Kalevala
THE
EPIC POEM OF FINLAND
INTO ENGLISH
BY
JOHN MARTIN CRAWFORD
[1888]
TO
DR. J.D. BUCK,
AN ENCOURAGING AND UNSELFISH FRIEND, AND TO HIS AFFECTIONATE FAMILY,
THESE PAGES ARE GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.
Contents
PREFACE
PROEM
RUNE I. Birth of Wainamoinen
RUNE II. Wainamoinen’s Sowing
RUNE III. Wainamoinen and Youkahainen
RUNE IV. The Fate of Aino
RUNE V. Wainamoinen’s Lamentation
RUNE VI. Wainamoinen’s Hapless Journey
RUNE VII. Wainamoinen’s Rescue
RUNE VIII. Maiden of the Rainbow
RUNE IX. Origin of Iron
RUNE X. Ilmarinen forges the Sampo
RUNE XI. Lemminkainen’s Lament
RUNE XII. Kyllikki’s Broken Vow
RUNE XIII. Lemminkainen’s Second Wooing
RUNE XIV. Death of Lemminkainen
RUNE XV. Lemminkainen’s Restoration
RUNE XVI. Wainainoinen’s Boat-building
RUNE XVII. Wainamoinen finds the Lost Word
RUNE XVIII. THE RIVAL SUITORS.
RUNE XIX. Ilmarinen’s Wooing
RUNE XX. The Brewing of Beer
RUNE XXI. Ilmarinen’s Wedding-feast
RUNE XXII. The Bride’s Farewell
RUNE XXIII. Osmotar, the Bride-adviser
RUNE XXIV. The Bride’s Farewell
RUNE XXV. Wainamoinen’s Wedding-songs
RUNE XXVI. Origin of the Serpent
RUNE XXVII. The Unwelcome Guest
RUNE XXVIII. The Mother’s Counsel
RUNE XXIX. The Isle of Refuge
RUNE XXX. The Frost-fiend
RUNE XXXI. Kullerwoinen, Son of Evil
RUNE XXXII. Kullervo as a Shepherd
RUNE XXXIII. Kullervo and the Cheat-cake
RUNE XXXIV. Kullervo finds his Tribe-folk
RUNE XXXV. Kullervo’s Evil Deeds
RUNE XXXVI. Kullerwoinen’s Victory and Death
RUNE XXXVII. Ilmarinen’s Bride of Gold
RUNE XXXVIII. Ilmarinen’s Fruitless Wooing
RUNE XXXIX. Wainamoinen’s Sailing
RUNE XL. Birth of the Harp
RUNE XLI. Wainamoinen’s Harp-songs
RUNE XLII. Capture of the Sampo
RUNE XLIII. The Sampo lost in the Sea
RUNE XLIV. Birth of the Second Harp
RUNE XLV. Birth of the Nine Diseases
RUNE XLVI. Otso the Honey-eater
RUNE XLVII. Louhi steals Sun, Moon, and Fire
RUNE XLVIII. Capture of the Fire-fish
RUNE XLIX. Restoration of the Sun and Moon
RUNE L. Mariatta—Wainamoinen’s Departure
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
PREFACE
The following translation was undertaken from a desire to lay before
the English-speaking people the full treasury of epical beauty,
folklore, and mythology comprised in _The Kalevala_, the national epic
of the Finns. A brief description of this peculiar people, and of their
ethical, linguistic, social, and religious life, seems to be called for
here in order that the following poem may be the better understood.
Finland (Finnish, Suomi or Suomenmaa, the swampy region, of which
Finland, or Fen-land is said to be a Swedish translation,) is at
present a Grand-Duchy in the north-western part of the Russian empire,
bordering on Olenetz, Archangel, Sweden, Norway, and the Baltic Sea,
its area being more than 144,000 square miles, and inhabited by some
2,000,000 of people, the last remnants of a race driven back from
the East, at a very early day, by advancing tribes. The Finlanders
live in a land of marshes and mountains, lakes and rivers, seas,
gulfs, islands, and inlets, and they call themselves Suomilainen,
Fen-dwellers. The climate is more severe than that of Sweden. The mean
yearly temperature in the north is about 27°F., and about 38°F., at
Helsingfors, the capital of Finland. In the southern districts the
winter is seven months long, and in the northern provinces the sun
disappears entirely during the months of December and January.
The inhabitants are strong and hardy, with bright, intelligent faces,
high cheek-bones, yellow hair in early life, and with brown hair in
mature age. With regard to their social habits, morals, and manners,
all travellers are unanimous in speaking well of them. Their temper
is universally mild; they are slow to anger, and when angry they keep
silence. They are happy-hearted, affectionate to one another, and
honorable and honest in their dealings with strangers. They are a
cleanly people, being much given to the use of vapor-baths. This trait
is a conspicuous note of their character from their earliest history
to the present day. Often in the runes of The Kalevala reference is
made to the “cleansing and healing virtues of the vapors of the heated
bathroom.”
The skull of the Finn belongs to the brachycephalic (short-headed)
class of Retzius. Indeed the Finn-organization has generally been
regarded as Mongol, though Mongol of a modified type. His color is
swarthy, and his eyes are gray. He is not inhospitable, but not
over-easy of access; nor is he a friend of new fashions. Steady,
careful, laborious, he is valuable in the mine, valuable in the field,
valuable oil shipboard, and, withal, a brave soldier on land.
