The Kalevala. An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition.

Paperback. 8vo. Pp. lvi, 679. Pictorial wraps. Map. Translated from the Finnish with an Introduction and Notes By Keith Bosley. Foreword by Albert B. Lord.

Nearly 23,000 verses long, the Kalevala, the great Finnish epic, which like the Iliad and the Odyssey grew out of a rich oral tradition with prehistoric roots, paints a portrait of a people in both peace and at war. Assembled in the 1840s by the Finnish scholar Elias Lönnrot and published in its final form in 1849, it played a central role in the march towards Finnish independence and inspired some of the greatest music of Sibelius. Ongoing debate as to the degree of Lönnrot's personal contributions to the poem is rife amongst scholars, as he merged verse variants and characters, left out superfluous lyrics and composed lines of his own to connect passages into a coherent plot.