Johann Herder was the first folkorist who wrote that folksongs express national identities. Folklorists in many places and languages began collecting folklore to study their own people's identities, and this mission quickly became one of building national pride: If your people have beautiful or old folklore, then that's a reason to feel proud of your identity!

The Finnish scholar named Elias Lönnrot discovered a living tradition of folk epic songs, very long stories about the feats of an ancient hero named Väinämöinen. His compilation of those songs, titled Kalevala, took on a life of its own.

Today's assigned reading recounts how people of different political ideologies each found their own meanings in the poem. But all continued the idea that Kalevala was central to Finnish identity, inspiring many generations of Finnish scholars to collect and analyze folklore.

And that's how, and why, Finland became a global center of world folklore studies.

Why was the Kalevala so important to Lönnrot and other European scholars in the 1800s? They imagined that Ancient Greek civilization was the ideal model for modern societies. And because the Ancient Greeks considered the epic poem to be the "highest" form of literature, Europeans centered literary studies on the Greek epics: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Imagine everybody's shock, and then excitement, at finding a living oral epic tradition which was as original and rich as Ancient Greek literature!

Readings

Estimated time: ~20 minutes

Lauri Honko, (1987), “The Kalevala Process,” pages 66-79, in Folklife Annual.

PDF File: Honko_1987_Kalevala_Process.pdf

Folksong text: Iivana Iivanainen, "Sampo" (1877).
Translated by Thomas DuBois. In Lea Virtanen, Finnish Folklore (2000).

PDF File: Finnish_Folklore_Sampo.pdf

Rationale: Lauri Honko tells the history of the Finnish National epic, Kalevala, to show how folklore texts have many meanings in oral tradition as well as in mass-mediated national tradition. What role do folklorists play in creating those meanings?

Lecture

While viewing this lecture, ponder how folklorists turned ancient folk songs into current national culture;

Do you know somebody who connects their identity to folklore, for example, they are proud of their people's songs and traditions? How is this person similar to or different from Lönnrot and other European folklorists?

Optional Expansion

Listen to field recordings of Finnish epic songs:

“Kantele” sung by Anni Kiriloff in 1922 [pdf copy of text and audio recording]
Listen to “Steady old Vainamoinen”, Finnish song #15 in California Gold online archive, and
- Look up the translated text in Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala, Rune XL, lines 221-264 (approx page 320 in Epub version).
What's the world's longest folk epic? Maybe it's the Epic of Siri in India?
Lauri Honko (author of today's assigned essay) also did fieldwork in the Tulu Nadu region of India. During a visit to Indiana University in 1986, he demonstrated some field recordings and urged us American folklorists to study the fantastic folk epics of Asia and Africa. Here is a recent (2020) online lecture by Honko's friend, Professor Viveka Rai, describing the Epic of Siri (Prof. Rai also demonstrates how that epic is chanted).

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