The Kalevala — Elias Lönnrot’s ambitious compilation of Finish stories published in the middle of the 19th century — is considered Finland’s national epic. The word “epic” likely brings to mind many things — Homer, for example — and indeed many interesting comparisons can be made between the Kalevala and epics of the ancient world. But I’d wager that most readers, upon encountering the 20,000 plus lines of the Kalevala for the first time, will report a rather different kind of experience than when reading the Iliad or the Odyssey. Matters of both content and style are reasons for this, but so is the more mundane reason that, unlike classical epics of Greece and Rome, the Kalevala is not a work that many of us are likely to have encountered in school.
There’s nothing jarring or offensive about that; a curriculum can’t include everything (or even a substantial part of) the cream of the crop of world literature. But for those who want to experience as much of the best literature out there as possible, Lönnrot’s work should not be overlooked. It’s a chance to learn about Finland’s development as a nation, its many oral folk stories which populate its distant past, and, on a more everyday level, an occasion to read absorbing literature.
So what’s the Kalevala about? As mentioned, it’s made up of oral folk stories from the Finnish region, stories that Lönnrot captured on paper, while adding flourishes of his own. It’s important to keep in mind, then, that the Kalevala has Elias Lönnrot’s hand all over it; indeed it is not the case that he merely kept all the tales in their original form, and simply threw them into a book so that’d we have a convenient collection. Lönnrot added and subtracted details, plots, characterizations, etc., and orchestrated the tales in such a way that the collective product amounts to a reasonably cohesive story. The translator of the Oxford University Press edition, Keith Bosley, of which I quote from below, offers a fine introduction about the nature of Lönnrot’s work (a very interesting and complex topic in its own right).
(Wikimedia Commons)
But to return to the content of the Kalevala. Its plots and characters are quite limited. Its protagonists include Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen (names, rest assured, that will roll off the tongue with a little bit of practice). These three men excel in singing, metalworking, and, well, cantankerous wooing, respectively (although they have other talents as well). All three desire a bride, and it’s their search (and myriad failures) to find one that constitutes a considerable portion of the plot.
Louhi, leader of dreary Northland, is another salient character; she longs not for a partner, but to acquire the Sampo, a very powerful, magical-like object capable of bringing immense prosperity. There’s also Kullervo, a tormented young man whose story we encounter about midway through the Kalevala. But that’s more or less it; other characters are only loosely defined or nominally distinguishable.
In terms of subject matter, one of the most striking things about the Kalevala is just how much incessant conflict it contains. Indeed scenes of merriment are few and far between, and the strife we are talking about is no trivial stuff. There’s murder, attempted murder, rape, selfish motives in spades, revenge, deep pangs of lament, stolen childhoods, callus demeanours, marriages gone awry, tears and anger and forlorness. It’s basically a cornucopia of some of the worst facts and emotions of human life. Reading the Kalevala can feel a bit like repeatedly experiencing the brief aftermath of dropping a dish on the kitchen floor: staring down at the mess for a few unblinking moments and viscerally feeling the sad disarray. Indeed, one can get a rather overwhelming feeling of nearly everything being broken and amiss in the Kalevala — things badly, often horrendously, out of whack.
Described in those terms, it makes it seem rather odd that the Kalevala could be such a thoroughly engrossing and satisfying work to read. But it is. And once one settles into its meliu and tone — which does take some time, for readers who, like myself, don’t have a past connection with the work — many of its stories offer a powerful connection to its characters who, though not always admirable, undergo the messiness of the human condition as we all do.
One episode — or rather series of related episodes — which is perhaps most filled with the kind of traits mentioned above, is the story of Kullervo. It begins with a youth’s horrendous upbringing — indeed one so violently tainted with the loss of his family that the (virtually) endless degradation which spirals out from it is not altogether surprising. After all, evil tends to beget evil. The moral injunction at the very end of the story — a relatively uncommon occurrence in the Kalevala — is the tame and rather obvious warning: “Do not, folk of the future / bring up a child crookedly.”
Other stories are imbued with tremendous power in that they show the stark consequences of a person mired in an environment (or set of circumstances) in which they cannot escape. There are several female characters whose circumstances are wrapped up in the interconnected themes of marriage, leaving one’s home (and former identity), and the uneasiness of moving into an alien environment. There’s something about these stories that effortlessly activates a mechanism of empathy within the reader; something which allows us to see, in such a clear way, the universal human propensity to fight for the exercise of one’s autonomy and cast off (or try to cast off) the subjecting reigns of another person.
In the story of Aino (a girl who is given to the far older Väinämöinen by Aino’s own brother as atonement for a lost competition), we see a girl at the mercy of many people, including, surprisingly, her own mother. It’s perhaps not a shock that Väinämöinen does not treat her well or seriously consider that she has her own wants and needs; but Aino’s mother is just as nearly blind to her daughter’s tormented feelings.
Aino’s plight is loosely echoed in the later story of Kyllikki, a girl that Lemminkäinen somehow manages to marry. And there are multiple occasions in the Kalevala where the circumstances of daughter-in-law and maiden are contrasted, with the former rarely coming out with a great number of advantages.
I mentioned the theme of longing for home, of wanting to return to one’s familiar environment. This is something we see in the male protagonists as well, though not in the same form. Even the wise and old Väinämöinen has instances where he feels the uneasiness and distaste for being an unfamiliar land — as when he finds himself wearily and confusedly making his way to Northland in order to seek out a bride (after he’s lost Aino).
Loss is a recurring theme in the Kalevala. Not just in terms of human relationships or physical desires, but in a broader sense as well. The struggle for the Sampo, for example, ends in partial gains by it’s various seekers. Louhi, its first owner, comes out on the shorter end of the stick, so to speak.
One of the things that sparked my interest in the Kalevala was seeing a video of the tremendously talented Nick Hennessey performing selected portions of it, namely the creation and Kullervo sections. In the question and answer segment after the performance, he made an intriguing remark about the Sampo (an object which, at that point, I had incredibly foggy notions of). He expressed how current discussions pertaining to the euro, control of the internet (and information), and similar vexing 21st-century issues, can all be usefully brought into discussions of the Sampo (and vice versa). Perhaps, then, my foggy notions about the nature of the Sampo were not quite the hindrances I had thought them to be, in terms of making sense of the Kalevala my first time through. At any rate, my curiosity and desire to learn more about it, and the Kalevala as a whole, is piqued.
Whatever initial strangeness the Kalevala might throw at readers who are unfamiliar with its content, it offers plenty that is relatable. I myself have many questions about the shamanistic elements that its central character possesses — Väinämöinen is such a bizarre and intriguing figure! — but there’s a plethora of everyday human dilemmas (marriages, longings, friendships, etc.) that make the Kalevala anything but an arcane collection of Finish folklore. Read it, enjoy it, and ponder over its many profound and illuminating stories.
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Lönnrot Elias, and Keith Bosley. 2008. The Kalevala an Epic Poem after Oral Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spectatio 
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