KALEVALA

Before the advent of the written word, storytellers had to use creative methods to ensure that their stories were not forgotten. That is why they introduced alliteration, rhythm, hymns and repetitions. The verses would be sang or repeated in the kind of droning voices that monks use to remember long texts. This is how the Edda, the Iliad, Beowulf and Ramayana survived until the stories could be written down. This is also the story of Finland's national epic, the Kalevala.

All over Finland "rune songs" with different stories were sung from 1000 B.C until the 1500's when the Lutheran Church following the Reformation, banned them as being pagan. Although the tradition soon disappeared from the western parts of Finland, there was a foothold of the songs and singers in Karelia and in Archangel's Karelia on the Russian side. A few of these songs were recorded in the 1600's, but it is thanks to Elias Lönnrot and his eleven trips to the region that we have the Kalevala with the rune songs from the last generation of singers.

Elias Ldnnrot (right) was a universal genius, born in the south of Finland in 1802 , the eighth child to a poor tailor and his wife. He learned to read at the age of five and his hunger for learning became widely known early. There are plenty of anecdotes about Ldnnrot in his home region where children were woken up with the words "Get up right away! Elias has already been sitting on a tree branch reading for long. "

Up until Elias was seven, Finland was under Swedish rule and the official language was Swedish. Finnish was also frowned upon under the Russian rule that followed. Elias attended the University of Turku, where he became acquainted with a small circle of nationalist-thinking teachers and students who wanted to promote the Finnish language. This is how Lönnrot became interested in Finnish folk poetry. He wrote a small monograph in Latin about the folk hero Väinämöinen and in 1828 he went on his first folk poetry collecting trip to Savo and Karelia in the east.

As the first Secretary of the Finnish Literature Society, Lönnrot also travelled to Lappland and other places on the northern and eastern fringes of Finland, where rune songs could still be heard.
The result of his collecting trips was first the "old" Kalevala in 1835 with 32 poems and some 12 000 verses, that is still hailed in Finland on "Kalevala Day" February 28, the day Elias L6nnrot signed his foreword. This year Finland celebrates the 150th anniversary of the "standard", "definite" or "new" Kalevala published in 1849. It has 50 poems and 22 795 lines of verses in the distinctive meter now called the Kalevala metre.

In the Old Kalevala Lönnrot let the songs very much speak for themselves, just like the way the singers had performed them. In the New Kalevala L6nnrot gave himself the same right "most singers bestow on themselves, namely, to be able to arrange the runes as they are best suited to be joined together". The result is an epic about the eternal questions facing humanity - life, death, love and survival.

The oldest stories in Kalevala tell of the origins of the world and human culture. The main characters in the later stories are usually bigger than life singers, shamans and sorcerers who experience great adventures in a distant land beyond the sea, on journeys where they woo potential brides, make raids and flee the enemy. Ritual poems focus especially on weddings and bear-killing feats.

Although few read the Kalevala, it has inspired all facets of Finnish life. When it was published, the epic and its heroes became symbols of a national rebirth for an autonomous Finland. Poet Eino Leino, composer Jean Sibelius, painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and architect Eliel Saarinen all made pilgrims to Karelia and produced works inspired by Kalevala. The epic was translated into 51 language and created enough of a stir abroad to give the Finns a new self-confidence, and faith in the greatness of the Finnish language and culture.

The 150th anniversary of the Old Kalevala in 1985 and the New Kalevala this year has been a source of inspiration for new artists like Vertti Teräsvuori, composer Aulis Salinen with the Kullervo Opera, and writer and even illustrator Mauri Komas with his Canine Kalevala children's book.

A Finnish family may not be intimately familiar with the Kalevala but it is constantly reminded of it through hundreds of names, - even a harvester and an ice breaker, all bearing names relating to Kalevala.

Scandinavian Press, Issue 3, 1999