Kalevala

Finnish scholar, Elias Lönnrot, spent almost twenty years travelling around Finland, Karelia, Ingria, and the surrounding areas recording the songs of his first collection of old rune singers. Following the publication of the first collection of thirty-two runes that make up Old Kalevala 1835, he assembled additional material into a new collection of fifty runes, published in 1849, that quickly became the National Epic of Finland.
The Kalevala-themed music composed by Jean Sibelius and the many paintings by Akseli Gallen-Kallela and other artists played a significant role in the Finnish search for identity and independence.
Kalevala has been widely translated into many languages in verse and in prose. While the two English verse translations of thirty years ago offer various metric patterns, Finnish-born Kaarina Brooks has translated, for the first time since 1904, the complete runic Kalevala, faithfully following the lovely sing-song kalevala-metre. And, as far as possible in a translation, her version returns the enchanting poesy of the original Finnish Kalevala.