The Finns are a very ancient people. It is claimed, too, that they
began earlier than any other European nation to collect and preserve
their ancient folk-lore. Tacitus, writing in the very beginning of the
second century of the Christian era, mentions the Fenni, as he calls
them, in the 46th chapter of his De Moribus Germanoram. He says of
them: “The Finns are extremely wild, and live in abject poverty. They
have no arms, no horses, no dwellings; they live on herbs, they clothe
themselves in skins, and they sleep on the ground. Their only resources
are their arrows, which for the lack of iron are tipped with bone.”
Strabo and the great geographer, Ptolemy, also mention this curious
people. There is evidence that at one time they were spread over large
portions of Europe and western Asia.
Perhaps it should be stated here that the copper, so often mentioned in
The Kalevala, when taken literally, was probably bronze, or “hardened
copper,” the amount and quality of the alloy used being not now known.
The prehistoric races of Europe were acquainted with bronze implements.
It may be interesting to note in this connection that Canon Isaac
Taylor, and Professor Sayce have but very recently awakened great
interest in this question, in Europe especially, by the reading of
papers before the British Philological Association, in which they argue
in favor of the Finnic origin of the Aryans. For this new theory these
scholars present exceedingly strong evidence, and they conclude that
the time of the separation of the Aryan from the Finnic stock must have
been more than five thousand years ago.
The Finnish nation has one of the most sonorous and flexible of
languages. Of the cultivated tongues of Europe, the Magyar, or
Hungarian, bears the most positive signs of a deep-rooted similarity
to the Finnish. Both belong to the Ugrian stock of agglutinative
languages, i.e., those which preserve the root most carefully, and
effect all changes of grammar by suffixes attached to the original
stein. Grimm has shown that both Gothic and Icelandic present traces of
Finnish influence.
The musical element of a language, the vowels, are well developed in
Finnish, and their due sequence is subject to strict rules of euphony.
The dotted ö (equivalent to the French eu) of the first syllable must
be followed by an e or an i. The Finnish, like all Ugrian tongues,
admits rhyme, but with reluctance, and prefers alliteration. Their
alphabet consists of but nineteen letters, and of these, b, c, d, f, g,
are found only in a few foreign words, and many others are never found
initial.
One of the characteristic features of this language, and one that is
likewise characteristic of the Magyar, Turkish, Mordvin, and other
kindred tongues, consists in the frequent use of endearing diminutives.
By a series of suffixes to the names of human beings, birds, fishes,
trees, plants, stones, metals, and even actions, events, and feelings,
diminutives are obtained, which by their form, present the names so
made in different colors; they become more naïve, more childlike,
eventually more roguish, or humorous, or pungent. These traits can
scarcely be rendered in English; for, as Robert Ferguson remarks: “The
English language is not strong in diminutives, and therefore it lacks
some of the most effective means for the expression of affectionate,
tender, and familiar relations.” In this respect all translations from
the Finnish into English necessarily must fall short of the original.
The same might be said of the many emotional interjections in which
the Finnish, in common with all Ugrian dialects, abounds. With the
exception of these two characteristics of the Ugrian languages, the
chief beauties of the Finnish verse admit of an apt rendering into
English. The structure of the sentences is very simple indeed, and
adverbs and adjectives are used sparingly.
Finnish is the language of a people who live pre-eminently close to
nature, and are at home amongst the animals of the wilderness, beasts
and birds, winds, and woods, and waters, falling snows, and flying
sands, and rolling rocks, and these are carefully distinguished by
corresponding verbs of ever-changing acoustic import. Conscious of the
fact that, in a people like the Finns where nature and nature-worship
form the centre of all their life, every word connected with the powers
and elements of nature must be given its fall value, great care has
been taken in rendering these finely shaded verbs. A glance at the
mythology of this interesting people will place the import of this
remark in better view.
In the earliest age of Suomi, it appears that the people worshiped
the conspicuous objects in nature under their respective, sensible
forms. All beings were persons. The Sun, Moon, Stars, the Earth, the
Air, and the Sea, were to the ancient Finns, living, self-conscious
beings. Gradually the existence of invisible agencies and energies
was recognized, and these were attributed to superior persons who
lived independent of these visible entities, but at the same time were
connected with them. The basic idea in Finnish mythology seems to lie
in this: that all objects in nature are governed by invisible deities,
termed _haltiat_, regents or genii. These _haltiat_, like members of
the human family, have distinctive bodies and spirits; but the minor
ones are somewhat immaterial and formless, and their existences are
entirely independent of the objects in which they are particularly
interested. They are all immortal, but they rank according to the
relative importance of their respective charges. The lower grades of
the Finnish gods are sometimes subservient to the deities of greater
powers, especially to those who rule respectively the air, the water,
the field, and the forest. Thus, Pilajatar, the daughter of the aspen,
although as divine as Tapio, the god of the woodlands, is necessarily
his servant. One of the most notable characteristics of the Finnish
mythology is the interdependence among the gods. “Every deity”,
says Castrén, “however petty he may be, rules in his own sphere as
a substantial, independent power, or, to speak in the spirit of The
Kalevala, as a self-ruling householder. The god of the Polar-star only
governs an insignificant spot in the vault of the sky, but on this spot
he knows no master.”
The Finnish deities, like the ancient gods of Italy and Greece,
are generally represented in pairs, and all the gods are probably
wedded. They have their individual abodes and are surrounded by their
respective families. The Primary object of worship among the early
Finns was most probably the visible sky with its sun, moon, and stars,
its aurora-lights, its thunders and its lightnings. The heavens
themselves were thought divine. Then a personal deity of the heavens,
coupled with the name of his abode, was the next conception; finally
this sky-god was chosen to represent the supreme Ruler. To the sky, the
sky-god, and the supreme God, the term Jumala (thunder-home) was given.
