The Kalevala, and music about it

I finished reading the Kalevala today—that is, the national epic of Finland, adapted by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century from folksong. I was surprised how much emotion it managed to produce in me, emotion as you get from stories, despite it just being a poem. Things happen according to the order of poetry rather than reality, such as there being a lot of coincidences, and everyone speaks in verse. And yet I got a strong sense of the characters and enjoyed it very much in a story kind of way. It was good reading.

A friend asked why I chose to read the Kalevala, and, heh, I wasn't exactly sure. It's a combination of having a taste for classics from European cultures, listening to a bit too much Finnish metal, and knowing a Finnish guy on the internet.

It was the characters that impressed me the most. Writers can learn a lot from how you feel for these characters even though the tales are simple and there's little internal narration. Lemminkainen is quite unlikeable, yet I end up caring about the outcomes of his missions, and one event concerning him is somehow the most heartwarming thing in the book. What another character, Kullervo, goes through seems to be a serious case of what we would now call an existential crisis, having nothing to do, no one to live for, and almost no cause to devote himself to. Given that, his fate, which I won't spoil, is masterfully sad.

I read the final chapter with the Kalevala Melody on repeat—here's a Spotify link—which is apparently the tune to which the poem is sung. It's very pretty and appropriate to the feel of the story, but I'd read too slowly if I actually synced my reading to the music! I found it a few days ago when searching for what a kantele sounds like, which is a folk instrument that comes up significantly in the epic.

In searching for the Kalevala Melody today, I found there's also quite a bit of music inspired by the Kalevala. Sibelius wrote some, and I'm listening at the very moment to the Kalevala Suite by Uuno Klami; I especially like the first movement as of now, which is about the creation myth in the first chapter. It's interesting to see which scenes from books composers decide to render as music— After I read the Icelandic Njal's Saga last year, I smiled to see there's a piece called Björn Behind Kári by Jón Leifs, which refers to an event that's not particularly significant, but definitely memorable and surprisingly funny and feel-good.

I've been told about Amorphis, a progressive metal band who have several albums themed after the Kalevala. They're not my style of music, though a few songs are growing on me. But it's exciting to read their lyrics and see how those old poems have been rendered into modern ones. It feels almost like hearing people speak conversationally about something you like that's more obscure or scholarly, the excitement of some solitary pleasure being put among the popular and quotidian. And they have a take on Lemminkainen's character that I didn't see when I was reading—

However, the greater effect of Kalevala on my metal appreciation is just familiarizing me with some of the myth and lore of Finland. Turisas is another name for Iku-Turso, who lives in the water and does some things; Lempo, the title of a Korpiklaani song, is the force of evil. Swallow the Sun's Songs from the North, which I wrote about in my last post and still love very much, has a little Finnish passage mentioning Pohjola, the cold and depressing northern country in the Kalevala. I wondered for a little while if the whole "North" in that album was this Pohjola. But I think the mention of Pohjola is just a very clever way to dip into the band's heritage and evoke the rustic and gloomy connotations of the North. The final song on the album is about commanding clouds into battle—could the speaker be becoming like Ukko, the highest god in the Kalevala who's always spoken about with regard to his control over the clouds?

By the way, there's something I really like about the sound of the name 'Ukko.' There's something mysterious about it, not a sinister sort of mystery but a quiet and peaceful one, as though after all the phenomena in the world, if you go behind the scenes and into the clouds, there's an Ukko hidden there. But apparently it just means 'old man.'

I'm young and grew up with the internet, so it didn't occur to me till writing this how instrumental the internet has been in my appreciation of the Kalevala. I know about it through the internet, read it from an online public domain archive, and browsed and discovered relevant music in a way that'd be much different if I had to, say, go to the library if I wanted to hear a kantele.