Kalevala Essay - Critical Essays

Critical Evaluation

The stories contained in the Kalevala stem from Finnish folktales that are many centuries old. However, it is important to remember that the Kalevala that now exists took shape only in 1835. This was when Elias Lönnrot published a compilation of folktales he spent years gathering and arranging. Lönnrot did not invent any of the stories in the Kalevala, but he did codify and edit them so that they would flow into each other in a smooth narrative that would make up a unified aesthetic whole. Lönnrot was no doubt influenced in his compilation of the Kalevala by the Finnish nationalism of his day (Finland was ruled by Russia until 1917). Finland was one of many European countries that experienced a nationalistic revival in the nineteenth century, and throughout Europe folk legends were an important part of this revival.

The Kalevala is a cohesive story, but it contains dozens of individual tales within the central narrative. The stories are legends, not historical fact. The adventures of Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Kullervo are fantastic and mythical. Nevertheless, the epic chronicles a development through time that can be termed historical. Like the Hindu epic The Mahabharata (c. 400 b.c.e.-200 c.e.; English translation, 1834) and the Babylonian creation story “Enuma elish,” the Kalevala starts at the beginning of time, with the creation of the cosmos itself, and then tells the story of the Adamlike Väinämöinen, who in many ways epitomizes basic human strivings and yearnings. As further generations are born and the epic’s list of characters lengthens, the narrative moves on in a historical progression to more complex strivings and conflicts, ending with the birth of Marjatta’s child, who heralds a new order of being. The Kalevala is the ontogenesis of humankind.

Väinämöinen has to be accounted the major character of the Kalevala, yet he is in many ways an enigmatic and unfulfilled figure. Like the biblical Adam and the Greek hero Prometheus, he is the first to do many things, but he never finds earthly happiness, particularly with regard to women. He repeatedly meets younger men, among them Joukahäinen and Ilmarinen, who do better with the opposite sex...

(The entire section is 953 words.)