The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot (good beach reads .TXT) 📕
Description
The Kalevala is a Finnish epic poem, which tells of the creation of the world and how the heroes that inhabit it came to be, and the legends of their conflicts and adventures. Spread out over fifty cantos, we hear how existence was created from the egg of a duck, how the forests were created from the chips of a world-tree felled by an ancient wizard, how the mighty Sampo—a multicolored mill of plenty—was created and later stolen, how the nine dread diseases came to be, and many more such stories.
The tales contained here are formed from Finland’s oral history. The author, Elias Lönnrot, was a Finnish doctor who was fascinated with his country’s stories, so between the 1820s and 1850s he embarked on a series of expeditions to the countryside of Finland and the surrounding area to collect and transcribe the folk stories told by local people. These tales were gradually collected into several volumes, the final of which is this “new” Kalevala. Lönnrot collected many different variants of each story, then edited each down into a cohesive whole when composing the new verse. The distinctive Kalevala-meter that was a common feature of all the original oral stories was kept during the process, and Crawford used the same with this English translation.
Lönnrot’s work proved extremely influential in Finland, and the national pride it imbued has been cited as a factor in the later Finnish independence movement. The Kalevala was also a source of inspiration for later authors of the twentieth century. Tolkien reused some of the themes and characters for the basis of his fictional universe (in particular The Silmarillion), the Kalevala-meter was used in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, and even Donald Duck has quested—as the Kalevala heroes did—for the legendary Sampo.
This edition was translated by John Martin Crawford in the late nineteenth century, and includes his introduction discussing some of the themes, characters, and settings.
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- Author: Elias Lönnrot
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And the bears lend their assistance,
Tear and mutilate her body
With their teeth and sharpened fingers.
Kullerwoinen, cruel wizard,
Thus repaid the wicked hostess,
Thus repaid her evil treatment.
Quick the wife of Ilmarinen
Cried aloud in bitter anguish,
Thus addressed the youth, Kullervo:
“Evil son, thou bloody herdsman,
Thou hast brought me wolves in malice,
Driven bears within my hurdles!”
These the words of Kullerwoinen:
“Have I evil done as shepherd,
Worse the conduct of the hostess;
Baked a stone inside my oat-cake,
On the inside, rock and tan-bark,
On the stone my knife, was broken,
Treasure of my mother’s household,
Broken virtue of my people!”
Ilmarinen’s wife made answer:
“Noble herdsman, Kullerwoinen,
Change, I pray thee, thine opinion,
Take away thine incantations,
From the bears and wolves release me,
Save me from this spell of torture;
I will give thee better raiment,
Give the best of milk and butter,
Set for thee the sweetest table;
Thou shalt live with me in welcome,
Need not labor for thy keeping.
If thou dost not free me quickly,
Dost not break this spell of magic,
I shall sink into the Death-land,
Shall return to Tuonela.”
This is Kullerwoinen’s answer:
“It is best that thou shouldst perish,
Let destruction overtake thee,
There is ample room in Mana,
Room for all the dead in Kalma,
There the worthiest must slumber,
There must rest the good and evil.”
Ilmarinen’s wife made answer:
“Ukko, thou O God in heaven,
Span the strongest of thy crossbows,
Test the weapon by thy wisdom,
Lay an arrow forged from copper,
On the crossbow of thy forging;
Rightly aim thy flaming arrow,
With thy magic hurl the missile,
Shoot this wizard through the vitals,
Pierce the heart of Kullerwoinen
With the lightning of the heavens,
With thine arrows tipped with copper.”
Kullerwoinen prays as follows:
“Ukko, God of truth and justice.
Do not slay thy magic servant,
Slay the wife of Ilmarinen,
Kill in her the worst of women,
In these hurdles let her perish,
Lest she wander hence in freedom,
To perform some other mischief,
Do some greater deed of malice!”
Quick as lightning fell the hostess,
Quick the wife of Ilmarinen
Fell and perished in the hurdles,
On the ground before her cottage;
Thus the death of Northland’s hostess,
Cherished wife of Ilmarinen,
Once the Maiden of the Rainbow,
Wooed and watched for many summers,
Pride and joy of Kalevala!
Kullerwoinen, young magician,
In his beauteous, golden ringlets,
In his magic shoes of deer-skin,
Left the home of Ilmarinen
Wandered forth upon his journey,
Ere the blacksmith heard the tidings
Of the cruel death and torture
Of his wife and joy-companion,
Lest a bloody fight should follow.
