Kalevala or the Finnish National Epic

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.

From Lang’s fundamental essay Custom and Myth, published in 1884, we have drawn the study Kalevala, or the Finnish National Epic, which today we propose to modern readers.

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot - a Finnish physician, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry - from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo. In this study, Andrew Lang reveals its secrets and summarizes its history.