Finnish Folk Poetry. Epic: An Anthology in Finnish and English

The Baltic-Finnish region - from Estonia in the south to Finnish and Russian Karelia in the north - is one of those areas where ancient epic survived long enough to be recorded. The folk poetry of the Finnish peoples made its major impact on the world with the publication of the "Kalevala" in the middle of the nineteenth century. The "Kalevala", which came to be seen as the 'national epic' of the Finns, is in reality a collection of epic fragments edited and arranged by Elias Lönnrot into a series of loosely linked narrative sequences. The main body of authentic material that forms the basis of Finnish folk poetry studies remains almost completely unknown outside Finland; even there, it is readily available only to scholars. The need for access to authentic specimens of folk poetry has been felt all the more acutely in recent years as interest in oral tradition has grown. It is this need that the present "Anthology" is designed to meet. The editors have attempted to produce a work that will satisfy the requirements of scholars and students and give pleasure to me general reader. The choice and arrangement of the poems illustrate the main historical stages of development - from ancient myths about the origin of the universe to an eighteenth-century elegy sung to army recruits as they left home. The poems bring alive the vanished world of the hunters and fishermen of Finnish and Russian Karelia, and of the serf bound to the land in Ingria. The poems take the reader back into an age when shamanism was still prevalent and show how Christianity slowly replaced the old beliefs. Above all, the poems remind us of the power of the human imagination and of man's need for art, a need that survives and finds a rich response even in the most primitive and deprived conditions.