In course of time, however, when the Finns came to have more purified
ideas about religion, they called the sky Taivas and the sky-god Ukko.
The word, Ukko, seems related to the Magyar Agg, old, and meant,
therefore, an old being, a grandfather; but ultimately it came to be
used exclusively as the name of the highest of the Finnish deities.
Frost, snow, hail, ice, wind and rain, sunshine and shadow, are
thought to come from the hands of Ukko. He controls the clouds; he is
called in The Kalevala, “The Leader of the Clouds,” “The Shepherd of
the Lamb-Clouds,” “The God of the Breezes,” “The Golden King,” “The
Silvern Ruler of the Air,” and “The Father of the Heavens.” He wields
the thunder-bolts, striking down the spirits of evil on the mountains,
and is therefore termed, “The Thunderer,” like the Greek Zeus, and
his abode is called, “The Thunder-Home.” Ukko is often represented
as sitting upon a cloud in the vault of the sky, and bearing on his
shoulders the firmament, and therefore he is termed, “The Pivot of the
Heavens.” He is armed as an omnipotent warrior; his fiery arrows are
forged from copper, the lightning is his sword, and the rainbow his
bow, still called Ukkon Kaari. Like the German god, Thor, Ukko swings
a hammer; and, finally, we find, in a vein of familiar symbolism, that
his skirt sparkles with fire, that his stockings are blue, and his
shoes, crimson colored.
In the following runes, Ukko here and there interposes. Thus, when the
Sun and Moon were stolen from the heavens, and hidden away in a cave
of the copper-bearing mountain, by the wicked hostess of the dismal
Sariola, he, like Atlas in the mythology of Greece, relinquishes the
support of the heavens, thunders along the borders of the darkened
clouds, and strikes fire from his sword to kindle a new sun and a new
moon. Again, when Lemminkainen is hunting the fire-breathing horse
of Piru, Ukko, invoked by the reckless hero, checks the speed of the
mighty courser by opening the windows of heaven, and showering upon
him flakes of snow, balls of ice, and hailstones of iron. Usually,
however, Ukko prefers to encourage a spirit of independence among his
worshipers. Often we find him, in the runes, refusing to heed the call
of his people for help, as when Ilmatar, the daughter of the air,
vainly invoked him to her aid, that Wainamoinen, already seven hundred
years unborn, might be delivered. So also Wainamoinen beseeches Ukko in
vain to check the crimson streamlet flowing from his knee wounded by
an axe in the hands of Hisi. Ukko, however, with all his power, is by
no means superior to the Sun, Moon, and other bodies dwelling in the
heavens; they are uninfluenced by him, and are considered deities in
their own right. Thus, Pæivæ means both sun and sun-god; Kun means moon
and moon-god; and Taehti and Ottava designate the Polar-star and the
Great Bear respectively, as well as the deities of these bodies.
The Sun and the Moon have each a consort, and sons, and daughters. Two
sons only of Pæivæ appear in The Kalevala, one comes to aid Wainamoinen
in his efforts to destroy the mystic Fire-fish, by throwing from the
heavens to the girdle of the hero, a “magic knife, silver-edged, and
golden-handled;” the other son, Panu, the Fire-child, brings back to
Kalevala the fire that bad been stolen by Louhi, the wicked hostess of
Pohyola. From this myth Castrén argues that the ancient Finns regarded
fire as a direct emanation from the Sun. The daughters of the Sun,
Moon, Great Bear, Polar-star, and of the other heavenly dignitaries,
are represented as ever-young and beautiful maidens, sometimes seated
on the bending branches of the forest-trees, sometimes on the crimson
rims of the clouds, sometimes on the rainbow, sometimes on the dome of
heaven. These daughters are believed to be skilled to perfection in the
arts of spinning and weaving, accomplishments probably attributed to
them from the fanciful likeness of the rays of light to the warp of the
weaver’s web.
The Sun’s career of usefulness and beneficence in bringing light
and life to Northland is seldom varied. Occasionally he steps from
his accustomed path to give important information to his suffering
worshipers. For example, when the Star and the Moon refuse the
information, the Sun tells the Virgin Mariatta, where her golden infant
lies hidden.
“Yonder is thy golden infant,
There thy holy babe lies sleeping,
Hidden to his belt in water,
Hidden in the reeds and rushes.”
Again when the devoted mother of the reckless hero, Lemminkainen,
(chopped to pieces by the Sons Of Mana, as in the myth of Osiris) was
raking together the fragments of his body from the river of Tuoni,
and fearing that the sprites of the Death-stream might resent her
intrusion, the Sun, in answer to her entreaties, throws his Powerful
rays upon the dreaded Shades, and sinks them into a deep sleep, while
the mother gathers up the fragments of her son’s body in safety. This
rune of the Kalevala is particularly interesting as showing the belief
that the dead can be restored to life through the blissful light of
heaven.
