What Do I Read Next?
Elias Lonnrot's Kanteletar, a compilation of lyric poems and ballads, was released between 1840 and 1841 as a companion piece to the Kalevala. The poems in the Kanteletar, drawn from the same oral traditions that Lonnrot utilized for his epic, offer a lively and diverse portrayal of rural Finnish life. They include laments, humor, songs of love, marriage, and sorrow, as well as stories about hunters, heroes, women, and children, among other themes. In 1992, Keith Bosley translated a hundred of these poems into English for the Oxford University Press's World's Classics series.
Lonnrot's Old Kalevala from 1835 and Proto-Kaleva circa 1835, as well as sections from his 1927 university dissertation on Vainamoinen, were translated into English by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. This translation is titled Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents (1969).
The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) sought to replicate the rhythm and essence of the Kalevala in his narrative poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855), which tells the story of a wise and heroic leader of the Ojibway tribe. Controversy over whether Longfellow adequately credited the Kalevala as a source brought the Finnish epic to wider attention and led to its first English translation.
Selections from Eino Leino's Helkavirsia, a collection of poems inspired by the Kalevala and written during the Russification era at the turn of the century, were translated by Keith Bosley under the title Whitsongs (Menard Press, London, 1978).
Emil Petaja, a Finnish-American author, crafted several science-fiction novels inspired by the Kalevala myths. Some of these titles include Stolen Sun (1967) and Star Mill (1965).
For information about Finland, you can visit the FTNFO and Virtual Finland websites at http://www.vn.fi/vn/um/finfo/fmdeng.html and http://www.vn.fi/vn/um/index.html. These pages are produced and regularly updated by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.
Two Voyagers Ohthere and Wulfstan at the Court of King Alfred (Sessions of York, England, 1984) features accounts from two ninth-century English merchants detailing their travels to northern Norway and Finland. Although brief, these logs are rich with information and personal insights. The primary sources are accompanied by explanatory essays.
P. H. Sawyer's Kings and Vikings (London, 1982) offers a 182-page overview of the Viking Age, focusing on Scandinavian society and its connections to Western Europe.
Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics, edited by Felix J. Oinas (1988), is a collection of fifteen essays on epic literature from regions such as the British Isles, Mesopotamia, India, Iran, Russia, Africa, and others. It includes a brief yet insightful introduction to oral tradition.
Homer's Iliad (circa 800 B.C.) and the Scandinavian Eddas (9th-13th centuries C.E.) are works that Lonnrot compared to his Kalevala. The Iliad is the epic of ancient Greece, while the Eddas are collections of Scandinavian poetry about Norse deities and heroes.
The German Nibelungenlied and the Icelandic Laxdaela Saga, both composed during the Middle Ages and available through Penguin Classics, offer fascinating contrasts to the shamanistic realm of the Kalevala.
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (Penguin Classics) is a German chivalric romance from the thirteenth century that presents a hero similar to Lemminkainen—strong, yet impulsive and youthful. The story revolves around the search for the Holy Grail, a mystical item somewhat akin to the Sampo, which miraculously provides sustenance for those who possess it.
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