A-Z 2021 L - Kalevala (Elias Lönnrot, 1835/1849)

I think I've gone over my love of fairy/folktales before, so I'll forego any introduction about such things, for now.  Instead, given the nature of Kalevala, I should look at the political underpinnings of a writer composing a collection of such stories.

Fairy and folk collections essentially fall into two categories.  There are the variety that most people likely think of, where the stories come from a variety of sources and are thrown together because someone from outside the culture enjoys them; this might best be defined as the Lang approach.  Then there are the collections made with purpose, by people within the culture they are collecting from, trying to make a specific, often inherently nationalistic, statement.  Kalevala is firmly a member of this second variety.

To begin with, it's important to address the things that Kalevala is not.  It is not a collection in the sense that most would think of collections being.  Rather than simply compiling an anthology of sorts, Elias Lönnrot collected the tales that flitted around the 19th-century Finnish landscape, then took his own hand at the bardic skillset, weaving the stories and songs around each other into a single coherent whole, a 600-page poem with chapter breaks.  This is not to say that it's internally consistent; several times characters take credit for events that are properly attributed to others.  That said, the central plotline, largely telling of the interactions between Väinämöinen the eternal singer, Ilmarinen the immortal blacksmith, Lemminkäinen of the islands, and Louhi the Mistress of the North, has mythic qualities all over it, with characters routinely singing (or smithing) reality into the shape they desire, shifting the forms of themselves and others at will, and calling on the gods with visible effects.  A recurring object, the Sampo, is crafted by Ilmarinen for Louhi and provides her homeland with riches, seemingly without end.  While most animals are simply animals, trees and boats seem to be able to speak with Väinämöinen easily.

There are segments that feel almost like in their earlier existence as song-poems in the oral tradition, they were intended almost as a call-and-response; many times through the book, whole sections are repeated with minor variation.  If Ilmarinen is smithing something, he's going to get amazing things that aren't what he was trying to make at least twice, and shove the wonders back into the furnace so he can try again.  If anyone is traveling and needs to request something from a village, he's going to knock on at least two doors and not find what he's looking for before finding it in the third.  The rule of threes is firmly in place here.

All in all, a wonderful read, albeit one with a great many unlikeable characters.  Even the most heroic characters are greatly flawed here; I can count the number of characters who never did anything immoral on one hand, and all of those are female characters.  That seems to be a common trait in mythic scenarios, though; it's near impossible to find characters in epics who aren't flawed and, well... human.

So, what about that nationalistic streak I mentioned?  Well, for that, we have to look at the world as it was for Lönnrot.  His Finland was a largely-autonomous part of Russia at the time, and few were recording the folk songs of the forest people in the north of the country.  A generation earlier, the folklorist Carl Axel Gottlund had lamented that there was no national epic for the Finnish people to unite behind, no central mythology.  Lönnrot's contribution, then, provided that; it's notable that he revised the first edition of it into a single unified whole, 14 years after the initial publishing, and later released an abridged version of the work in 1862 specifically so it could be taught in schools.  A visit to Finland now would show just how important this work became for the culture; it's common to find names from the Kalevala attached to places and businesses (a small town started by Finnish immigrants in Michigan is called Kaleva, with street names to match), and when Don Rosa wrote a Sampo-inspired story in Uncle Scrooge comics, complete with relevant characters, it instantly made him a celebrity there.

It could be, and often has been, argued that Kalevala helped to focus the Finnish national identity, enough that when Russia began trying to limit the autonomy of Finland in the late 19th century, the Finnish people pushed back, long and hard enough that they eventually declared independence in late 1917 (admittedly alongside other issues in Russia).  Its reach extends beyond Finland's borders, however; most notably, J.R.R. Tolkien based parts of The Silmarillion on Kalevala, and the character of Tom Bombadil is almost certainly inspired by Väinämöinen.

In any case, this was a very enjoyable read, and significantly less viking-ey than I expected.  Fancy that, the least coastal part of Scandinavia has a different culture...  but just as rich in mythic lore.