Among the other deities of the air are the Luonnotars, mystic maidens,
three of whom were created by the rubbing of Ukko’s hands upon his left
knee. They forthwith walk the crimson borders of the clouds, and one
sprinkles white milk, one sprinkles red milk, and the third sprinkles
black milk over the hills and mountains; thus they become the “mothers
of iron,” as related in the ninth rune of The Kalevala. In the highest
regions of the heavens, Untar, or Undutar, has her abode, and presides
over mists and fogs. These she passes through a silver sieve before
sending them to the earth. There are also goddesses of the winds, one
especially noteworthy, Suvetar (_suve_, south, summer), the goddess of
the south-wind. She is represented as a kind-hearted deity, healing
her sick and afflicted followers with honey, which she lets drop from
the clouds, and she also keeps watch over the herds grazing in the
fields and forests. Second only to air, water is the element held most
in reverence by the Finns and their kindred tribes. “It could hardly
be otherwise,” says Castrén, “for as soon as the soul of the savage
began to suspect that the godlike is spiritual, super-sensual, then,
even though he continues to pay reverence to matter, he in general
values it the more highly the less compact it is. He sees on the one
hand how easy it is to lose his life on the surging waves, and on the
other, he sees that from these same waters he is nurtured, and his life
prolonged.” Thus it is that the map of Finland is to this day full of
names like Pyhäjärvi (sacred lake) and Pyhäjoki (sacred river). Some
of the Finlanders still offer goats and calves to these sacred waters;
and many of the Ugrian clans still sacrifice the reindeer to the river
Ob. In Esthonia is a rivulet, Vöhanda, held in such reverence that
until very recently, none dared to fell a tree or cut a shrub in its
immediate vicinity, lest death should overtake the offender within
a year, in punishment for his sacrilege. The lake, Eim, is still
held sacred by the Esthonians, and the Eim-legend is thus told by F.
Thiersch, quoted also by Grimm and by Mace da Charda:
“Savage, evil men dwelt by its borders. They neither mowed the meadows
which it watered, nor sowed the fields which it made fruitful, but
robbed and murdered, insomuch that its clear waves grew dark with the
blood of the slaughtered men. Then did the lake Eim mourn, and one
evening it called together all its fishes, _and rose aloft with them
into the air_. When the robbers heard the sound, they exclaimed: ‘Eim
hath arisen; let us gather its fishes and treasures.’ But the fishes
had departed with the lake, and nothing was found on the bottom but
snakes, and lizards, and toads. And Eim rose higher, and higher, and
hastened through the air like a white cloud. And the hunters in the
forest said: ‘What bad weather is coming on!’ The herdsmen said: ‘What
a white swan is flying above there!’ _For the whole night the lake
hovered among the stars_, and in the morning the reapers beheld it
sinking. And from the swan grew a white ship, and from the ship a dark
train of clouds; and a voice came from the waters: ‘Get thee hence with
thy harvest, for I will dwell beside thee.’ Then they bade the lake
welcome, if it would only bedew their fields and meadows; and it sank
down and spread itself out in its home to the full limits. Then the
lake made all the neighborhood fruitful, and the fields became green,
and the people danced around it, so that the old men grew joyous as the
youth.”
The chief water-god is Ahto, on the etymology of which the Finnish
language throws little light. It is curiously like Ahti, another name
for the reckless Lemminkainen. This water-god, or “Wave-host,” as he is
called, lives with his “cold and cruel-hearted spouse,” Wellamo, at the
bottom of the sea, in the chasms of the Salmon-rocks, where his palace,
Ahtola, is constructed. Besides the fish that swim in his dominions,
particularly the salmon, the trout, the whiting, the perch, the
herring, and the white-fish, he possesses a priceless treasure in the
Sampo, the talisman of success, which Louhi, the hostess of Pohyola,
dragged into the sea in her efforts to regain it from the heroes
of Kalevala. Ever eager for the treasures of others, and generally
unwilling to return any that come into his possession, Ahto is not
incapable of generosity. For example, once when a shepherd lad was
whittling a stick on the bank of a river, he dropped his knife into the
stream. Ahto, as in the fable, “Mercury and the Woodman,” moved by the
tears of the unfortunate lad, swam to the scene, dived to the bottom,
brought up a knife of gold, and gave it to the young shepherd. Innocent
and honest, the herd-boy said the knife was not his. Then Ahto dived
again, and brought up a knife of silver, which he gave to the lad, but
this in turn was not accepted. Thereupon the Wave-host dived again, and
the third time brought the right knife to the boy who gladly recognized
his own, and received it with gratitude. To the shepherd-lad Ahto gave
the three knives as a reward for his honesty.
A general term for the other water-hosts living not only in the sea,
but also in the rivers, lakes, cataracts, and fountains, is Ahtolaiset
(inhabitants of Ahtola), “Water-people,” “People of the Foam and
Billow,” “Wellamo’s Eternal People.” Of these, some have specific
names; as Allotar (wave-goddess), Koskenneiti (cataract-maiden),
Melatar (goddess of the helm), and in The Kalevala these are sometimes
personally invoked. Of these minor deities, Pikku Mies (the Pigmy) is
the most noteworthy. Once when the far-outspreading branches of the
primitive oak-tree shut out the light of the sun from Northland, Pikku
Mies, moved by the entreaties of Wainamoinen, emerged from the sea in
a suit of copper, with a copper hatchet in his belt, quickly grew from
a pigmy to a gigantic hero, and felled the mighty oak with the third
stroke of his axe. In general the water-deities are helpful and full
of kindness; some, however, as Wetehilien and Iku-Turso, find their
greatest pleasure in annoying and destroying their fellow-beings.
Originally the Finlanders regarded the earth as a godlike existence
with personal powers, and represented as a beneficent mother bestowing
peace and plenty on all her worthy worshipers. In evidence of this we
find the names, Maa-emæ (mother-earth), and Maan-emo (mother of the
earth), given to the Finnish Demeter. She is always represented as
a goddess of great powers, and, after suitable invocation, is ever
willing and able to help her helpless sufferers. She is according to
some mythologists espoused to Ukko, who bestows upon her children the
blessings of sunshine and rain, as Gé is wedded to Ouranos, Jordh to
Odhin, and Papa to Rangi.