Kullerwoinen left the smithy,
Blowing on his magic bugle,
Joyful left the lands of Ilma,
Blowing blithely on the heather,
Made the distant hills re-echo,
Made the swamps and mountains tremble,
Made the heather-blossoms answer
To the music of his cow-horn,
In its wild reverberations,
To the magic of his playing.
Songs were heard within the smithy,
And the blacksmith stopped and listened,
Hastened to the door and window,
Hastened to the open court-yard,
If perchance he might discover
What was playing on the heather,
What was sounding through the forest.
Quick he learned the cruel story,
Learned the cause of the rejoicing,
Saw the hostess dead before him,
Knew his beauteous wife had perished,
Saw the lifeless form extended,
In the court-yard of his dwelling.
Thereupon the metal-artist
Fell to bitter tears and wailings,
Wept through all the dreary night-time,
Deep the grief that settled o’er him,
Black as night his darkened future,
Could not stay his tears of sorrow.
Kullerwoinen hastened onward,
Straying, roaming, hither, thither,
Wandered on through field and forest,
O’er the Hisi-plains and woodlands.
When the darkness settled o’er him,
When the bird of night was flitting,
Sat the fatherless at evening,
The forsaken sat and rested
On a hillock of the forest.
Thus he murmured, heavy-hearted:
“Why was I, alas! created,
Why was I so ill-begotten,
Since for months and years I wander,
Lost among the ether-spaces?
Others have their homes to dwell in,
Others hasten to their firesides
As the evening gathers round them:
But my home is in the forest,
And my bed upon the heather,
And my bath-room is the rain-cloud.
“Never didst thou, God of mercy,
Never in the course of ages,
Give an infant birth unwisely;
Wherefore then was I created,
Fatherless to roam in ether,
Motherless and lone to wander?
Thou, O Ukko, art my father,
Thou hast given me form and feature;
As the sea-gull on the ocean,
As the duck upon the waters,
Shines the Sun upon the swallow,
Shines as bright upon the sparrow,
Gives the joy-birds song and gladness,
Does not shine on me unhappy;
Nevermore will shine the sunlight,
Never will the moonlight glimmer
On this hapless son and orphan;
Do not know my hero-father,
Cannot tell who was my mother;
On the shore, perhaps the gray-duck
Left me in the sand to perish.
Young was I and small of stature,
When my mother left me orphaned;
Dead, my father and my mother,
Dead, my honored tribe of heroes;
Shoes they left me that are icy,
Stockings filled with frosts of ages,
Let me on the freezing ice-plains
Fall to perish in the rushes;
From the giddy heights of mountains
Let me tumble to destruction.
“O, thou wise and good Creator,
Why my birth and what my service?
I shall never fall and perish
On the ice-plains, in the marshes,
Never be a bridge in swamp-land,
Not while I have arms of virtue
That can serve my honored kindred!”
Then Kullervo thought to journey
To the village of Untamo,
To avenge his father’s murder,
To avenge his mother’s tortures,
And the troubles of his tribe-folk.
These the words of Kullerwoinen:
“Wait, yea wait, thou Untamoinen,
Thou destroyer of my people;
When I meet thee in the combat,
I will slay thee and thy kindred,
I will burn thy homes to ashes!”
Came a woman on the highway,
Dressed in blue, the aged mother,
To Kullervo spake as follows:
“Whither goest, Kullerwoinen,
Whither hastes the wayward hero?”
Kullerwoinen gave this answer:
“I have thought that I would journey
To the far-off land of strangers,
To the village of Untamo,
To avenge my father’s murder,
To avenge my mother’s tortures,
And the troubles of my tribe-folk.”
Thus the gray-haired woman answered:
“Surely thou dost rest in error,
For thy tribe has never perished,
And thy mother still is living
With thy father in the Northland,
Living with the old Kalervo.”
“O, thou ancient dame beloved,
Worthy mother of the woodlands,
Tell me where my father liveth,
Where my loving mother lingers!”
“Yonder lives thine aged father,
And thy loving mother with him,
On the farthest shore of Northland,
On the long-point of the fish-lake!”
“Tell me, O thou woodland-mother,
How to journey to my people,
How to find mine honored tribe-folk.”
“Easy is the way for strangers:
Thou must journey through the forest,
Hasten to the river-border,
Travel one day, then a second,
And the third from morn till even,
To the
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