Kalevala (Kalevala)

Finnish creation myth cum ancestor epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot (1802-84), physician, botanist and linguist who, as an intrepid collector of folklore seemed almost as interested in reciting the poems he’d memorized as listening to those of his ministering minstrels. The epic is a mixed bag of approximately-connected stories sharing several features with, and lending to the superficial structure of, Estonia’s Kalevipoeg, and ending with an interesting form of virgin birth where the heroine – plain old (or rather young) shepherd-girl Marjatta (named Neitsy Maaria, or Virgin Mary, by one of Lönnrot’s sources, the Karelian folk singer Arhippa Perttunen [1769-1841(?)]) – becomes pregnant by swallowing a berry, and a berry in Finnish (and Estonian genitive) is Marja. This closing canto hints at Lönnrot’s irritation at Christian elements interfering in tales he preferred to imagine pagan, and very old, as indeed the source material may well be: one point of evidence raised is the lack of mention of obvious neighbors such as Russians, Germans or Swedes. Stories predating Lönnrot’s poem, collected by himself or other folklorists such as Kristfrid (Cristfried?) Ganander (1741-90), include 12 sons of Kaleva, of whom Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Hiisi. Another son is suggested by Kullervo, sometimes known as Kalevanpoika (cf. Estonia’s Kalevipoeg), tragic (or “hapless” according to J.R.R. Tolkien) hero of the book’s second half. Recent years have seen an exploration of the Kalevala as stolen or culturally appropriated from Karelian. To be followed…