Customer Reviews

Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes (European thought)

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There is an elegant, powerful simplicity to this epic tale, no matter what language you read it in. The symbols transcend both language and time. There is nothing contrived here. Such a tale could not be counterfeited by a modern mind.

At the center of the entire epic is Vainamoinen, the singer at the world's dawn. Here is the archetype for the wizard- the first and greatest among shamans. Before Merlin, before Taliesin, before Math, before Manannan, there was Vainamoinen, Eternal Seer.

Something real and vital carries over even in translation. Reading this book on a cold winter's night you can taste the sea and smell the forest. You can identify with the characters even though they have godlike powers, because they also have trades that they live by (Vainamoinen is a boatbuilder, Ilmarinen a smith, Joukahainen builds his own crossbows, etc.) These Godlike beings lived simple lives close to the earth. And simple wisdom is powerful wisdom. Yet, there is also so much more of the old, deep legends and symbols buried in these lines. You can tell that they were preserved long after the long lines of singers had ceased to know their original meanings.

The ancient Finns beleived in the power of words, and the greater power of songs. There is still power here. Or as the epic says:

Words shall not be hid

nor spells be buried;

might shall not sink underground

though the mighty go.

Kalevala as translated by W. F. Kirby

In the early to mid-1800's Elias Lonnrot traveled throughout Finland collecting bardic folk poems and arranging them into what eventually became the Kalevala, Finland's national epic. It recounts the adventures of Vainamoinen, the bard/sorcerer; Ilmarenan the magical smith/craftsman; Lemminkainen the rogue; and a number of other characters.

The Kalevala describes a pagan world oozing with magic and teeming with nature deities. It starts at creation, follows the heroes on various quests (mostly in search of a wife and/or magical objects) and through various conflicts (mostly with the nation to the North and their matron/sorceress) and ends with a poem that appears to be about Christianity replacing the old magical order.

One of the main reasons I picked this up is that J. R. R. Tolkien, my favorite author, claimed it was a big influence on his writing. I can definitely see how this world inspired a young J. R. R. Tolkien to begin creating his own magic-infused world of Middle Earth. There are especially striking parallels in The Silmarillion (magic through singing, loss/recovery of the sun and moon, a magical item forged by a master smith, etc.).

It was interesting to be transported into such a different world, but to be honest, I did not find the strange world of the Kalevala as engaging as that of the Norse or Anglo-Saxon poems. A large part of the text was taken up with incantations, spells, and prayers with the description of actual deeds usually kept to a bare minimum. The gods were basically natural forces that served whoever invoked them correctly. For me, the self-reliant but fatalistic heroes and meddling gods of the Norse eddas and sagas make for a more entertaining story.

All of the poems are written in trochaic tetrameter (think: The Song of Hiawatha) with a lot of parallelism (similar to the Hebrew poetry of the Psalms). The classic translation I read by Kirby maintained the original meter and did an acceptable job on the parallelism. Some newer translations opt for a meter "more pleasing to the modern ear." Personally, I think this is terrible. The meter is one of the distinguishing features of this poem (it's even referred to as "Kalevala Meter"!), and to do away with it is to lose a crucial part of the reading experience. Yes, it does become grating after a while...just read it in smallish chunks.

Overall: An interesting trip into a magical world that is a bit low on action. It might be more interesting as a study in comparative religion and anthropology than as an entertaining story.