Feb. 13, 18S5.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



129 



THE KAl-KVALA. 

 Br Edward Clodd. 



THE important woi-k of Mr. Andrew Lang on " Custom 

 and Myth " demanded so full a notice in these 

 columns, that reference to certain essays which were 

 Included in that volume, but which lay somewhat outside 

 its main purpose, was excluded. Among tliesc e.«says is a 

 reprint of Mr. Lang's paper on the national poem of the 

 Finns, the " Kalevala," which appeared in Fraser's 

 Magazine some years ago. This paper merited repro- 

 duction, and thanks are due to the author for 

 rescuing so skilful and vivid an analy.sis of that 

 remarkable and, among ourselvej;, neglected epic from 

 the oblivion of a dead serial. The interest of the 

 present writer in the " Kalevala " was aroused by a visit 

 to Finland in tlie summer of 187S, when, in the balmy 

 August evenings the children of the household sang the 

 songs of Suomi (i.t'., the swamp or sea-laud, the native 

 name of the country) on the waters and among the pines 

 and birches of that land of lake, fen, and forest, and when 

 his accomplished hostess Englished the runes which tell the 

 exploits of Wiiinamoinen and his fellow-heroes. He is 

 now engaged, in conjunction with Mr. Kirby (of the 

 British Museum), to whom, in fact, the lion's share of the 

 work at present falls, in preparing a translation or para- 

 phrase of the "Kalevala" for English readers ; and, mean- 

 while, the readers of Knowledge may find their interest 

 in that poem awakened by an epitome of its contents, 

 prefaced by some general remarks on Finnish niytholog}'. 



Finland, i.e.. Fen-land, is little known to the tourist; 

 it lies out of the beaten track of the "personally con- 

 ducted," but both scenery and people well repay the 

 journey thither. The most pictures-que route is vid 

 Stockholm, and thence by sea to Wiborg. Puints of inte- 

 rest and curiosity are ever opening out as the little 

 steamer threads its way among the rocklets that fringo the 

 gulf in such numbers as to make navigation by night im- 

 possible, and the leisurely voyage leaves time for halting 



o 



to spy the nakedness of primitive Abo, and to see in 

 detail the 'varsity town of Helsingfors, majestically up- 

 lifted in the rear of the guns of Sveaborg, that guard the 

 narrow and winding channel. The area of Finland ex- 

 ceeds that of the L'^nited Kingdom, but its popula- 

 tion is barely two-thirds that of Scotland. One third 

 of the country is lake and river, swamp and morass, 

 the remainder is forest or patches of cleared ground, 

 if that can be called cleared which, after the uprooting and 

 burning of the trees, is everywhere encumbered with masses 

 of granite as outcrop, or erratic boulder, so that but a 

 scanty harvest rewards the rude husbandry, and the 

 peasants have in hard times to mix bark with their rye 

 bread. The ruling class is Swedish by descent, although 

 Finnish to the core, for both high and low, although more 

 or less racially distinct, have been welded together by the 

 struggles of centuries, and by the common liberties enjoyed 

 during the six or seven centuries under Swedish rule. 

 After long resistance, Finland was ceded to Russia in 1809. 

 The conqueror astutely encouraged the national feeling to 

 counteract hankerings after re-ui;ion with the Swedes, pre- 

 serving the ancient constitution, with its rights of legisla- 

 tion and taxation, and thus inviting the purely Finnish 

 element to come more into pla}'. 



As might be expected, the inhabitants of the Baltic 

 provinces are of more mixed race than those in the inland 

 districts. But both may conveniently be classed as non- 

 Aryan, and as more nearly allied to the Tatar-Mongolian 



race than to any other known grou]i, although their exact 

 relation, like that of the Magyars, to the pre- Aryan dwellers 

 dwellers in Europe is obscure. The language nf the more 

 remote provinces is still in the agglutinative stage — i.e., the 

 words are loosely joined togetlu^r iastcail of l)eing fused, 

 the union is mechanical ratiicr than clu'mical ; but that of 

 the Baltic provinces has, under foreign iulluence, almost 

 reached the inflectional stage. 



The fantastic mythology of the Finns has not received 

 among English students the attention which it deserves. 

 As the heritage of a people allied to races dominant in 

 Eurasia before the Aryans (who may themselves have 

 .'■prung from their loins) appear upon the scene, it would 

 contain more primitive elements, and thus throw light on 

 the intellectual condition of an ancestry more remote than 

 ours. Moreover, it would take firm root in an undisturbed 

 and isolated country like Finland, whose physical features 

 — long indented coasts, numberless islets, gianito hills, 

 stretches of marshland, sandy moors, dense, gloomy 

 forests, dark, turbulent waters, and long, sad, silent winters 

 — fed the weird imagination of a people in whose blood 

 ran dread of the Shaman and all his spells and in- 

 cantations. In fact, save that general personification 

 of phenomena which lies at the base of all primitive inter- 

 pretation of them, the Finnish mythology has apparently 

 little in common with any other, that of the ncm- Aryan 

 Esthoniaus on the opposite shores of the Gulf of Finland 

 excepted. Early mythology and theology are one, and we 

 find among the ancient Finns the worship of natural 

 oVijects, all moving things being credited with life, and all 

 their relations regarded as the actions of mighty powers. 

 So far as the gods of their Pantheon can be sorted from 

 the confused and contradictory mass of oral traditions, it 

 would appear that the chief deity, a kind of jirimini 

 inter pares, is Jumala,* the impersonal heavens with all 

 their varied phases. Personified, or detached from the 

 visible, he appears as the many-titled Ukkof (itself once a 

 general term for gods)— Ancient One, God of tin; Sky, The 

 Thunderer, and so forth; who is husband of Ilmatar, the 

 daughter of the Breizes of the Air, and also father of the 

 chief heroes of the Kalevala, Wainiimoinen, and Tlmarinen, 

 broadly resembling the Norse demi-gods Odin and Thor 

 respectively. Ilkko, whom we shall meet in the Kalevala, 

 is one of a crowd of departmental, immortal deities, more or 

 less incarnated, arranged in pairs, like the ancient classic 

 r'ods, and ranked in the order of the importance of their 

 functions. Philajatar, the goddess of the mountain-ash, is 

 the servant of Tapio, the forest god ; but, nevertheless, her 

 dominion is an imperiuin in imperio. " Every god," tays 

 Gastrin, in his " Finnish Mythology," how petty soever he 

 may be, operates in his own si)hero as a substantial, inde- 

 pendent power, or, to speak in the spirit of the runes, as a 

 self-ruling householder. The god of the polar-star only 

 governs a quite insignificant spot in the vault of heaven, 

 but on this spot he is his own master or host." 



So we find Pwiva^ sun-god ; Paun, his son, god of fire 

 Koit, god of the dawn; Kun, moon god ; gods of the 

 leading stars, serene and stately deities. Among the 

 powers of the upper air are the mystic maidens Luon- 

 notars, three of whom were created by Ukko rubbing hi.s 

 hands on his left knee-cap. How they became the " mothers 

 of iron" will be told in the analysis of the Kalevala. 

 Udutar is the goddess of fogs and mists, the finer descrip- 

 tions of which she passes through a sieve before sending 

 them on the earth. On that adoration of the water which 

 among the Finns held place second only to that of the air, 



* Id est, Thunder-home, from J urn (pronounced Yoom), an 

 onomatopa^ia for tlinnder, and la, a local siiflix. 

 t Cognate with Magyar, arjrj, old 



