, though, he decided to complete his studies and entered Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki to study medicine. In the spring of 1828, he set out with the aim of collecting folk songs and poetry. The monograph's second volume was destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku the same year. His thesis was entitled De Vainamoine priscorum fennorum numine ( Väinämöinen, a Divinity of the Ancient Finns). He was the son of Fredrik Johan Lönnrot, a tailor and Ulrika Lönnrot he was born in the village of Sammatti, Uusimaa.Īt the age of 21, he entered the Imperial Academy of Turku and obtained a master's degree in 1826.
During the time he was compiling the Kalevala he was the district health officer based in Kajaani responsible for the whole Kainuu region in the eastern part of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. 1.3 Lönnrot's contribution to the KalevalaĬollection and compilation Elias Lönnrot Įlias Lönnrot (9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a physician, botanist, linguist, and poet.In connection with the Kalevala, there is another much more lyrical collection of poems, also compiled by Lönnrot, called Kanteletar from 1840, which is mostly seen as a "sister collection" of the Kalevala. An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862.
The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories (Finnish: runot). The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses.
The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. The Kalevala ( Finnish: Kalevala, IPA: ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo.
Kalevala (or Kalewala, first edition, 1835) at Finnish Wikisource
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