Linguaphile wrote:Antea wrote:I was listening to a podcast that explained that today is the "Kalevala day", because it was first published a 28 Februar. I was thinking about how little I know about this important part of tradition. Has someone read or studied the Kalevala?
As Naava said, it's quite important and well-known. The funny thing is that I have copies of it in three languages (Finnish, English, Estonian) and know the basics of the plot, but I don think I've ever actually read it from beginning to end (in any language), just parts of it.
Neither have I. We were taught the plot in school, and I've read some runes from here and there, but never the entire book. I think it'd be more entertaining if it was sung; it's quite heavy text to read.
Since this is a Finnish culture thread and you (
Antea) said that you don't know anything about Kalevala, I feel like I should explain to you where Kalevala comes from before you read it. It is an interesting story on its own, but I also believe knowing its background can help you to understand it better.
To summarise, it was published in the 1800s when nationalism was A Big Thing in Finland. People (especially the Swedish speaking elite) were trying to find and create a Finnish identity that would be separate from both Swedish and Russian identities, and to use that to build a sense of unity between the ruling elite and the common folk. Kalevala was one of the tools to achieve this, and its importance to the Finnish culture stems from that. Like the
kalevalaseura.fi says, Kalevala became "the symbol of the Finns' past, nationality, language, and culture to the Finnish intelligentsia, on which they started to build the frail Finnish identity. It sparked interest even abroad and made the small, unknown people famous among other Europeans."[1] It was a way of showing to the world (and to Finns themselves) that such a thing as Finnish culture even existed: a proof that Finns weren't just uncivilised peasants living in the woods, but instead had a beautiful national epic just like the Ancient Greeks had their
Iliad and Odyssey. [2]
Moreover, Lönnrot also wished to develop the (standard) Finnish language.
[source] Kalevala was published at a time when "the battle of dialects" took place: the literature written so far had been based on (South) Western dialects, but now the supporters of the Eastern dialects had waken up and demanded those dialects should be used as the basis of written Finnish instead of the Western dialects. [3] Kalevala as a famous ancient epic written mostly in Eastern dialects (and partly in Karelian, with some Western influence mixed in) [4] helped to defend their arguments, but it also gave one example of using both Western and Eastern features in the same text. (In the end, a compromise was indeed made: the standard Finnish we use today is a combination of both Eastern and Western dialects.)
(Here's the footnotes:)
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[1] Translation's mine; the original text does not use the word 'famous' (more like 'acknowledged', 'known', or 'noticed') but IMO that works best in this context.
[2] He himself has written in the Kalevala 1835 preamble that his goal was to create an epic similar to the example set by the Greeks.
[3] The arguments from both sides are very entertaining, by the way. It seems they had no chill or shame, and every now and then someone would declare their own dialect was "the best" just because.
[4] Lönnrot thought Karelian was a dialect of Finnish, but he changed the parts that he deemed too difficult for Finns to understand. You can still see Karelian influence in the vocabulary and grammar, though. (source) Ever since it was published, Kalevala has been (and most likely will be) a very important part and, in a sense, a source of Finnish culture. It itself has shaped the Finnish identity and language, but it has also inspired many other authors and artists. (For example, there's the
Kullervo symphony by Sibelius, a play on the same subject by Aleksis Kivi, several operas by Rautavaara, and the famous painting of the story of Aino by Akseli Gallen-Kallela that I swear every Finn has seen.) However, you probably shouldn't think Kalevala is the
result of (ancient) Finnish culture. There's two reasons for that.
First of all, Lönnrot collected the poems mainly from Karelia
[source] [1]. The idea was that these faraway lands had preserved the original, shared mythos that had been lost in Finland. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to say for sure if this is true or not. In any case, what is true is that none of the poems in Kalevala came from Western, Southern or Northern Finland. Even if these areas had had similar poetical traditions, they are not directly represented in Kalevala. This is why some Karelian activists have lately argued that Kalevala is in fact a Karelian epic written by a Finnish man, and claiming it as Finnish without a mention of its Karelian roots is an act of cultural appropriation.
[source]Secondly, the poems were not written down as they were sung. Lönnrot listened to over 70 rune singers on his journeys, and you bet none of them recited the entire Kalevala exactly as it was published in the end: even though the characters were the same, one singer could sing a story another signer had never heard, and those who sang about the same story gave different versions of it. [2] What Lönnrot then did was to compare what he had heard and work on it as if it was a puzzle: he chose some poems and left some out, put them in order that would create a (more or less) coherent plot line, altered verses that didn't fit, added his own verses to fill any gaps between the runes he had recorded... [3] As a result, Kalevala is very much the result of Lönnrot's work. Even if the rune singers had passed their knowledge to the next generations, Kalevala wouldn't exist without Lönnrot. This is also why the Karelian activists, while wishing the epic's roots were made more visible, wouldn't want to claim it as theirs alone: "Kalevala does not and could not belong to one nation alone", as Eila Stepanova [4] says.
[source] Here's also a translation of
an article, where a few other Karelians explain what they think of the matter:
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Who Kalevala belongs to?
Folk poetry is one of those treasures that gave rise to the world-famous Kalevala.
The Kalevala has left a huge mark on global popular culture. Among other things, JRR Tolkien drew inspiration for his literary world in the epic and its language.
After conveying their poems to Elias Lönnrot, the Karelians themselves remained for the most part in the shadow of the author and his work.
For Häkki [a Karelian living in Finland], the Kalevala is primarily responsible for the appropriation and exploitation of Karelian culture. According to them, Lönnrot’s adaptation destroyed the original essence and meaning of folk poems.
- Kalevala is a storybook that has little to do with the real Karelia. Finns are free to keep it as their epic.
Häkki believes that the Kalevala should be studied in school from a more critical perspective.
In turn, Ponomarjov [a Karelian folk music enthusiast from Koštamuš in Russia] regards the Kalevala as basically a Karelian epic compiled only by Lönnrot.
- It is his great work that makes the Kalevala our common heritage.
There are several positive aspects to Lönnnrots work.
- It may be that Lönnrot distorted the meaning of or even invented some things. Despite this, he preserved the essence of folk poems for future generations, Lesonen [who is active in the Karelian cultural society Viena based in Koštamuš] believes.
Between life and oblivion, it is better to choose the former, she adds.
- Let us admit and respect each other’s differences, but also be proud of our common heritage.
I think the translation was made by Arton Kričja, but if I'm wrong, I'll be happy to edit the translator's name here. In any case, this was not translated by me.
(And here's the footnotes:)
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[1] He also collected poems from the Finnish side of Karelia, and travelled in Savonia and Lapland; here's a map of where he went, although it doesn't show where he heard or collected the runes. I've understood that despite his long travels, majority of what was put in Kalevala came from the areas of what we now call the Republic of Karelia in Russia.
[2] He himself has said that based on the runes he and some others after him had collected, he could have made seven Kalevalas, each different from one another. Interestingly, people themselves believed that Lönnrot had managed to reconstruct the original text from the excerpts he had collected. [source]
[3] For example, he removed Christian and "modern" features, and changed some characters and place names. [source] Remember also the earlier notion of how he modified the language.
[4] She was the leader of the research project "Omistajuus, kieli ja kulttuuriperintö – Kansanrunousideologiat Suomen, Karjalan tasavallan ja Viron alueilla" (Ownership, language, and cultural heritage - folk poetry ideologies in the regions of Finland, Republic of Karelia, and Estonia.) P.s. Spot the student who was supposed to work on her thesis but who instead decided to write an essay on Kalevala. I have no regrets.