Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot—The epic poem of Finland (12 things you should know)

In this video I am going to tell you everything you need to know about the Kalevala, the national epic poem of Finland and Karelia in Russia. I will summarise the main story, talks about its author, and its influence on Finnish national and cultural identity and around the world.

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[agneshaycollection]

Kalevala is one of my favourite book. I miss from the video a few very important things: Wainamoinen did not get old, he was born old. The magic of the words, one can build a ship with words, fight with words ... etc

[Aurinkohirvi]

Collecting oral tradition was a popular hobby among academic people in Finland. Lönnrot was one of the many who did it. About 150 000 runos were collected, Kalevala includes 50. A single runo can be very long, there's 22 795 verses all together in Kalevala: plenty to read. About 100 000 are published in Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot collection, which is the biggest poem collection in the world. Runos were also collected from Estonia, but they aren't included in the runo collection nor Kalevala.

[sannapires]

You must have made a lot of reseach for this video, thank you! There is indeed many cultural layers in Kalevala and Kalevalaic poetry. The newest one is influenced by christianity. There is a layer of patriarchal Indo-European influence and changes that came with Iron Age. The oldest layer and the least noticable are part of ancient animism and shamanic worldview that explains inner thruths and phenomenons of outher world with metaphors and symbolism. Information on this oldest layer underneath of other influences can not be read literally because it doesn't really tell a story of human characters but personifies abstract conceps of a reality where humans, nature and spirit world are all one.

[drawntostories]

This is a good summary and I think you managed to analyze it well from several different angles.

[TheHellomypeople]

Its cool that im reading Kalevala in a russian translation, and you gave us an exerpt of an English translation, but the rhythmic pattern is the same in both translations. Probably means that thats the way it sounds in Finnish too

[Lukzguy]

I just now realized how Ilmarinens grief fueled devotion for the divine feminine leads him to create a dead replica (edit(a false idol, if you will))of his hearts desire and therefore commits idolatry. Beautiful!

[andrewdunbar]

I'd love to see a video on various or the best Finnish novels or writers. I've only read The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, who seems to be very popular in French but almost unknown in English.

[KajDalfall]

The Turkish and Finnish connection is a theory that hast been proven anywhere. I don't have anything against Turks but I don't want to be wrongfully connected to anyone. BTW. Akka means old woman.

[SatiaRenee]

I read this a while ago and remember only bits and pieces. I may have to revisit it.

[Victor-lodg]

Nice video! Very informative. Just a side note, it's worth checking out the pronunciation of the author's name :) Finnish is a beautiful language.

[mborok]

I thought the Sampo was a magic mill that produced salt, gold and one other thing (food?) and, when it was lost at sea, turned the sea salty.

[Aurinkohirvi]

Dude! Ural-Altaic language family does not exist! It was never a popular idea and has been completely debunked SEVERAL DECADES ago! The language family is Uralic where Finnish belongs. So big mistake I had to give a thumb down.
And the whole Altaic language family has been debunked recent couple of decades ago. For example Turkish now is considered to belong into Turkic language family.
Nowadays there's attempts to construct a Finno-Indoeuropean proto language, but that hasn't been succesful either, but its considered likely they have a common language origin.

[KajDalfall]

Turks and Finns are zero related via genom.

[turblijura]

Väinämöinen was not old. He was born old.