The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot (good beach reads .TXT) 📕

however, did not stop here; he went on searching and collecting, and, in 1840, had brought together more than one thousand fragments of epical poetry, national ballads, and proverbs. These he published in two works, respectively entitled, Kanteletar (Lyre-charm), and The Proverbs of the Suomi People, the latter containing over 1,700 proverbs, adages, gnomic sentences, and songs.

His example was followed by many of his enthusiastic countrymen, the more prominent of whom are Castrén, Europæus, Polén and Reniholm. Through the collections of these scholars so many additional parts of the epical treasure of Finland were made public that a new edition of the Kalevala soon became an imperative necessity. The task of sifting, arranging, and organizing the extensive material, was again allotted to Dr. Lönnrot, and in his second editions of the Kalevala, which appeared in 1849, the epic, embracing fifty runes and 22,793 lines, had reached its mature form. The Kalevala was no sooner published than it attracted the attention of the leading scholars of Europe. Men of such worldwide fame as Jacob Grimm, Steinthal, Uhland, Carrière and Max Müller hastened to acknowledge its surpassing value and intrinsic beauty. Jacob Grimm, in a separate treatise, published in his Kleinere Schriften, said that the genuineness and extraordinary value of the Kalevala is easily proved by the fact that from its mythological ideas we can frequently interpret the mythological conceptions of the ancient Germans, whereas the poems of Ossian manifest their modern origin by their inability to clear up questions of old Saxon or German mythology. Grimm, furthermore, shows that both the Gothic and Icelandic literatures display unmistakable features of Finnish influence.

Max Müller places the Kalevala on a level with the greatest epics of the world. These are his words:

“From the mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected equalling the Iliad in length and completeness; nay, if we can forget for a moment, all that we in our youth learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Finn is not a Greek, and Wainamoinen was not a Homer [Achilles?]; but if the poet may take his colors from that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, the Kalevala possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will claim its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the Ionian Songs, with the Mahabharata, the Shahnameth, and the Nibelunge.”

Steinthal recognizes but four great national epics, viz., the Iliad, Kalevala, Nibelunge and the Roland Songs.

The Kalevala describes Finnish nature very minutely and very beautifully. Grimm says that no poem is to be compared with it in this respect, unless it be some of the epics of India. It has been translated into several European languages; into Swedish by Alex. Castrén, in 1844; into French prose by L. LeDuc, in 1845; into German by Anton Schiefuer, in 1852; into Hungarian by Ferdinand Barna, in 1871; and a very small portion of it⁠—the legend of Aino⁠—into English, in 1868, by the late Prof. John A. Porter, of Yale College. It must remain a matter of universal regret to the English-speaking people that Prof. Porter’s life could not have been spared to finish the great work he had so beautifully begun.

Some of the most convincing evidences of the genuineness and great age of the Kalevala have been supplied by the Hungarian translator. The Hungarians, as is well known, are closely related to the Finns, and their language, the Magyar dialect, has the same characteristic features as the Finnish tongue. Barna’s translation, accordingly, is the best rendering of the original. In order to show the genuineness and antiquity of the Kalevala, Barna adduces a Hungarian book written by a certain Peter Bornemissza, in 1578, entitled Ördögi Kisertetekröl (on Satanic Specters), the unique copy of which he found in the library of the University of Budapest. In this book Bornemissza collected all the incantations (ráolvasások) in use among Hungarian country-people of his day for the expulsion of diseases and misfortunes. These incantations, forming the common stock of all Ugrian peoples, of which the Finns and Hungarians are branches, display a most satisfactory sameness with the numerous incantations of the Kalevala used for the same purpose. Barna published an elaborate treatise on this subject; it appeared in the Transactions of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Philological Department, for 1870. Again, in 1868, twenty-two Hungarian deeds, dating from 1616⁠–⁠1660, were sent to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, as having been found in the Hegyalja, where the celebrated wine of Tokay is made. These deeds contained several contracts for the sale of vineyards, and at the end of each deed the customary cup of wine was said to have been emptied by both parties to the contract. This cup of wine, in the deeds, was termed, “Ukkon’s cup.” Ukko, however, is the chief God according to Finnish mythology, and thus the coincidence of the Magyar Ukkon and the Finnish Ukko was placed beyond doubt.

The Kalevala (the Land of Heroes) relates the ever-varying contests between the Finns and the “darksome Laplanders,” just as the Iliad relates the contests between the Greeks and the Trojans. Castrén is of the opinion that the enmity between the Finns and the Lapps was sung long before the Finns had left their Asiatic birthplace.

A deeper and more esoteric meaning of the Kalevala, however, points to a contest between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil; the Finns representing the Light and the Good, and the Lapps, the Darkness and the Evil. Like the Niebelungs, the