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The Living Kalevala: An Epic Finnish Poem
| Article
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13118 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1987 |
6,391 Words |
| Author
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Eloise and Lauri Paananen
Coauthors Eloise and Lauri Paananen specialize in ethnic
groups of North America, particularly those from the northern
European countries. Born in Finland, Lauri is a frequent
contributor to Newyorkin Uutiset, a Finnish-language
newspaper published in Brooklyn, New York. Eloise, his wife,
is the author of more than twenty books, two of which deal
with Finnish immigration to America. |
When Finnish settlers first appeared in America and established the Delaware colony in 1638, they brought with them incredible wood working skills, their native handicrafts, and an inborn talent for surviving harsh conditions. They hacked at the surrounding wilderness and built log homes in a style later called the "American log cabin"; they brought their saunas, their language, and their Lutheran religion. Hardworking, industrious, and creative in the ways of the wilds, they established churches and legal system, built flour mills and roads, and mapped uncharted regions. They got along well with the Indians, apparently having no need for stockades, and they learned Indian dialects easily.
For convenience sake, these early folk often changed their names. But because at that time, Finns were subjects of the Swedish kingdom, there was confusion about their ethnic identity. Since there were so few of them, nobody paid much attention to the differences between Swedes and Finns--particularly to the fact that the languages of the Finns was Finno-Ugric, from the Uralic family of languages, as is Estonian and Lapp, whereas Swedish is a North Germanic language of the Indo-European family. Furthermore, the Finns' ancient culture and folklore were not of Viking origin.
Finnish literature had not yet blossomed when the Finnish colony settled on American shores; scholars knew Latin and Swedish, but Finnish, hardly at all. There were great disparities in the meanings of words between the eastern and western parts of the sparsely populated northern country. Folklore was a matter of memory, passed from generation to generation. With the exception of the great work of Bishop Mikael Agricola who, in 1548, translated the New and part of the Old Testaments, as well as the Pslams into Finnish, the Finnish literary landscape was sparse. Agricola also had begun collecting runes and fragments of Finnish mythology, many of which had been forgotten except in Karelia and a few other remote places.
One can only speculate about how those early Finnish settlers in America assuaged their homesickness with the songs and poems they remembered. In the primeval forests of America, they might have felt the odd stirrings of familiarity, for beyond the relatively urbanized regions of Turku and Helsinki, their original homeland stretched endlessly into dark frozen wilderness. There ancient spirits dwelled and magic words were sung.
As the Finns blended into the mainstream of American colonial life, they passed on the snatches of poems and songs, wise sayings, and
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