Kalevala

The Kalevala is an epic poem which Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century said that he had compiled from Finnish folk sources. It is commonly called the Finnish national epic and is one of the most significant works of Finnish-language literature. The Kalevala is credited with inspiring the nationalism that ultimately led to Finnish independence from Russia in 1917. The name means "land of Kaleva". The text of the Kalevala consists of 22,795 verses, divided into 50 poems or chapters (finnish runot, singular runo, from Germanic rune).

Writing the Kalevala

Lönnrot was a physician by profession but his passion for the traditional oral stories of his native Finland led him to travel extensively to acquire new material. He collected most of the poems from the region of Karelia. He believed that the small poems he collected were fragments of a once-continuous epic. He published the first Kalevala, the "old" Kalevala, in two volumes in 1835-1836. The old Kalevala consisted of thirty-two poems first collected by Lönnrot from about 1829, which he then edited and expanded with connecting material to make a continuous story. Lönnrot continued to collect new material, which he integrated into a second edition of the Kalevala, published in 1849. This "new" Kalevala contained fifty poems, and is the standard text of the Kalevala read today.

Related Topics:
Karelia - 1835 - 1836 - 1829 - 1849

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