Of the minor deities of the earth, who severally govern the plants,
such as trees, rye, flax, and barley, Wirokannas only is mentioned
in The Kalevala. Once, for example, this “green robed Priest of the
Forest” abandoned for a time his presidency over the cereals in order
to baptize the infant-son of the Virgin Mariatta. Once again Wirokannas
left his native sphere of action, this time making a most miserable and
ludicrous failure, when he emerged from the wilderness and attempted
to slay the Finnish Taurus, as described in the runes that follow. The
agricultural deities, however, receive but little attention from the
Finns, who, with their cold and cruel winters, and their short but
delightful summers, naturally neglect the cultivation of the fields,
for cattle-raising, fishing, and hunting.
The forest deities proper, however, are held in high veneration. Of
these the chief is Tapio, “The Forest-Friend,” “The Gracious God of
the Woodlands.” He is represented as a very tall and slender divinity,
wearing a long, brown board, a coat of tree-moss, and a high-crowned
hat of fir-leaves. His consort is Mielikki, “The Honey-rich Mother of
the Woodland,” “The Hostess of the Glen and Forest.” When the hunters
were successful she was represented as beautiful and benignant, her
hands glittering with gold and silver ornaments, wearing ear-rings and
garlands of gold, with hair-bands silver-tinseled, on her forehead
strings of pearls, and with blue stockings on her feet, and red strings
in her shoes. But if the game-bag came back empty, she was described as
a hateful, hideous thing, robed in untidy rags, and shod with straw.
She carries the keys to the treasury of Metsola, her husband’s abode,
and her bountiful chest of honey, the food of all the forest-deities,
is earnestly sought for by all the weary hunters of Suomi. These
deities are invariably described as gracious and tender-hearted,
probably because they are all females with the exception of Tapio and
his son, Nyrikki, a tall and stately youth who is engaged in building
bridges over marshes and forest-streams, through which the herds
must pass on their way to the woodland-pastures. Nyrikki also busies
himself in blazing the rocks and the trees to guide the heroes to their
favorite hunting-grounds. Sima-suu (honey-mouth), one of the tiny
daughters of Tapio, by playing on her Sima-pilli (honey-flute), also
acts as guide to the deserving hunters.
Hiisi, the Finnish devil, bearing also the epithets, Juntas, Piru, and
Lempo, is the chief of the forest-demons, and is inconceivably wicked.
He was brought into the world consentaneously with Suoyatar, from whose
spittle, as sung in The Kalevala, he formed the serpent. This demon
is described as cruel, horrible, hideous, and bloodthirsty, and all
the most painful diseases and misfortunes that ever afflict mortals
are supposed to emanate from him. This demon, too, is thought by the
Finlanders to have a hand in all the evil done in the world.
Turning from the outer world to man, we find deities whose energies
are used only in the domain of human existence. “These deities,” says
Castrén, “have no dealings with the higher, spiritual nature of man.
All that they do concerns man solely as an object in nature. Wisdom
and law, virtue and justice, find in Finnish mythology no protector
among the gods, who trouble themselves only about the temporal wants
of humanity.” The Love-goddess was Sukkamieli (stocking-lover).
“Stockings,” says Castrén gravely, “are soft and tender things, and
the goddess of love was so called because she interests herself in the
softest and tenderest feelings of the heart.” This conception, however,
is as farfetched as it is modern. The Love-deity of the _ancient_ Finns
was Lempo, the evil-demon. It is more reasonable therefore to suppose
that the Finns chose the son of Evil to look after the feelings of the
human heart, because they regarded love as an insufferable passion,
or frenzy, that bordered on insanity, and incited in some mysterious
manner by an evil enchanter.
Uni is the god of sleep, and is described as a kind-hearted and welcome
deity. Untamo is the god of dreams, and is always spoken of as the
personification of indolence. Munu tenderly looks after the welfare
of the human eye. This deity, to say the least, is an oculist of long
and varied experience, in all probability often consulted in Finland
because of the blinding snows and piercing winds of the north. Lemmas
is a goddess in the mythology of the Finns who dresses the wounds of
her faithful sufferers, and subdues their pains. Suonetar is another
goddess of the human frame, and plays a curious and important part in
the restoration to life of the reckless Lemminkainen, as described
in the following runes. She busies herself in spinning veins, and in
sewing up the wounded tissues of such deserving worshipers as need her
surgical skill.
Other deities associated with the welfare of mankind are the Sinettaret
and Kankahattaret, the goddesses respectively of dyeing and weaving.
Matka-Teppo is their road-god, and busies himself in caring for horses
that are over-worked, and in looking after the interests of weary
travellers. Aarni is the guardian of hidden treasures. This important
office is also filled by a hideous old deity named Mammelainen, whom
Renwall, the Finnish lexicographer, describes as “femina maligna,
matrix serpentis, divitiarum subterranearum custos,” a malignant woman,
the mother of the snake, and the guardian of subterranean treasures.
From this conception it is evident that the idea of a kinship between
serpents and hidden treasures frequently met with in the myths of the
Hungarians, Germans, and Slavs, is not foreign to the Finns.
