Excerpt from The Kalevala, Vol. 1 of 2: The Epic Poem of Finland, Into English It may be interesting to note in this connection that Canon Isaac Taylor, and Professor Sayce have but very recently awakened great interest in this question, in Europe especially, by the reading of papers before the British Philologicalviii. The Kalevala. Association, in which they argue in favor of the Finnie origin of the Aryans. For this new theory these scholars present exceedingly strong evidence, and they conclude that the time of the separation of the Aryan from the Finnie stock must have been more than five thousand years ago. The Finnish nation has one of the most sonorous and flexible of languages. Of the cultivated tongues of Europe, the Magyar, or Hungarian, bears the most positive signs of a deep-rooted Similarity to the Finnish. Both belong to the Ugrian stock of agglutinative languages, t.e., those which preserve the root most carefully, and effect all changes of grammar by suffixes attached to the original stem. Grimm has shown that both Gothic and Icelandic present traces of Finnish influence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

'One of the great mythic poems of Europe' The New York Times Sharing its title with the poetic name for Finland - 'the land of heroes' - Kalevala is the soaring epic poem of its people, a work rich in magic and myth which tells the story of a nation through the ages from the dawn of creation. Sung by rural Finns since prehistoric times, and formally compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the nineteenth century, it is a landmark of Finnish culture and played a vital role in galvanizing its national identity in the decades leading to independence. Its themes, however, reach beyond borders and search the heart of human existence. Translated with an Introduction by Eino Friberg

"[...]any errors and shortcomings which may be detected in my work. I have added short notes at the end of each volume, and a glossary of proper names at the end of the book, but a detailed commentary would be out of place in a popular edition. The Arguments to each Runo are translated, slightly modified, from those in the original. The religion of the poem is peculiar; it is a Shamanistic animism, overlaid with Christianity. The Kalevala relates the history of four principal heroes: Väinämöinen, the Son of the Wind, and of the Virgin of the Air; a great culture-hero, patriarch, and minstrel, always described as a vigorous old man. The [...]".

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