Nowhere are the inconsistencies of human theory and practice more
curiously and forcibly shown than in the custom in vogue among
the clans of Finland who are not believers in a future life, but,
notwithstanding, perform such funereal ceremonies as the burying in
the graves of the dead, knives, hatchets, spears, bows, and arrows,
kettles, food, clothing, sledges and snow-shoes, thus bearing witness
to their practical recognition of some form of life beyond the grave.
The ancient Finns occasionally craved advice and assistance from the
dead. Thus, as described in The Kalevala, when the hero of Wainola
needed three words of master-magic wherewith to finish the boat in
which he was to sail to win the mystic maiden of Sariola, he first
looked in the brain of the white squirrel, then in the mouth of the
white-swan when dying, but all in vain; then he journeyed to the
kingdom of Tuoni, and failing there, he “struggled over the points of
needles, over the blades of swords, over the edges of hatchets” to the
grave of the ancient wisdom-bard, Antero Wipunen, where he “found the
lost-words of the Master.” In this legend of The Kalevala, exceedingly
interesting, instructive, and curious, are found, apparently, the
remote vestiges of ancient Masonry.
It would seem that the earliest beliefs of the Finns regarding the dead
centred in this: that their spirits remained in their graves until
after the complete disintegration of their bodies, over which Kalma,
the god of the tombs, with his black and evil daughter, presided. After
their spirits had been fully purified, they were then admitted to the
Kingdom of Manala in the under world. Those journeying to Tuonela were
required to voyage over nine seas, and over one river, the Finnish
Styx, black, deep, and violent, and filled with hungry whirlpools, and
angry waterfalls.
Like Helheim of Scandinavian mythology, Manala, or Tuonela, was
considered as corresponding to the upper world. The Sun and the Moon
visited there; fen and forest gave a home to the wolf, the bear, the
elk, the serpent, and the songbird; the salmon, the whiting, the perch,
and the pike were sheltered in the “coal-black waters of Manala.” From
the seed-grains of the death-land fields and forests, the Tuoni-worm
(the serpent) had taken its teeth. Tuoni, or Mana, the god of the under
world, is represented as a hard-hearted, and frightful, old personage
with three iron-pointed fingers on each hand, and wearing a hat drawn
down to his shoulders. As in the original conception of Hades, Tuoni
was thought to be the leader of the dead to their subterranean home,
as well as their counsellor, guardian, and ruler. In the capacity of
ruler he was assisted by his wife, a hideous, horrible, old witch
with “crooked, copper-fingers iron-pointed,” with deformed head and
distorted features, and uniformly spoken of in irony in the Kalevala as
“_hyva emanta_,” the good hostess; she feasted her guests on lizards,
worms, toads, and writhing serpents. Tuonen Poika, “The God of the
Red Cheeks,” so called because of his bloodthirstiness and constant
cruelties, is the son and accomplice of this merciless and hideous pair.
Three daughters of Tuoni are mentioned in the runes, the first of whom,
a tiny, black maiden, but great in wickedness, once at least showed a
touch of human kindness when she vainly urged Wainamoinen not to cross
the river of Tuoni, assuring the hero that while many visit Manala,
few return, because of their inability to brave her father’s wrath.
Finally, after much entreaty, she ferried him over the Finnish Styx,
like Charon, the son of Erebus and Nox, in the mythology of Greece.
The second daughter of Tuoni is Lowyatar, black and blind, and is
described as still more malignant and loathsome than the first. Through
the East-wind’s impregnation she brought forth the spirits of the nine
diseases most dreaded by mankind, as described in the 45th Rune of the
Kalevala:
“Colic, Pleurisy, and Fever,
Ulcer, Plague, and dread Consumption,
Gout, Sterility, and Cancer.”
The third daughter of Tuoni combines the malevolent and repugnant
attributes of her two sisters, and is represented as the mother and
hostess of the impersonal diseases of mankind. The Finns regarded all
human ailments as evil spirits or indwelling devils, some formless,
others taking the shapes of the most odious forms of animal life, as
worms and mites; the nine, however, described above, were conceived to
have human forms.
Where the three arms of the Tuoni river meet a frightful rock arises,
called Kipu-Kivi, or Kipuvuori, in a dungeon beneath which the spirits
of all diseases are imprisoned. On this rock the third daughter of
Tuoni sits, constantly whirling it round like a millstone, grinding
her subjects until they escape and go forth to torture and slay the
children of men; as in Hindu mythology, Kali (black) sits in judgment
on the dead.
Various other spiritual powers than gods and goddesses are held in
high reverence by the Finns. Tontu is represented as a kind-hearted
house-spirit, a sort of diminutive Cyclops, and offerings of bread and
broth are made to him every morning. Putting a mare’s collar on one’s
neck and walking nine times around a church is thought to be a certain
means of attracting one to the place desired. Para is a mystical,
three-legged being, constructed in many ways, and which, according to
Castrén, attains life and action when its possessor, cutting the little
finger of his left hand, lets three drops of blood fall upon it, and
at the same time pronouncing the proper magic word. The possessor,
by whatever means, of this mystic being, is always supplied with
abundance of milk and cheese. The Maahiset are the dwarfs of Finnish
mythology. Their abode is under stumps, trees, blocks, thresholds and
hearth-stones. Though exceedingly minute and invisible to man they have
human forms. They are irritable and resentful, and they punish with
ulcers, tetter, ringworms, pimples, and other cutaneous affections, all
those who neglect them at brewings, bakings, and feastings. They punish
in a similar manner those who enter new houses without making obeisance
to the four corners, and paying them other kindly attentions; those
who live in untidy houses are also likewise punished. The Kirkonwæki
(church-folk) are little deformed beings living under the altars of
churches. These misshapen things are supposed to be able to aid their
sorrowing and suffering worshipers.
Certain beasts, and birds, and trees, are held sacred in Finland. In
the Kalevala are evident traces of arctolatry, bear-worship, once very
common among the tribes of the north. Otso, the bear, according to
Finnish mythology, was born on the shoulders of Otava, in the regions
of the sun and moon, and “nursed by a goddess of the woodlands in a
cradle swung by bands of gold between the bending branches of budding
fir-trees.” His nurse would not give him teeth and claws until he had
promised never to engage in bloody strife, or deeds of violence. Otso,
however, does not always keep his pledge, and accordingly the hunters
of Finland find it comparatively easy to reconcile their consciences
to his destruction. Otso is called in the runes by many endearing
titles as “The Honey-Eater,” “Golden Light-Foot,” “The Forest-Apple,”
“Honey-Paw of the Mountains,” “The Pride of the Thicket,” “The
Fur-robed Forest-Friend.” Ahava, the West-wind, and Penitar, a blind
old witch of Sariola, are the parents of the swift dogs of Finland,
just as the horses of Achilles, Xanthos and Belios, sprang from
Zephyros and the harpy Podarge.
As to birds, the duck, according to the Kalevala, the eagle, according
to other traditions, lays the mundane egg, thus taking part in the
creation of the world. Puhuri, the north-wind, the father of Pakkanen
(frost) is sometimes personified as a gigantic eagle. The didapper
is reverenced because it foretells the approach of rain. Linnunrata
(bird-path) is the name given to the Milky-way, due probably to a myth
like those of the Swedes and Slavs, in which liberated songs take the
form of snow-white dovelets. The cuckoo to this day is sacred, and is
believed to have fertilized the earth with his songs. As to insects,
honey-bees, called by the Finns, Mehilainen, are especially sacred, as
in the mythologies of many other nations. Ukkon-koiva (Ukko’s dog) is
the Finnish name for the butterfly, and is looked upon as a messenger
of the Supreme Deity. It may be interesting to observe here that the
Bretons in reverence called butterflies, “feathers from the wings of
God.”
As to inanimate nature, certain lakes, rivers, springs, and fountains,
are held in high reverence. In the Kalevala the oak is called Pun
Jumalan (God’s tree). The mountain-ash even to this day, and the
birch-tree, are held sacred, and peasants plant them by their cottages
with reverence.
Respecting the giants of Finnish mythology, Castrén is silent, and
the following notes are gleaned from the Kalevala, and from Grimm’s
Teutonic Mythology. “The giants,” says Grimm, “are distinguished by
their cunning and ferocity from the stupid, good-natured monsters of
Germany and Scandinavia.” Soini, for example, a synonym of Kullervo,
the hero of the saddest episode of the Kalevala when only three days
old, tore his swaddling clothes to tatters. When sold to a forgeman of
Karelia, he was ordered to nurse an infant, but he dug out the eyes
of the child, killed it, and burned its cradle. Ordered to fence the
fields, he built a fence from earth to heaven, using entire pine-trees
for fencing materials, and interweaving their branches with venomous
serpents. Ordered to tend the herds in the woodlands, he changed the
cattle to wolves and bears, and drove them home to destroy his mistress
because she had baked a stone in the centre of his oat-loaf, causing
him to break his knife, the only keepsake of his people.
Regarding the heroes of the Kalevala, much discussion has arisen as to
their place in Finnish mythology. The Finns proper regard the chief
heroes of the Suomi epic, Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen, as
descendants of the Celestial Virgin, Ilmatar, impregnated by the winds
when Ilma (air), Light, and Water were the only material existences. In
harmony with this conception we find in the Kalevala, a description of
the birth of Wainamoinen, or Vaino, as he is sometimes called in the
original, a word probably akin to the Magyar Ven, old. The Esthonians
regard these heroes as sons of the Great Spirit, begotten before the
earth was created, and dwelling with their Supreme Ruler in Jumala.
The poetry of a people with such an elaborate mythology and with
such a keen and appreciative sense of nature and of her various
phenomena, was certain, sooner or later, to attract the attention
of scholars. And, in fact, as early as the seventeenth century, we
meet men of literary tastes who tried to collect and interpret the
various national songs of the Finns. Among these were Palmsköld and
Peter Bäng. They collected portions of the national poetry, consisting
chiefly of wizard-incantations, and all kinds of pagan folk-lore.
Gabriel Maxenius, however, was the first to publish a work on Finnish
national poetry, which brought to light the beauties of the Kalevala.
It appeared in 1733, and bore the title: De Effectibus Naturalibus.
The book contains a quaint collection of Finnish poems in lyric forms,
chiefly incantations; but the author was entirely at a loss how to
account for them, or how to appreciate them. He failed to see their
intimate connection with the religious worship of the Finns in paganism.
The next to study the Finnish poetry and language was Daniel Juslenius,
a celebrated bishop, and a highly-gifted scholar. In a dissertation,
published as early as 1700, entitled, Aboa vetus et nova, he discussed
the origin and nature of the Finnish language; and in another work of
his, printed in 1745, he treated of Finnish incantations, displaying
withal a thorough understanding of the Finnish folk-lore, and of the
importance of the Finnish language and national poetry. With great care
he began to collect the songs of Suomi, but this precious collection
was unfortunately burned.
Porthan, a Finnish scholar of great attainments, born in 1766,
continuing the work of Juslenius, accumulated a great number of
national songs and poems, and by his profound enthusiasm for the
promotion of Finnish literature, succeeded in founding the Society of
the Fennophils, which to the present day, forms the literary centre
of Finland. Among his pupils were E. Lenquist, and Chr. Ganander,
whose works on Finnish mythology are among the references used in
preparing this preface. These indefatigable scholars were joined by
Reinhold Becker and others, who were industriously searching for more
and more fragments of what evidently was a great epic of the Finns.
For certainly neither of the scholars just mentioned, nor earlier
investigators, could fail to see that the runes they collected,
gathered round two or three chief heroes, but more especially around
the central figure of Wainamoinen, the hero of the following epic.
The Kalevala proper was collected by two great Finnish scholars,
Zacharias Topelius and Elias Lönnrot. Both were practicing physicians,
and in this capacity came into frequent contact with the people of
Finland. Topelius, who collected eighty epical fragments of the
Kalevala, spent the last eleven years of his life in bed, afflicted
with a fatal disease. But this sad and trying circumstance did not
dampen his enthusiasm. His manner of collecting these songs was as
follows: Knowing that the Finns of Russia preserved most of the
national poetry, and that they came annually to Finland proper, which
at that time did not belong to Russia, he invited these itinerant
Finnish merchants to his bedside, and induced them to sing their heroic
poems, which he copied as they were uttered. And, when he heard of a
renowned Finnish singer, or minstrel, he did all in his power to bring
the song-man to his house, in order that he might gather new fragments
of the national epic. Thus the first glory of collecting the fragments
of the Kalevala and of rescuing it from literary oblivion, belongs to
Topelius. In 1822 he published his first collections, and in 1831, his
last.
Elias Lönnrot, who brought the whole work to a glorious completion,
was born April 9, 1802. He entered the University of Abo in 1822, and
in 1832, received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University
of Helsingfors. After the death of Castrén in 1850, Lönnrot was
appointed professor of the Suomi (Finnish) language and literature
in the University, where he remained until 1862, at which time he
withdrew from his academical activity and devoted himself exclusively
to the study of his native language, and its epical productions. Dr.
Lönnrot had already published a scholarly treatise, in 1827, on the
chief hero of the Kalevala, before he went to Sava and Karjala to glean
the songs and parts of songs front the lips of the people. This work
was entitled: De Wainainoine priscorum Fennorum numine. In the year
1828, he travelled as far as Kajan, collecting poems and songs of the
Finnish people, sitting by the fireside of the aged, rowing on the
lakes with the fishermen, and following the flocks with the shepherds.
In 1829 he published at Helsingfors a work under the following title:
Kantele taikka Suomee Kansan sek vazhoja että nykysempia Runoja ja
Lauluja (Lyre, or Old and New Songs and Lays of the Finnish Nation). In
another work edited in 1832, written in Swedish, entitled: Om Finnarues
Magiska Medicin (On the Magic Medicine of the Finns), he dwells on the
incantations so frequent in Finnish poetry, notably in the Kalevala.
A few years later he travelled in the province of Archangel, and
so ingratiated himself into the hearts of the simple-minded people
that they most willingly aided him in collecting these songs. These
journeys were made through wild fens, forests, marshes, and ice-plains,
on horseback, in sledges drawn by the reindeer, in canoes, or in
some other forms of primitive conveyance. The enthusiastic physician
described his journeyings and difficulties faithfully in a paper
published at Helsingfors in Swedish in 1834. He had the peculiar good
luck to meet an old peasant, one of the oldest of the runolainen in
the Russian province of Wuokiniem, who was by far the most renowned
minstrel of the country, and with whose closely impending death,
numerous very precious runes would have been irrevocably lost.
The happy result of his travels throughout Finland, Dr. Lönnrot now
commenced to arrange under the central idea of a great epic, called
Kalevala, and in February, 1835, the manuscript was transmitted to the
Finnish Literary Society, which had it published in two parts. Lönnrot,
however, did not stop here; he went on searching and collecting, and,
in 1840, had brought together more than one thousand fragments of
epical poetry, national ballads, and proverbs. These he published in
two works, respectively entitled, Kanteletar (Lyre-charm), and The
Proverbs of the Suomi People, the latter containing over 1700 proverbs,
adages, gnomic sentences, and songs.
His example was followed by many of his enthusiastic countrymen, the
more prominent of whom are Castrén, Europæus, Polén and Reniholm.
Through the collections of these scholars so many additional parts of
the epical treasure of Finland were made public that a new edition of
the Kalevala soon became an imperative necessity. The task of sifting,
arranging, and organizing the extensive material, was again allotted
to Dr. Lönnrot, and in his second editions of the Kalevala, which
appeared in 1849, the epic, embracing fifty runes and 22,793 lines,
had reached its mature form. The Kalevala was no sooner published than
it attracted the attention of the leading scholars of Europe. Men of
such world-wide fame as Jacob Grimm, Steinthal, Uhland, Carrière and
Max Müller hastened to acknowledge its surpassing value and intrinsic
beauty. Jacob Grimm, in a separate treatise, published in his Kleinere
Schriften, said that the genuineness and extraordinary value of the
Kalevala is easily proved by the fact that from its mythological
ideas we can frequently interpret the mythological conceptions of the
ancient Germans, whereas the poems of Ossian manifest their modern
origin by their inability to clear up questions of old Saxon or German
mythology. Grimm, furthermore, shows that both the Gothic and Icelandic
literatures display unmistakable features of Finnish influence.
Max Müller places the Kalevala on a level with the greatest epics of
the world. These are his words: