Karelo Finnish epic kalevala protagonists. Kalevala Karelian-Finnish folk epic

Summary "Kalevala" allows you to get acquainted in detail with this famous Karelian-Finnish epic. The book consists of 50 runes (or songs). It is based on epic folk songs. The folklore material was carefully processed in the XIX century by the Finnish linguist Elias Lennort. He was the first to plot separate and isolated epic songs, eliminating certain irregularities. The first edition was published in 1835.

Runes

The brief content of the Kalevala describes in detail the actions in all the runes of this national epic. Generally Kalevala is the epic name of the state in which all the heroes and characters of Karelian legends live and act. This title was given to the poem itself Lennroth.

"Kalevala" consists of 50 songs (or runes). These are epic works written by a scientist in the course of communication with Finnish and Karelian peasants. The ethnographer managed to collect most of the material on the territory of Russia - in the Arkhangelsk and Olonets provinces, as well as in Karelia. In Finland, he worked on the western shores of Lake Ladoga, right up to Ingria.

Translating to Russian language

For the first time, a brief summary of Kalevala was translated into Russian by the poet and literary critic Leonid Belsky. It was published in the journal Pantheon of Literature in 1888.

The following year the poem was printed in a separate edition. For Russian, Finnish, and European scholars and researchers, the Kalevala is a key source of information about the pre-Christian religious views of Karelians and Finns.

To describe the brief content of "Kalevala" you need to start with the fact that in this poem there is no harmonious main plot that could link all the songs together. As it happens, for example, in Homer's epic works, the Odyssey or the Iliad.

"Kalevala" in a very brief content is an extremely diverse work. The poem begins with the legends and ideas of the Karelians and Finns about how the world was created, how the earth and the sky, all kinds of lights appeared. At the very beginning, the main character of the Karelian epic named Vainamainen is born. It is alleged that he was born thanks to the daughter of air. It is Väinämöinen who arranges the whole earth, starts sowing barley.

Adventures of folk heroes

The epos "Kalevala" in short content tells the story of the travels and adventures of various heroes. First of all - Vainamainen himself.

He meets the beautiful maiden of the North, who agrees to marry him. However, there is one condition. The hero must build a special boat from the fragments of its spindle.

Väinämöinen starts to work, but at the most crucial moment hurts himself with an ax. The bleeding turns out to be so strong that it cannot be eliminated on its own. We have to ask for help from a wise healer. He tells him a folk story about the origin of iron.

The secret of wealth and happiness

The healer helps the hero, relieves him of heavy bleeding. In the epic "Kalevala" in summary, Väinämöinen returns home. In native walls, he reads a special spell that raises a strong wind in the area and transfers the hero to the country of the North to a blacksmith named Ilmarinen.

The blacksmith forges at his request a unique and mysterious item. This is the mysterious mill of Sampo, which, according to legend, brings happiness, luck and wealth.

Immediately several runes devoted to the adventures of Lemminkäinen. He is a warlike and powerful sorcerer, a womanly heart conqueror known to the whole district,   A cheerful hunter who has only one drawback - the hero is fond of women's charms.

In the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala" (you can read a brief content in this article), its fascinating adventures are described in detail. For example, he somehow finds out about a pretty girl who lives in Saari. And she is known not only for her beauty, but also for her incredibly obstinate character. All fiancés she categorically refuses. The hunter decides by all means to achieve her hands and hearts. The mother is trying in every way to dissuade her son from this thoughtless venture, but to no avail. He does not listen to her and goes on the road.

In Saari, at first, the loving hunter makes fun. But over time, he manages to conquer all the local girls, except for one - impregnable Kyullikki. This is the beauty for which he set off.

Lemminkäinen goes on to take decisive action - kidnaps the girl, intending to take her as his wife to her home. Finally, he threatens all women of Saari - if they tell who actually took Kyllikki, he will start a war, as a result of which all their brothers and husbands will be exterminated.

At first, Kyullikki resists, but as a result agrees to marry a hunter. In return, she takes an oath from him that he will never go to war to her native lands. The hunter promises this, and also takes an oath with his new wife that she will never go to the village to dance, but will be his faithful wife.

Väinamöinen in the netherworld

The plot of the Finnish epic "Kalevala" (a summary is provided in this article) returns to Vainainmeinen. This time is a story about his journey to hell.

Along the way, the hero has to visit the womb of the giant Viipunen. With the latter he is seeking the secret three words that are needed in order to build a wonderful boat. On it, the hero goes to Pohjela. He expects to achieve the location of the northern maiden and marry her. But it turns out that the girl chose him the blacksmith Ilmarinen. They are getting ready to play the wedding.

wedding ceremony

The description of the wedding, the corresponding celebration of the rites, as well as the duties of husband and wife are devoted to several separate songs.

In the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala" in a brief content describes how the more experienced mentor tell the young bride, how she will behave in marriage. The old beggar woman, who comes to the celebration, starts up in the memories of the times when she was young, got married, but she had to divorce, as her husband turned out to be angry and aggressive.

Read at this time of instruction and the groom. He is not told to treat his chosen one badly. He also gives advice to a poor old man who recalls how he instructed his wife.

At the table, the newlyweds are served with all sorts of dishes. Väinämöinen utters a feast song in which he glorifies his native land, all its inhabitants, and separately the owners of the house, matchmakers, bridesmaids and all the guests who came to the festival.

Wedding feast is fun and plentiful. On the way back the newlyweds go to the sleigh. On the way, they break. Then the hero turns to local people for help - it is necessary to go down to Tuonela for the gimlet to fix the sled. This is only a true brave man. Those in the surrounding villages and villages are not located. Then Väinämäinen has to go to Tuonela himself. He repairs the sleigh and safely goes back.

The tragedy of the hero

A tragic episode devoted to the fate of the hero Kullervo is given separately. His father had a younger brother named Untamo, who did not like him and built all sorts of wiles. As a result, a real feud arose between them. Untamo gathered the warriors and killed his brother and his clan. Only one pregnant woman survived, and Untamo took her as a slave. She gave birth to a child, who was named Kullervo. Even in infancy, it became clear that he would grow up a hero. When he grew up, he began to think about revenge.

Untamo was very worried, he decided to get rid of the boy. He was put in a barrel and thrown into the water. But Kullervo survived. He was thrown into a fire, but even there he did not burn. Tried to hang on the oak, but after three days found sitting on a bitch and draw warriors on the bark.

Then Untamo humbled himself and left Kullervo with him as a slave. He nursed the children, ground rye, chopped wood. But he did not succeed. The child was exhausted, rye turned into dust, and in the forest he cut down good logging trees. Then Untamo sold the boy to the blacksmith Ilmarinen.

Blacksmith service

In a new place, Kullervo was made a shepherd. In the work "Kalevala" (the Karelian-Finnish mythological epos, a summary of which is given in this article) describes his service to Ilmarinen.

Once the mistress gave him bread for lunch. When Kullervo began to cut it, the knife crumbled into crumbs, inside was a stone. This knife was the last reminder to the boy about his father. Therefore, he decided to take revenge on his wife Ilmarinen. The angry hero drove the herd into the marsh, where wild animals had eaten the cattle.

He turned bears into cows and wolves into calves. Under the guise of a herd drove them back home. He ordered the hostess to be torn to pieces as soon as she looked at them.

Hiding from the blacksmith's house, Kullervo decided to take revenge on Untamo. On the way, he met an old woman who told him that his father was actually alive. The bogatyr really found his family on the border of Lapland. His parents accepted him with open arms. They considered him long dead. Like her eldest daughter, who went to the forest to pick berries and did not return.

Kullervo remained in the parental home. But even there he could not use his heroic power. All that he undertook was spoiled or useless. Father sent him to pay tribute in the city.

Returning home, Kullervo met a girl, lured her into a sleigh, and seduced her. Later it turned out that this is his missing older sister. Having learned that they are relatives, the young people decided to commit suicide. The girl rushed into the river, and Kullervo reached the house to tell her mother everything. His mother forbade him to say goodbye to life, urging him instead to find a quiet corner and live peacefully there.

Kullervo came to Untamo, destroyed his whole family, destroyed houses. When he returned home, he did not find any of his relatives alive. Over the years, all died, and the house was empty. Then the bogatyr killed himself by throwing himself on a sword.

Sampo Treasures

The final runes of the Kalevala show how Karelian heroes mined Sampo from Pohjola’s treasures. They were pursued by the sorceress-mistress of the North, as a result Sampo was drowned in the sea. Väinämöinen nevertheless collected the fragments of Sampo, with the help of which he rendered many blessings to his country, and also went to fight with various monsters and disasters.

The latest rune tells the legend of the birth of a child virgin Marjatta. This is an analogue of the birth of the Savior. Väinämöinen advises to kill him, because otherwise he will surpass the power of all Karelian heroes.

In response, the baby showered him with reproaches, and the ashamed hero leaves the canoe, giving him his place.

In Kalevala there is no main plot that would link all the runes together. The story begins with a story about the creation of the earth, the sky, the stars and the birth of the air of the Finnish protagonist, Waynemeinen, by the daughter, who arranges the earth and sows barley. It tells about the adventures of a hero who meets a beautiful maiden of the North. Her pure gaze is radiant: High, slim, beautiful, And her face is beautiful: A blush burns on her cheeks, Her entire breast glitters with gold, In her braids silver sparkles. She agrees to become his bride if he creates a boat from the fragments of her spindle. While working, Waynemeinen injured himself with an ax so that the bleeding does not stop. He goes to the healer, who tells the story of the origin of iron. Then, with the help of magic, Waynemeinen arranges the wind and transports the blacksmith Ilmarinen to the country of the North, Pohjola, where he manufactures Sampo for the mistress of the North - an item that gives wealth and happiness. Sampo earned here. Next comes the story of the hero Lemminkainen, the warlike enchanter and the dangerous seducer of women. Then again, Waynemeinen is mentioned: he descends into the underworld, enters the womb of the giant Vipunen and learns from him three words that will help create a boat for the maiden of the North. After that, the hero again goes to Pohjola in order to get the hand of the northern maiden, but she already fell in love with the blacksmith Ilmarinen and married him. In order to win the hand of the beautiful North, the blacksmith overcame three obstacles: I plowed the viper's field, I bridled the Manala of the wolf, I caught a big pike In the black river of the kingdom of Tuoni. The story returns to the adventures of Lemminkainen in Pohjola. Included rune about the hero Kullervo, fell in love by ignorance in his sister. Both, brother and sister, having learned the truth, commit suicide. The next plot is the extraction of the treasure of Sampo from Pohjola by three Finnish heroes. Waynemainen makes cantela (harp), skillfully playing an instrument, he puts to sleep Pohjola’s population. This helps to take away the heroes of Sampo. The mistress of the North is pursuing them for the theft, and he falls into the sea and breaks into fragments. With the help of these fragments, Waynemeinen performs many good deeds for his native country. Sampo fragments planted, Splinters from a motley cover On a toe in the middle of the mist, There on a hazy island, So that they grow and multiply, So that they can transform In rye perfect for bread And in barley for brewing beer. Waynemeinen struggles with various disasters and monsters sent by the mistress of Pohjola to Kalevala. The last rune speaks of the birth of a wonderful child by the virgin Maryatta (the birth of the Savior). He is destined to become more powerful than Waynemeinen, and the latter advises to kill the baby. But the kid is ashamed of the hero by such a non-heroic murder, and Waynemeinen sails forever from Finland, giving way to the baby Marjatta, the recognized ruler of Karelia.

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Lesson 9 “KALEVALA” - KARELO-FINNSKY MYTHOLOGICAL EPOS

Goals:   to give an idea of ​​the Karelian-Finnish epic; to show how the ideas of the northern peoples about the world order, about good and evil, are reflected in the ancient runes; to reveal the depth of ideas and the beauty of the images of the ancient epic.

Methodical techniques: text reading, analytic conversation, revealing reading comprehension.

During the classes

I. Organizational moment.

Ii. Post topics and lesson objectives.

Iii. Study a new topic.

1. The word of the teacher.

Today we will get acquainted with the Karelian-Finnish epic “Kalevala”, which occupies a special place among the world's epics - the content of the poem is so peculiar. It narrates not so much about military campaigns and feats of arms, but about the initial mythological events: the origin of the universe and the cosmos, the sun and stars, the earth's firmament and the waters, of all things on earth. In the myths of Kalevala everything happens for the first time: the first boat is built, the first musical instrument and the music itself is born. The epos is full of stories about the birth of things, it has a lot of magic, fantasy and miraculous transformations.

2. Work in a notebook.

Folk epic - a poetic variety of narrative works in prose and verse; as an oral work, the epic is inseparable from the performing art of the singer, whose mastery is based on following national traditions. People's epic reflects the life, lifestyle, beliefs, culture, self-consciousness of people.

3.   Conversation on issues.

- “Kalevala” is a mythological folk epic. What are myths and why did people create them? (Myths are stories created by popular fantasy, in which people explained various phenomena of life. The myths set out the most ancient ideas about the world, its structure, the origin of people, gods, and heroes.)

“What myths are you familiar with?” (With the myths of ancient Greece.)Remember the most vivid heroes of myths. (The strong and courageous Hercules, the most skillful singer Arion, the brave and cunning Odyssey.)

4. Work with the textbook article   (p. 36–41).

Reading aloud articlesabout the epic “Kalevala” by several students.

5. Analytical conversation.

The conversation is based on questions 1–9 presented on p. 41 textbooks.

- Where and when, according to scientists, was the Karelian-Finnish epic formed? Who literally processed and recorded it?

- How many runes (songs) does the composition Kalevala consist of?

- What are the ancient runes talking about?

- What heroes "inhabit" the epos "Kalevala" and what natural elements accompany their deeds?

- What are the northern and southern points of this beautiful country called?

- Who ordered whom and why to make the wonderful mill Sampo and what does this mill symbolize?

- How did the blacksmith Ilmarinen work on the creation of Sampo?

- What happened to Sampo afterwards?

- Tell us about the traditions, working days and holidays, about the heroes of Kalevala. Compare with the heroes of epics. What do they have in common and what is different?

Iv. Summing up the lesson.

Word of the teacher.

The epos "Kalevala" is an invaluable source of information about the life and beliefs of ancient northern peoples. Interestingly, the images of Kalevala took an honorable place even on the modern coat of arms of the Republic of Karelia: the eight-pointed star crowning the coat of arms is the symbol of Sampo - the guiding star of the people, the source of life and prosperity, “the happiness of the eternal beginning.”

The whole culture of modern Karelians is permeated with the echoes of Kalevala. Annually, within the framework of the Kalevala Mosaic, an international cultural marathon, folk festivals and festivals are held, including theatrical performances based on Kalevala, performances by folklore groups, dance festivals, exhibitions of Karelian artists continuing the traditions of the ethnic culture of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the region.

Homework:   pick 2-3 proverbs on various topics, explain their meaning.

Individual task:   retelling-dialogue (2 students) of Anikin's article “The Wisdom of Nations” (p. 44–45 in the textbook).

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The name “Kalevala”, given to the poem by Lonnrot, is the epic name of the country in which Karelian folk heroes live and operate. Suffix la   means residence, so Kalevala   - this is the place of residence of Kalev, the mythological ancestor of the bogatyrs Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkäinen, sometimes called his sons.

The material for the addition of an extensive poem of 50 songs (runes) was Lönnrot individual folk songs, part of the epic, part of the lyric, part of the magical character, recorded from the words of Karelian and Finnish peasants by Lönnrot himself and his predecessors. The best remembered were ancient runes (songs) in Russian Karelia, in Arkhangelskaya (Vuokkiniemi parish - Voknavolok) and Olonets gubernias - in Repola (Reboly) and Khimole (Gimola), as well as in some places in Finland Karelia and on the western shores of Lake Ladoga, before Ingria.

In Kalevala there is no main plot that would link all the songs together (as, for example, in the Iliad or the Odyssey). Its content is extremely diverse. It opens with a story about the creation of the earth, the sky, the stars and the birth of the air of the protagonist of the Karelians, Väinämöinen, by the daughter, who arranges the earth and sows barley. The following describes the different adventures of the hero, who meets, by the way, the beautiful maiden of the North: she agrees to become his bride if he miraculously creates a boat from the fragments of her spindle. Having begun work, the hero wounds himself with an ax, cannot calm down the bleeding and goes to the old medicine man, to whom the legend tells about the origin of iron. Returning home, Väinämöinen raises the wind with incantations and transports the blacksmith Ilmarinen to the country of the North, Pohjol, where he, according to the promise given to Väinämöinen, forges the mysterious object that gives wealth and happiness for the mistress of the North - the Sampo mill (runes I-XI))

The following runes (XI-XV) contain an episode about the adventures of the hero Lemminkäinen, the warrior magician and the seducer of women. Further, the story returns to Väinämöinen; describes his descent into hell, his stay in the womb of the giant Viipunen, his extraction of the last three words needed to create a wonderful boat, the departure of the hero in Pohlёlu in order to get the hand of the northern maiden; however, the latter preferred the blacksmith Ilmarinen to him, whom he marries, and the wedding is described in detail and wedding songs that set forth the duties of the wife and husband (XVI-XXV) are given.

The Runes (XXVI-XXXI) again tell of Lemminkäinen’s adventures in Pohjøl. The episode about the sad fate of the hero Kullervo, who seduced his sister by ignorance, as a result of which both brother and sister commit suicide (runes XXXI-XXXVI), belongs to the best parts of the entire poem in the depth of feeling that sometimes reaches true pathos. The runes about the hero Kullervo were recorded by Lönnrot’s assistant, folklorist Daniel Europeus.

Further runes contain a lengthy story about a common enterprise of three Karelian heroes - about how the treasures of Sampo from Pohjola (Finland) were mined, how Väinämöinen made kantele and played on it fascinated the whole nature and put to sleep the population of Pohjoly, as Sampo was taken away by heroes. It tells about the pursuit of heroes by the Northern mistress, the fall of Sampo into the sea, the blessings rendered by Väinämönen to his native country through Sampo fragments, his struggle with various disasters and monsters sent by the mistress of Pohjola to Kalevala, about the marvelous play of the hero to the Kalevala, them when the first one fell into the sea, and about the return of the sun and the moon, hidden by the mistress of Pohjola (XXXVI-XLIX).

The last rune contains the folk-apocryphal legend of the birth of a wonderful child by the virgin Maryatta (the birth of the Savior). Väinämöinen gives him advice to kill him, as he is destined to surpass the power of the Karelian hero, but a two-week-old baby shoots Väinämöinen with reproaches of injustice, and the ashamed hero sings a wonderful song for the last time, leaving the martyr, giving place to the infant, to the rest of the world, giving place to the baby, to the child, to the rest of the world.

Philological and ethnographic analysis

It is difficult to specify a common thread that would link the various episodes of the Kalevala into one artistic whole. E. Aspelin believed that the main idea of ​​her - the glorification of the change of summer and winter in the North. Lönnrot himself, denying the unity and organic connection in the runes of Kalevala, admitted, however, that the songs of the epic are directed towards proving and figuring out how the heroes of the Kalev country subordinate the population of Pohyola. Julius Kron argues that Kalevala is imbued with one idea - to create Sampo and get it into the ownership of the Karelian people - but he acknowledges that the unity of the plan and the ideas are not always seen with the same clarity. The German scientist von Pettau divides the Kalevala into 12 cycles, completely independent of each other. The Italian scientist Comparetti, in his extensive work on Kalevala, concludes that it is not possible to assume unity in the runes, that the combination of runes made by Lönnrot is often arbitrary and still gives the runes only a ghostly unity; Finally, it is possible to make other combinations from the same materials according to some other plan.

Lönnrot did not discover the poem, which was hidden in the runes (as Steinthal believed) - it did not open because the people did not exist such a poem. The runes in the oral transmission, even if they were contacted by the singers in several ways (for example, several adventures of Väinämöinen or Lemminkäinen), represent the whole epic as little as the Russian epics or Serbian youth songs. Lönnrot himself admitted that when he joined the runes into an epic, some arbitrariness was inevitable. Indeed, as the test of Lonnrot's work showed him with the versions written by him and other rune collectors, Lönnrot chose such retellings that best fit the plan he had drawn, rallying the runes from particles of other runes, made additions, and made the verses Fleece (50) can even be called his work, although based on folk legends. For his poem, he skillfully disposed of all the wealth of Karelian songs, introducing, along with narrative runes, songs of ritual, conspiracy, family, and this gave Kalevala considerable interest as a means of studying worldview, concepts, everyday life and poetic creativity of the Finnish common people.

Characteristic of the Karelian epos is the complete absence of a historical basis: the adventures of the heroes are distinguished by their purely fabulous character; no echoes of the historical clashes of the Karelians with other nations were preserved in the runes. In Kalevala there is no state, people, society: she knows only the family, and her heroes accomplish feats not for the sake of their people, but for the achievement of personal goals, like heroes of wonderful fairy tales. Types of warriors are in connection with the ancient pagan views of the Karelians: they accomplish feats not so much with the help of physical strength, as through conspiracies, like shamans. They can take a different look, wrap other people in animals, miraculously transported from place to place, cause atmospheric phenomena - frosts, fogs, and so on. There is also the proximity of the heroes to the deities of the pagan period. It should be noted also the high importance attached by the Karelians, and later by the Finns, to the words of the song and music. Prophetic man who knows the runes, conspiracies, can work wonders, and the sounds extracted by the wondrous musician Väinämönen from kantele, conquer the whole of nature.

In addition to the ethnographic, Kalevala is also of high artistic interest. Its advantages include: simplicity and brightness of images, a deep and vivid sense of nature, high lyrical outbursts, especially in the image of human grief (for example, mother's longing for a son, children for parents), healthy humor that permeates certain episodes, a successful characterization of the characters. If you look at Kalevala as an integral epic (Crohn’s view), then it will have many flaws, which, however, are characteristic of more or less all oral folk epic works: contradictions, repetitions of the same facts, too large dimensions of some particulars in relation to the whole. The details of some forthcoming action are often spelled out in great detail, and the action itself is told in a few minor verses. This kind of disproportion depends on the memory properties of one or another singer and is often found, for example, in Russian epics.

However, there are historical facts, in an interlacing with geography, partially confirming the events described in the epic. To the north of the present village of Kalevala, there is Lake Topozero - the sea through which the heroes sailed. On the shores of the lake settled saami   - the people of Pohjola. Saami had strong sorcerers   (Old Louhi). But the Karelians were able to push the Sami far to the north, subdue the population of Pohjola and conquer the latter.

Kalevala Day

Every year on February 28, the Day of the National Epos of Kalevala is celebrated - the official day of Finnish and Karelian culture, the same day is dedicated to the Finnish flag. Every year in Karelia and Finland the “Kalevalsky Carnival” takes place, in the form of a street costume procession, as well as theatrical performances based on the epic plot.

Kalevala in art

Please provide information in an encyclopedic form and scatter it into relevant sections of the article. According to the decision of the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, it is preferable to base lists on secondary generalizing ones that contain criteria for the inclusion of elements in the list.

• The first written mention of the heroes of Kalevala is contained in the books of the Finnish bishop and first printer Mikael Agricola in the 16th century.
• The first monument to the hero of Kalevala was erected in Vyborg in 1831.
• The poem was first translated into Russian in 1888 by the poet and translator Leonid Petrovich Belsky.
• In Russian literature, the image of Väinnemüinen is found for the first time in the poem of Decembrist FN Glinka “Karelia”
• The first painting on the plot of "Kalevala" was created in 1851 by the Swedish artist Johan Blakstadius.
• The first work on the plot of Kalevala was the play by the Finnish writer Alexis Kivi, Kullervo (1860).
• The most significant contribution to the musical incarnation of Kalevala was made by the classic of Finnish music, Jan Sibelius.
• Kalevala has been translated into Ukrainian by linguist Yevgeny Timchenko. In Belarus, the first translation was made by the poet and writer Mikhas Mashara. Newest - translator Yakub Lapatka.
• Latvian translation by Linard Lyzen.
• Nenets translation was made by Vasily Ledkov.
• The plots of Kalevala are present in the work of many artists. In the Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Karelia a unique collection of works of fine art on the themes of the Kalevala epos is collected. The cycle of paintings with scenes from the Kalevala by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela is widely known.
• In 1933, the Academia publishing house produced Kalevala with illustrations and in the general decoration of the students of Pavel Filonov, Masters of Analytical Art T. Glebova, A. Poret, M. Tsybasov, and others. Filonov himself was an editor of illustrations and design.
• Based on Kalevala, the Karelian composer Helmer Sinisalo wrote the ballet Sampo, which was first staged in Petrozavodsk on March 27, 1959. This work was repeatedly performed both in the USSR and abroad.
• In 1959, a joint Soviet-Finnish film Sampo (directed by Alexander Ptushko, screenplay by Väinö Kaukonen, Viktor Vitkovich, Grigory Yagdfeld) was made based on Kalevala.
• In 1982, Finnish director Kalle Holmberg filmed a 4-part film adaptation of Kalevala for television - “The Iron Age. Tales of Kalevala, awarded the prizes of the Finnish and Italian Film Academy. In 2009, the film was released in Russia with a set of two DVDs.
• John Tolkien's The Silmarillion was created under the impression of Kalevala.
• Influenced by the Kalevala, Henry Longfellow created the “Song of Haiwatat”. Under the impression of the English translation of the Finnish epic by William Kirby, Tolkien’s first prose work, “The Life of Kulervo,” was created.

Among the first propagandists of Kalevala were Jacob the Grotto in Russia, Jacob Grimm in Germany.

Maxim Gorky put the Kalevala on a par with Homer's epic. In 1908, he wrote: “Individual creativity did not create anything equal to the Iliad or the Kalevala.” In 1932, he calls the Finno-Karelian epos "monument of verbal creativity." “Kalevala” is mentioned in the second volume of “The Life of Klim Samgin”, in chapters on the hero’s Finnish impressions: “Samghin recalled that as a child he read Kalevala, a gift from his mother; This book, written with poems that jumped past memory, seemed boring to him, but the mother still forced her to read it to the end. And now, through the chaos of everything he experienced, the epic figures of the heroes of Suomi, the fighters against Hiysi and Loukhi, the elemental forces of nature, her Orpheus Väinnemöinen ... jolly Lemminkäinen-Baldur Finov, Ilmarinen, who skalved Sampo, the treasure of the country, emerged. ” The motives of Kalevala are Valery Bryusov, Veelimir Khlebnikov, Sergey Gorodetsky, Nikolai Aeev. "Kalevala22 was in the library of Aleksandr Blok.

Kalevala was highly appreciated by the national poet of Belarus Yakub Kolas about his work on the poem “Symon the Musician”, he said: “Kalevala” gave me a good impetus to work ... And its numerous creators and I drank from one source, only Finns on the seashore among the rocks, and we are in our forests and marshes. No one owns this living water, it is open to many and for many. And in some ways the joy and grief of every nation is very similar. So the works may be similar ... I was ready to bow at Lonnrot's feet. "(According to the book by Maxim Luzhanin" Kolas tells about himself ")

V. G. Belinsky could not assess the world significance of the Kalevala. The great critic was familiar with the Finnish epic only in a bad, prosaic retelling. His tense relationship with Ya. K. Groth, the main then popularizer of Finnish literature in Russia, rejection of the Slavophile idealization of folk archaic (Finland of that time, like the Slavic countries, was cited by Slavophiles, for example, Shevyrev, as an example of patriarchal imperfection in opposition to “depraved” Europe ). In a review of the book by M. Eman, “The main features of the ancient Finnish epic of Kalevala”, Belinsky wrote: “We are the first to be ready to give justice to the beautiful and noble feat of the city of Lönnrot, but we do not consider it necessary to go into exaggeration. How! all the European literature, except Finnish, turned into some ugly market? ... ”. “Furious Vissarion” objected to comparing “Kalevala” with the ancient epos, pointed to the underdevelopment of contemporary Finnish culture: “A different national spirit is so small that it will fit in a nutshell, and another is so deep and wide that it lacks the whole earth. Such was the national spirit of the ancient Greeks. Homer is far from exhausted it all in his two poems. And who wants to get acquainted and get accustomed to the national spirit of ancient Hellas, Homer alone is not enough, but for this purpose both Hesiod, tragedians, Pindar, comedian Aristophanes, philosophers, historians, and scientists will be necessary, and there still remains architecture and sculpture and finally the study of domestic home and political life. " (Belinsky V. G. Complete Works of Vol. X, 1956 p. 277-78, 274 M.)

• In 2001, the children's writer Igor Vostryakov retold the Kalevala for children in prose, and in 2011 made a retelling of the Kalevala in verse.
• In 2006, the Finnish-Chinese fantasy film “Warrior of the North” was filmed, the plot of which is based on the interweaving of Chinese folk legends and the Karelian-Finnish epic.

Use name

• In the Republic of Karelia there is the Kalevala National District and the settlement of Kalevala.
• In Petrozavodsk and Kostomuksha there is Kalevala street.
• The Kalevala is a corvette in the Baltic fleet of the Russian Empire in 1858–1872.
• Kalevala is a bay in the southern part of Posiet Bay in the Sea of ​​Japan. Surveyed in 1863 by the crew of the Kalevala corvette, named after the ship.
• There is a Kalevala cinema and a Kalevala bookstore chain in Petrozavodsk.
• In Syktyvkar, there is the Kalevala covered market.
• Kalevala is a Russian folk-metal band from Moscow.
• “Kalevala” is a song by Russian rock bands Mara and Khimera.
• In the Prionezhsky district of the Republic of Karelia, the Kalevala hotel has been operating in the village of Kosalma since the 1970s.
• In Finland, since 1935, under the brand Kalevala koru   jewelry made in the traditional technique with the national Baltic-Finnish ornament.
• In Petrozavodsk, in the park named after Elias Lonnrot, a fountain was installed in memory of the heroes of the Kalevala epic.

Translations

Russian translations and adaptations

• 1840 - Small passages in the Russian translation are given by Ya. K. Groth (Sovremennik, 1840).
• 1880-1885 - Several runes in Russian translation published by G. Helgren ("Kullervo" - M., 1880; "Aino" - Helsingfors, 1880; runes 1-3 Helsingfors, 1885).
• 1888 - Kalevala: Finnish folk epic / Complete poetic translation, with a preface and notes by L. P. Belsky. - SPb .: N.A. Lebedev Printing House, Nevsky Prospect, 8., 1888. 616 p.). It was reprinted many times in the Russian Empire and the USSR.
• 1960 - From the poem “Kalevala” (“The Birth of Kantele”, “Golden Maiden”, “Aino”) // S. Marshak: Op. in 4 t., t. 4, p. 753-788.
• 1981 - Lyubarskaya A. Retelling for children of the Karelian-Finnish epos “Kalevala”. Petrozavodsk: Karelia, 1981. - 191 p. (poetic excerpts from the translation of L. P. Belsky).
• 1998 - Lönnrot E. Kalevala. Translated by Eino Kiuru and Armas Mishin. Petrozavodsk: Karelia, 1998. (Reprinted by Vita Nova publishing house in 2010).
• 2015 - Pavel Krusanov. Kalevala Prose retelling. St. Petersburg, K.Tublins Publishing House. ISBN 978-5-8370-0713-2

  Foreign language translations

• German translations of Kalevala: Schiffner (Helsingfors, 1852) and Paul (Helsingfors, 1884-1886).
• French translation: Leouzon Le Duc (1867).
• Swedish translations: Kastrena (1841), Collan (1864-1868), Herzberg (1884)
• English translation: I. M. Crawford   (New York, 1889).
• Translation in eighteen runes: H. Rosenfeld, “Kalevala, the folk epos of the Finns” (New York, 1954).
• Translation into Hebrew (in prose): trans. Sarah tobiah, “Kalevala, the land of heroes” (Kalevala, Eretz ha-giborim), Tel Aviv, 1964 (later reprinted several times).
• Translation into Belarusian: Jakub Lapatka   Kalevala, Minsk, 2015, Poraklady on ўsimple peraklad on Belarusian MOV

Plan

Introduction

Chapter 1. Historiography

Chapter 2. The history of the creation of "Kalevala"

1. Historical conditions for the emergence of "Kalevala" and problems of authorship

2.2. Circumstances of the creation of "Kalevala" as a historical source

Chapter 3. Daily Life and Religious Views of the Karelian-Finns

1 Main epic stories

2 Heroic Images of the Kalevala

3 Daily life in the Kalevala runes

4 Religious Representations

Conclusion

List of sources and literature

Introduction

Relevance.Epic work is universal in its functions. Fabulous fiction is not separated in it from the real. The epos contains information about gods and other supernatural beings, fascinating stories and instructive examples, aphorisms of worldly wisdom and examples of heroic behavior; its instructive function is as integral as its cognitive one.

The publication one hundred and sixty years ago of the Kalevala epic became epochal for the culture of Finland and Karelia. On the basis of the epos many rules of the Finnish language were fixed. A new presentation appeared on the history of this region in the 1st millennium BC. The images and scenes of the epic had a great influence on the development of Finnish national culture, in its most diverse areas - literature and literary language, drama and theater, music and painting, even architecture. . Thus, Kalevala influenced the formation of the Finns national identity.

Interest in this epic is not waning in our days. Almost every writer, artist, composer of the Finnish republic, regardless of his nationality, has experienced the Kalevala influence in one form or another. National festivals, contests, seminars and conferences are held annually. Their main goal is to preserve the traditions of rune chants, to spread the national musical instrument Kantale, to continue the study of runes.

But the meaning of the Kalevala is also important in the context of global culture. To date, Kalevala has been translated into more than 50 languages, about one hundred and fifty prose narrations, abridged editions and fragmentary variations are also known. Only in the 1990s. published more than ten translations into the languages ​​of the peoples: Arabic, Vietnamese, Catalan, Persian, Slovene, Tamil, Hindi, and others. Under its influence, the Estonian epos "Kalevipoeg" by F. Kreuzwald (1857-1861), the Latvian epic "Lachplesis" by A. Pumpur (1888) were created; The American poet Henry Longfellow wrote on his Indian folklore song "Song of Haiwatt" (1855).

Scientific novelty. "Kalevala ”has repeatedly been the object of research of domestic and foreign specialists. The artistic originality and unique features of the epos, the history of its origin and development are revealed. However, despite some achievements in studying Kalevala, its influence on the development of national culture of different countries and peoples, reflection of images and plots of the great epos in the works of individual writers and poets, artists and composers, world cinema and theater has been little studied. In fact, the Kalevala has not been studied comprehensively as a source on the ancient history of the Finns and Karelians.

The object of our study   - The history of the peoples of Northern Europe in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Subject of study   - Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala".

Purpose of the study:

On the basis of a comprehensive analysis to prove that the great epic of the Karelian-Finnish people "Kalevala" is the source for the ancient and medieval history of Finland.

The implementation of the research goal involves the following tasks:

.Study the problem historiography and determine its priorities

.Identify the historical conditions of the Karelian-Finnish epos and its authorship.

.Identify the circumstances that influenced the creation of the Kalevala and its structure

.Based on the analysis of the content of Kalevala, reconstruct the daily life of the ancient Karelian-Finns.

.To determine the meaning of the “Kalevala” to characterize the religious ideas of the Karelian-Finnish people.

Chronological scope of the study.After a thorough analysis of the epos, features were identified that allow the approximate chronology of the Kalevala to be defined - from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD. In some specific cases, it is possible to go beyond this, which is determined by the purpose and objectives of the work.

Geographic scope. -   The territory of modern Finland and the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as the north-western regions of Russia and the Eastern Baltic.

Research Method:   historical analysis

The purpose and objectives of the graduation essay determined its structure. This work is from the introduction, three chapters and conclusion.

Along with Kalevala, which is the natural basis of our research, we rely in our work on a number of other sources and documents on the history of the Karelian-Finnish people, as well as on the achievement of national and foreign historiography.

Chapter I. Historiography

Source study base of this study is represented by various groups of sources. From the group of folklore sources, the first to be called the epos “Kalevala”. It was written and published by E. Lennrot in its final version in 1849. This work consists of 50 runes or twenty-two thousand poems and is put on its importance by researchers with such world-famous epics as Odyssey, Mahabharata or Song about the Nibelungs.

Based on the region of the study, we considered such a source as the “Elder Edda”. It is a collection of songs about gods and heroes, recorded in the middle of the XIII century. And it contains ten mythological and nineteen heroic songs, which are interspersed with small prose inserts explaining and supplementing their text. The songs of “Edda” are anonymous, from other monuments of epic literature they are distinguished by the laconism of expressive means and the concentration of action around a single episode of the tale. Of particular interest is the "Revelation of Velva", which contain the idea of ​​the universe, and "High Speech", which are instructions in the wisdom of life. In addition, we used the “Younger Edda”, written by Snorri Sturluson around 1222-1225, and consisting of four parts: “Prologue”, “Gulvi's Visions”, “Poetry Language” and “List of sizes”.

Sources of personal origin are presented in this study by such a work as “The Journey of Elias Lönnrot: Travel Notes, Diaries, Letters. 1828-1842. On the basis of this source, important conclusions were made concerning the problem of authorship of Kalevala, the interpretation of the plan and the mechanism for selecting material for creating an epos. This travel diary is also indispensable for ethnographic research, as it contains information regarding the wedding ritual of the Karelians of the mid-19th century.

In the collections of documents on the history of Karelia in the Middle Ages and Modern Times, such documents as the preface of M. Agrikola to the Psalms of David, The Story of Karel Nousia, The Letter of the Novgorod Bishop Theodosius helped to confirm a number of data relating to the life and religion of the ancient Finns and Karelia .

Archaeological data are also of great importance. Since no written sources of this period have been found, only they can prove or disprove the information given in the epic. This was especially true of the issue of dating the transition to active use in iron metallurgy. It should be noted also the great connection in the work between archaeologists and the Kalevala, their constant interaction. We can judge this by permanent links in various archaeological research on this epic.

The historiography of this topic is quite extensive. It is necessary to consider and analyze the opinions of various scientists involved in the epic of Kaleval since its publication on the degree of its historicity. What directly relates to the stated research topic.

Finnish scientist MA Castren was one of the first to start developing this problem. He held a peculiar look at the historicity of the Karelian-Finnish epic. Proceeding from the fact that in primitive times it was impossible to create such broad epic works as “Kalevala”, Castren “believed that it was difficult to trace in the Finnish epic whatever the general idea that would link different episodes of“ Kalevala ”into one artistic whole. " Different runes on the themes of the Kalevala, in his opinion, appeared at different times. And the residence of the heroes of the epos - “Kalevala” he represented as a kind of historical point, something like a village. The relationship between Kalevala and Pohjola Kastren viewed as a historical reflection of the relationship between the Karelian and Finnish clans. At the same time, he believes that historical figures cannot be types of heroes.

After the first edition of Kalevala in 1835, many Russian and Western European authors joined the study of the Karelian-Finnish epos and its historical basis. In the Russian Empire, the Decembrists were the first to notice the Kalevala. Fyodor Glinka became interested in the plot of the Karelian rune about the game of Väinämöinen on Kantala and made a translation of this rune into Russian. Some attention was paid to the Karelian-Finnish epos by critic V.G. Belinsky. So he wrote a review of the book by Eman, “The main features of the ancient epic of Kalevala”. The same Russian scientists as Afanasyev, Schiffner tried to compare the subjects of the Karelian-Finnish epic with the Greek and Scandinavian, for example, the production of Kantale Väinämöinen and the creation of Hermes Kifara; Lemminkäinen's death episode and Balder's demise.

In the second half of the century, the theory of borrowing replaces mythological interpretations. Representatives of such views are P. Field, Stasov, A.N. Veselovsky. All of them deny the historicity of the runes and see in them only mythology.

At the end of the 19th century, it became interesting among Russian scientists to get directly acquainted with the sources used by Lönnrot in the Kalevala. In this regard, the ethnographer V.N. Maykov notes that Lonnrot himself “denied any unity and organic connection in the songs of Kalevala. And at the same time he adhered to another point of view, according to which “the Finnish folk epic is a whole, but it is imbued from beginning to end with one idea, namely the idea of ​​creating Sampo and getting it for the Finnish people.”

But there were other views, in particular V.S. Miller and his student Shambinago tried to trace the relationship of the Karelian-Finnish epic and the works of Russian folk art. They discussed the issue of the historical conditions of the convergence of the Russian epic hero Sadko with the image of the hero of the Kalevala runes Väinämöinen. So vs Miller wrote about this: “Finnish legends about the sacred lake Ilmen, of course, had to become known to the Slav population, go to him ... and merge with his family traditions.” Such views had a serious impact on the development of the views of Finnish folklorists of the first half of the twentieth century.

The application of the Indo-European theory to the study of the Karelian-Finnish epic led J. Grima to a comparison of the Kalevala with the Hindu epic. He saw in the epic a reflection of the ancient struggle of the Finns with Lapps. Another philologist, M. Muller, was looking for comparative material for the Kalevala runes in Greek mythology. He saw the main advantage of Kalevala in that it opened a treasury of previously unseen myths and legends. Therefore, he puts it on a par with such great epos of the myth as “Mahabharata”, “Shahname”, “Nibelungs” and “Iliad”. The Finnish philologists were also influenced by some of the research of the German philologist von Tettats, who considered the runes about the manufacture of Sampo and his abduction as the main content of Kalevala.

Of the French philologists, we can mention L. de Duke, one of the first translators of Kalevala. He, like Lönnrot, developed the concept of the historical origin of the Karelian-Finnish epic. As for the English and American philologists, they intensively developed the theme of the influence of Kalevala on the poem of the American poet Longfellow “Song of Haiwatt”.

Some tried to trace the reflection of the magical worldview in the Karelian-Finnish runes and compare the Finnish runes with the ancient Anglo-Saxon myths. The Italian philologist D. Comparetti paid considerable attention to Kalevala, publishing a monograph on the national poetry of the Finns and Karelians at the end of the 19th century. “In all Finnish poetry,” wrote Comparetti, “the militant element finds rare and weak expression. Magic songs, with the help of which the hero defeats his opponents; they are not, of course, chivalrous. ” Therefore, Comparetti denied in the runes the existence of direct borrowing. In the Karelian-Finnish runes, he saw such a clear manifestation of nation-wide poetry that he refused to prove the fact of their borrowing by the Finns from Norwegian poetry, Russian epics, and other Slavic songs. But at the same time, Comparetti was inclined to deny the negation of the historical reality in the runes, since he did not see in this epic even the most basic ethnic and geographical ideas.

And in the twentieth century, Russian scientists continued to actively study the Kalevala, the main problem was its origin (popular or artificial). In 1903, an article by V.A. Gordlevskogo dedicated to the memory of E. Lonnrot. In his arguments about what Kalevala is, he relied on the research of A.R. Niemi (“Composition of“ Kalevala ”, Collection of songs about Väinämöinen”). In this article, the Russian scientist argues with the carriers of the Western theory of the origin of Karelian epic runes (J. Kron), who exaggerated the Baltic-German influence through the Vikings and Varangians on the Karelian and Finnish epic. For V. Gordlevsky, the Kalevala is the “undivided property of the entire Finnish people.” In his opinion, the reason for the good preservation of the epic runes in Karelia was that “famous Karelian singers still firmly remembered that their ancestors were in the hitherto wild land from Eastern Finland during the Northern War; their language still keeps traces of contact with the eastern Finns and the Swedes. ” The scientist also cites two points of view on the Kalevala. Does it represent a folk poem created by E. Lönnrot in the spirit of folk singers, or is it an artificial formation made by Lönnrot from various fragments. Further V.A. Gordlevsky notes that, of course, modern scholars reject the form of the Kalevala as a folk poem, because in this form it has never been sung by the people, although, the author continues, it could have resulted in such a form. In the end, Gordlevsky emphasizes that "at its core, the Kalevala is a folk work captured by a democratic spirit." This article, rich in correct information and fruitful ideas, gave a powerful impetus to the study of Kalevala in Russia.

This topic was continued in 1915 by the translator of Kalevala into Russian L. Belsky, but, unlike Gordlevsky, it is more categorical. Thus, in the preface to his translation, he wrote that the works of scientists "destroyed the view of her as an integral work of the Finnish people, that" Kalevala "is a series of separate epics and other kinds of folk poetry artificially linked into E. Lönnrot's epic. songs and conspiracies. Inspired by the desire to give something like Homer's epic, E. Lönnrot connected organically unconnected.

At the same time, the teachings of K. Kron and his school are spreading in Finland. In his opinion, such a work as “Kalevala”, “the most valuable of what was created in Finnish, could not have originated among the poor and illiterate Karelian people”. However, the long-term efforts of Crohn and his school were in vain. In Western Finland, no runes related to the Kalevala theme were found, and no heroic and epic songs were found, although the search began in the 16th century. Basically discovered Catholic legends and semi-religious spells. Despite this, K. Kron created a theory based on a whole chain of assumptions, according to which the Kalevala runes originated in western Finland in the late Middle Ages and were “supposedly” sung in the houses of the then Finnish aristocracy and “supposedly” were spread by professional roving singers. In 1918, Kron replaced this theory with a new one.

According to the new theory, he pushes the time of the birth of the Kalevala runes about half a millennium ago, that is, from the late Middle Ages to the end of the Scandinavian Viking period. In the Kalevala Guide to Epic Songs, he gave such a “psychological” explanation: “During the struggle for our independence, the era when the Finns, for their part, independently marched off the coast of Sweden, appeared to me.” Thus, Professor Kron invented a whole heroic era of Finnish sea thieves, in order to draw on to this era the miracle of the origin of the Kalevala runes. But, in spite of the apparent fantasticality, the theory of Crohn influenced Finnish scientists studying the Kalevala.

In Soviet Russia, interest in the Kalevala was manifested in an article published in Volume 5 of the Literary Encyclopedia (1931), Professor D. Bubrin pointed out the duality of the Kalevala. On the one hand, this is a folk epic, since it was based on folk songs, but at the same time they underwent processing and their connection was very conditional. Also interesting are the judgments of E.G. Kagarov about “Kalevala”, expressed by him in the preface to the publication of “Kalevala”. He remarked: "The Kalevala was compiled in the middle of the XIX century, and the unity of the poem is explained to a certain extent by the personal poetic intent of the compiler." In E. Lönnrot, he saw only a poet-editor, who, choosing a series of cycles and episodes and giving the epic a beginning and a denouement, turned it into a harmonious and unified whole. But at the same time neither Bubrin nor Kagarov used primary material in their studies, i.e. folk, lyric and epic songs and spells.

In 1949, the centenary of the “complete Kalevala” (final version 1849) was celebrated in Petrozavodsk. V.Ya. Propp with the report "Kalevala in the light of folklore." It presented new positions on Karelian issues, i.e. "Runes" were declared common property of western and eastern Finns.

But the report rejected O.V. Kuusinen, the former programmer and keynote speaker at the session. His report and the general theme of the jubilee were based on three theses: 1) “Kalevala” is not a book by E. Lönnrot, but a collection of folk songs edited by him; 2) songs of predominantly Karelian origin, rather than West Finnish; 3) the Kalevala runes did not arise in the aristocratic environment of the Vikings, but among ordinary people in the period preceding the Middle Ages. Thus, Kalevala is a great Karelian phenomenon, not Finnish culture. Therefore, the bold ideas of V.Ya. Propp in the Soviet Union did not come in time. In his book “Folklore and reality”, he writes that it is impossible to identify “Kalevala” and the folk epos. Since E. Lönnrot did not follow the folk tradition, but broke it. He violated the folklore laws and subordinated the epos to literary norms and tastes of his time. With this, he created Kalevala widespread popularity.

The two-volume V.Ya. is very informative. Evseev "Historical foundations of the Karelian-Finnish epos", published in the late 50s. Twentieth century. Where, from the point of view of historical materialism, the epic is disassembled line by line and compared with the body of the epic Karelian-Finnish songs. On the basis of this approach, it was recognized that the events inherent in the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system are reflected in Kalevala and, accordingly, the question of its historicity has been resolved positively.

Repeatedly, E. Narn returns to Kalevala in his research. He sees the main difference between Kalevala and popular poetry in the fact that as a result of a certain revision of the storytelling options, a certain system of “assembling” the best places, the unification of names, “a new aesthetic integrity with a new meaningful level has emerged.”

In the 80-90-ies. XX century most of his research E. Karhu<#"center">Chapter 2. The history of the creation of "Kalevala"

2.1 Historical conditions of the occurrence of "Kalevala" and problems of authorship

An important component of our research will be the establishment of historical conditions that influenced the creation of the source of interest to us. At the beginning of the XIX century, and especially in the 20s. in the culture of Europe begins the heyday of the direction romanticism . This situation can be regarded as a response to such grandiose events as the Great French bourgeois revolution, the campaigns of Napoleon, who changed life in many European countries and redrew their boundaries. It was a time when the age-old foundations, forms of human relationships, ways of life broke. A major role was also played by the industrial revolution, which on the one hand led to economic growth, trade, an increase in the number of urban dwellers, and on the other, aggravated the already difficult social situation: becoming a source of the ruin of the peasants in the villages, and as a result of hunger, growth, crime, pauperization. All of this meant that the Enlightenment, with its faith in the human mind and universal progress, was untenable in its predictions. Therefore, a new cultural era of romanticism begins. For which are characteristic: disappointments in progress, hopes for improving life and at the same time a feeling of confusion in a new hostile world. All this gave rise to a flight from reality to some fabulous and exotic countries and gave where people tried to find the ideal of life.

Against this background, one can trace the increased interest in the historical past of nations. This contributed to the theory of G.-V. Hegel and Herder. Under their influence the formation of national ideologies took place. Therefore, the study of folk traditions, life and work has become so relevant. With the help of folklore, followers romanticism   wanted to find one golden age , in which, in their opinion, their peoples lived in the past. And the society was then built on harmonious beginnings, and universal well-being reigned everywhere.

An image appears national poet who feels the charm and power of wild nature, natural feelings and, accordingly, folk legends and myths. Therefore, in Europe, many enthusiasts direct their forces to search and record various genres of folklore (myths, songs, legends, fairy tales, riddles, proverbs). A classic example here is the activity of the Brothers Grimm. The results of this work were mass publications throughout Europe of collections of songs, fairy tales, fictionalized stories from   people's lives . Also such an increased interest in fairy tales, songs, proverbs can be explained by the fact that they have ceased to be considered something low, rough, simple and peculiar only to the common people. And they began to be perceived as a reflection national   spirit as a manifestation genius of the people , with their help, it was possible to know the universal or even divine basis.

Later, when romanticism as a direction survives its first crisis, the attitude to folklore changes, a serious scientific approach will appear. Now it is perceived as a possible historical source. In many countries, national schools will be created to study these specific sources. Numerous theories, disputes and discussions on the topic of authorship and the origin of epics, mythical cycles continued even after the change of cultural direction.

All these cultural trends have not bypassed Finland, where they were fascinated by the entire educated part of society. It was in this setting that the author studied. Kalevala   Elias Lönnrot Next, we consider in detail his biography, in order to understand how the personality of the author could influence the formation of the epic.

E. Lönnrot was born in 1802 in the south-west of Finland, in the town of Sammatti, in the family of a tailor. He was the fourth child among his seven brothers and sisters. Father’s craft and a small plot could not feed a large family, and Elias grew up in need and poverty. One of his first childhood memories was hunger. He went to school rather late at the age of twelve, to some extent this was filled up by the fact that Elias learned to read quite early, and he could always be seen with a book. At school, where instruction was conducted in Swedish, he studied for four years, first in Tammisaari, then in Turku and Porvoo. After that, he was forced to suspend training and began to help his father in his craft. Together they walked through the villages, working with customers at home. In addition, Lönnrot was engaged in self-education, worked as a roving singer and performer of religious chants, and was also a student of a chemist in Hämmyenlin. In this work he was helped by the fact that he learned Latin at school, reading the Latin dictionary. Phenomenal memory, perseverance and a desire to study further helped him to prepare for entering the University of Turku on his own. And as his biographers have established, that neither before him, nor many decades after him has anyone else from these places had a chance to study at a university. Here Lönnrot first studied philology, and his thesis was devoted to Finnish mythology and was called About the god of the ancient Finns Väinamöinen . In 1827 it was issued as a brochure. Then Lönnrot decided to continue his education and get a doctor’s degree. But in 1828 a fire broke out in the city, and the building of the university burned down, the training was suspended for several years, and E. Lönnrot had to become a home teacher in Vesilath.

After graduating from university, in 1833, he received the position of the district doctor in the small town of Kajaani, where the next twenty years of his life passed. Kayani was a city only in name, in fact it was a rather miserable place, with four hundred inhabitants, cut off from civilization. The population often went hungry, and now and then terrible epidemics broke out, which claimed many lives. In 1832-1833, there was a poor harvest, a terrible famine broke out, and Lönnrot, as the only physician in a vast district, had enough worries beyond measure. In the letters, he wrote that hundreds and thousands of sick, extremely emaciated people, also scattered over a space of hundreds of miles, expected help from him, and he was alone. Along with the practice of medicine Lonnrot acted as a popular educator. In the newspapers, he printed articles for the purpose of gathering for the hungry, published an urgently reprinted in Finnish language brochure “Councils in the event of a poor harvest” (1834), wrote and published a medical reference book for peasants in 1839, and compiled Legal guide for general education . Also his great merit was writing a popular book. Memories of people's lives at all times co-author in Finnish Stories   and Stories of Russia . With his own money, he issued a magazine. Mehilyainen . For great services to science in 1876, he was elected an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Used to characterize the author's identity Kalevala source Travels of Elias Lönnrot: Travel Notes, Diaries, Letters. 1828-1842. , allowed me to get an idea of ​​the scientist’s style of work, areas of his scientific interests, and with what techniques Kalevala was created.

2.2 Circumstances of the creation of “Kalevala” as a historical source

Next, we would like to trace the history of the birth of folklore studies in Finland. This will help us to understand how E. Lennrot's scientific interests were formed and what materials he could rely on in his work. It is worth noting that interest in folklore has always been present in Finland. The founder here can be considered Bishop Mikoela Agricole, who, in the preface to his translation of the “Psalms of David” in Finnish, draws the attention of priests to the fact that among the Finnish pagan gods are Väinämainen, Ilmarinen, Kalevala, Ahti, Tapio, and among the Karelian gods - Khiyesi. By this, the bishop showed practical interest in the names of the heroes of the Karelian-Finnish epic. Since he was actively engaged in the struggle against the pagan views that still remained with him among the Karelians and Finns. In 1630, the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf issued a memorial, according to which he commanded to record folk legends, legends, stories, songs, telling about past times. The king hoped to find in them a confirmation of the original rights of the Swedish throne to own vast territories in northern Europe. Although this goal was not achieved, the beginning of the universal gathering of folk poetry was made. With approval romanticism   in culture as the main direction led to an increase in interest in the manifestations of folklore.

The first collector, propagandist and publisher of folklore in Finland was the professor of rhetoric at the University of Turku, H.G.Portan (1739-1804), who published his dissertation “On Finnish Poetry” in 1778 in Latin. In it he put folk songs above the “artificial” poetry of the authors of that time.

No less famous is Christfried Hanander (1741-1790). In the works The Dictionary of the Modern Finnish Language (1787) and Finnish Mythology (1789) he quoted many examples of folk poetry. The Finnish Mythology, which has about 2,000 lines of Karelian-Finnish runes, is still the reference book for researchers of the poetry of the Kalevalsky metric. The commentary and interpretations of the content of the song fragments are extremely valuable.

The emergence of studies of folk poetry by Professor D. Yuslenius, H.G. Porta et al. An important role in the preparation of Kalevala was played by collections of texts by folklorist and enlightener KA Gottlund (1796-1875), who first expressed the idea of ​​creating a single folklore arch. He believed that if you collect all the ancient songs, then one could form some kind of integrity, similar to the works of Homer, Ossian or "Song of the Nibelungs."

The immediate predecessor of E. Lönnrot was S. Topelius (the elder), the father of a famous Finnish writer who published in 1829-1831. five notebooks of folk epic songs collected from Karelian peddlers who brought goods from White Sea Karelia to Finland (85 epic runes and spells, a total of 4,200 verses). It was he who indicated E.Lönnrot and other enthusiastic gatherers to the White Sea (Arkhangelsk) Karelia, where "the voice of Väinämöinen still sounds, the chanter and Sampo ring". In the 19th century, individual Finnish folk songs are published in Sweden, England, Germany, and Italy. In 1819, the German lawyer Kh.R. von Schröter translated into German and published in Sweden, in the city of Uppsala, a collection of songs called Finnish Runes, which featured spell poetry, as well as some epic and lyrical songs. In the XIX century. epic, enchanting, wedding ritual, lyrical songs were recorded by A.A. Borenius, A.E. Alquist, J.-F.Kayan, MAKastren, H.M.Reinholm and others - altogether about 170 thousand lines of folk poetry were collected.

At this time, the idea of ​​the possibility of creating a single epos from scattered folk songs Finn and Karel is born by one person or a group of scientists. This was based on the theory of the German scientist FA Wolf, according to which Homer's poems are the result of a later work by the compiler or compilers of songs that previously existed in oral tradition. In Finland, this theory was supported by such scientists as H.G. Portan and K.A. Gotlund As early as the end of the 18th century, H. G. Porta suggested that all folk songs come from a single source, that they agree with each other on the main content and main subjects. And by comparing the options with each other, you can return them to a more consistent and appropriate form. He also came to the conclusion that Finnish folk songs can be published in the same way as the "Songs of Ossian" by the Scottish poet D. Macpherson (1736-1796). Portan did not know that MacPherson had published his own poems under the guise of the songs of the ancient blind singer Ossian.

At the beginning of the XIX century, this idea of ​​Porta acquired the form of a social order expressing the needs of the Finnish society. Well-known linguist, folklorist, poet K.A. Gottlund, as a student, in 1817 wrote about the need for the development of "national literature." He was sure that if people wanted to form an orderly integrity out of folk songs, be it an epic, a drama or something else, then a new Homer, Ossian or "A Song of the Nibelungs" would be born.

One of the reasons for the increased interest in folklore, in our opinion, is the change in the legal status and position of Finland on the world map. In 1809, the last war between Russia and Sweden over the northern territories, including Finland, Karelia and the Baltic States, ended. And this struggle lasted with varying success for almost a thousand years, starting with the Varangian and Viking campaigns. There was an era (HUI-HUP centuries), when Sweden was considered a great European power Finland for six centuries belonged to Sweden. The Russian emperor Alexander I, having conquered Finland and wanting to diminish the Swedish influence in it, granted the Finns autonomous self-government. And in March 1808 the people of Finland were solemnly proclaimed a nation with their own laws, an autonomous form of statehood.

But at the beginning of the 19th century, the Finnish nation as such did not exist yet, it had yet to be created, and the all-round development of the national culture played a huge role in this along with the socio-political and economic development. The legacy of Finland’s centuries-old domination of Finland went to the administration, the system of school and university education, the press and all public cultural life. The official language remained Swedish, although it was only available to one tenth of the inhabitants. These included the upper classes, educated circles, still few urban populations.

Ethnically, Finnish linguistically and culturally was the peasantry, the main population of the region. But in terms of language, it remained powerless, in the official life of his language had no access. This was one of the reasons for the delay in the natural evolutionary process of the folding of the Finnish nation. The threat of Swedish assimilation also remained relevant, since there were less than a million Finns. All this led to the search for national identity, cultural traditions and, as a result, national self-affirmation.

The combination of these prerequisites for E. Lönnrot formed an interest in collecting folklore, and taking advantage of a forced break in training, he relied on the advice of E. Topelius (the elder) in 1828 on his first of 11 trips to Finland in Karelia and Sava province to record the remaining runes. For four months, Lennroth collected material on five notebooks of the Kantele collection (four of them were published in 1828–1831). He wrote down more than 2,000 lines from the ringleader from the parish of Kesalahti Juhani Kainulainen. Already in this collection Lennroth used the method rejected by Russian folklore studies: he connected lines of different songs. I took something from the collections of K. Gottlund and S. Topelius. Already in this edition, Väinämainen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkäinen, Pellervoinen, Loukhi, Tapio, Mielikki and others acted as characters.

Only in 1832, during the third journey, Lennrot managed to reach the villages of Russian Karelia. In the village of Akonlahti, he met Soav Trohkimaynen and recorded several epic songs. The heroes of which were Lemminkäinen and Kavkomieli, Väinämöinen, who makes Sampo and Kantele.

The fourth expedition of Lennrot became very successful in 1833, when he visited the northern Karelian villages of Voinitsa, Voknavolok, Chen, Kiviyarvi, Akonlahti. An important role in the history of the creation of Lönnrot "Kalevala" was played by the meeting with the band members Ontrei Malinen and Voassila Kieleväinen. Based on the recorded material, a collection was prepared Wedding songs . The material collected during this trip made it possible to create a multi-hero poem. Prior to that, Lönnrot worked on poems about one hero (Lemminkäinen, Väinämöinen).

New poem Lennroth called the "Collection of songs about Vainamainen." In science, it received the name "First Kalevala". However, it was already printed in the twentieth century, in 1928. The fact is that Lennroth himself delayed its publication, as he soon set off on the fifth journey, which gave him the greatest number of songs. For the eighteen days of April 1834, he recorded 13,200 lines. He received the main song material from Archippa Perttunen, Martiski Karjalainen, Jurkka Kettunen, Simana Miihkalinen, Varahvontty Sirkeinen and the narrator Matro. One famous A. Perttunen sang to him 4124 lines.

"First Kalevala" contained sixteen chapters-chants. Already in this poem was developed the main plot and conflict. However, as V. Kaukonen wrote, Lennrot has not yet found an answer to the question of where and when his heroes lived. In the "First Kalevala" Pohjola was already there, but there was no Kalevala. Sampo in this poem was called Sampo. It looked like some kind of wonderful barn with never-drying grain. The heroes brought him to the cape of a misty bay and left him on the field.

Returning from the fifth trip to Kajaani, Lennroth began to rethink the epic story. According to the testimony of the same Kaukonen, Lennrot now makes additions and changes to the text of “First Kalevala” in all its chapters and so many that one can hardly find 5-10 lines in a row taken from a particular folk song and preserved in its original form. And most importantly: he came up with a plot. By making Aino (an image mostly fictional by Lennrot) sister of Youkahainen, Lennrot urges Youkahainen to avenge old man Väinämöinen not only for losing the competition in singing, but also because Väinämainen is guilty of his sister’s death.

Any episode of "Kalevala" compared to popular sources is different from them. To explain how this or that episode turned out to be under Lennrot's hand, it is necessary to write whole studies. Taking from the runes sometimes only a few lines, Lennroth unwrapped them and put them in the general plot. The singers knew very little about what Sampo is, how it is done, and they sang about three to ten lines about it, not more. Lennrot has a whole story on Sampo on many pages. Having, in fact, only one shepherd’s song where Kalevala is mentioned, Lönnrot composed the country where Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Ilmarinen live.

The first version of Kalevala, published in 1835, consisted of 32 runes, with a total number of lines exceeding 12,000 thousand and had the following name Kalevala or ancient Karelian songs about ancient times of the Finnish people . Then E. Lönnrot continued the search for folk songs and work on the poem. This work continued for another fourteen years. In the years 1840-1841, based on material collected during several previous trips, a three-volume poetry collection was published Canteletar who is also called the younger sister Kalevala . It contained separately recorded female folklore i.e. wedding, ceremonial songs, laments, spells, as well as a variety of runic songs recorded from more than a hundred storytellers.

When working on an extended version of the epic, the author achieves tremendous creative freedom. From 1835 to 1844 he makes six more expeditions, visiting, besides Karelia, the region of Northern Dvina and Arkhangelsk, as well as Kargopol, Vytergu, Petersburg province, Estonia. By 1847, E.Lonnrot already had about 130 thousand lines of runes records. New material has accumulated so much that he said: "I could create several Kaleval and none of them would be like the other."

E.Lonroth's titanic work was completed in 1849, when the “complete” Kalevala was published, consisting of 50 runes or 22,758 verses. This “canonical version” of the Kalevala is now known all over the world. Her appearance was enthusiastically greeted by the public, causing a real boom among collectors and fans of folk poetry. Dozens of folk song collectors headed to Karelia, and later to Ingria. Some wanted to make sure that the plots, themes, motifs, characters of Kalevala are not fictionalized by E. Lönnrot. Others went in search of new runes that were not found by E. Lönnrot.

Value Kalevala   also in that it is the first major work of Finnish literature, as well as a model of the Finnish language. Images and plots of the epic had a great influence on the development of the national culture of Finland, its most diverse areas - literature and literary language, drama and theater, music and painting, even architecture. Through all this, the Kalevala influenced the formation of the national identity and the Finnish nation itself. At present, the epic has not lost its cultural significance. Almost every writer, artist, composer of the republic, regardless of his nationality, experienced the influence of Kalevala in one form or another.

The appearance of Kalevala turned out to be significant not only for the Finnish culture, but also for the entire world cultural community. When creating the Kalevala, Lennroth had before his eyes the Iliad and the Elder Edda, and the Kalevala encouraged representatives of other nations to create their own national folklore and literary epics. The Estonian epos "Kalevipoeg" by F. Kreutzwald (1857-1861) and the Latvian epic "Lachplesis" by A. Pumpur (1888) appeared; The American poet Henry Longfellow created on the material of Indian folklore his "Song of Hiawatat" (1855). Thus, Kalevala gained worldwide fame.

To date, Kalevala has been translated into more than fifty languages, and about one hundred and fifty of its prose, reduced editions and fragmentary variations are also known. And now there are new translations of the epos. Only in the 1990s, more than ten translations into the languages ​​of the peoples were published: Arabic, Vietnamese, Catalan, Persian, Slovenian, Tamil, Faroese, Hindi, and others. The publication of new translations of the Karelian-Finnish epos into the languages ​​in which it was published in the past - English, Hungarian, German, Russian continues.

The question of the interest of Russian science and culture in matters of Karelian-Finnish folklore will be considered in more detail. Namely, how was perceived and evaluated Kalevala . As you know, the first information about Karelian-Finnish folk poetry appeared in the Russian press as early as the beginning of the 19th century. As in the press of other countries, the main source of this early information was the study of the Finnish enlightener of the second half of the 18th century, Professor Henrik Gabriel Portan, who is rightly considered not only the father of Finnish historiography, but also folkloristics.

From the works of Portaan, travelers in Finland, the Swede A. F. Scheldebrant and the Italian Giuseppe Acherby included separate texts of the Karelian-Finnish runes in their books translated into a number of European languages. In 1806, an excerpt from the book of Acherby published a Russian magazine, "The Lover of Language". In 1821, young Andres Shegren, who later became a well-known Finno-Ugric scholar and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published in German in St. Petersburg a small book about Finnish language and literature, which also referred to folklore. Shegren collected folk songs and in 1827 met in Petrozavodsk with the exiled Russian poet Fyodor Glinka, who translated several runes into Russian; One of them was published the next year in the Russian magazine Slav.

In the 1840s A well-known scholar, Jacob Karlovich Groth, then a professor of Russian language and literature at the University of Helsinki, who later became a Russian academician, wrote a lot about Russian readers to Kalevala, Finnish literature and the Finnish people. The grotto was intimately acquainted with Elias Lennrot, they were good friends, met often, corresponded. Twenty letters of Lennrot the Grotto in Swedish and Finnish have been preserved. The grotto traveled extensively throughout Finland; in 1846, he and Lennrot undertook a lengthy trip to Northern Finland. In the same year he published a book in Russian about this journey, which also aroused interest in Finland. In his articles, Grotto wrote in detail about Lennrot and his writings, gave a prosaic presentation of the Kalevala, and translated some runes in verse.

In 1847, the prose presentation of the Kalevala by Moritz Eman was published in Russian. This edition deserves a mention not so much by itself (Eman didn’t know enough Russian and made many mistakes and stylistic absurdities), but because VG Belinsky responded to it with a review.

It should be said that the first German translation of the Kalevala (extended edition of 1849), which played a large role in its propaganda in various countries of the world, published in 1852, was made in St. Petersburg by a Russian scientist and academician Anton Schiffner. Later German translators of Kalevala in Germany, for example, Martin Buber (1914) and Wolfgang Steinitz (1968), relied in part on the Schiffner translation. Shifner's translation served as an additional “control book” for the translators of Kalevala into many other languages ​​of the peoples of the world, just as L. P. Belsky’s Russian translation became such a guide for translators of Kalevala into the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. Later, the students of the outstanding Russian linguist and folklorist, professor at Moscow University F. I. Buslayev were engaged in translating the Kalevala into Russian. Among his students were Finnish scholars G. Lundal and S. Helgren who studied Russian, who translated in the 1870s and 80s. the Kalevala runes, mainly in prose.

Leonid Belsky, an associate professor at Moscow University and the most significant Russian translator of Kalevala, was also a pupil of F. I. Buslaev. He was the first to make a complete poetic translation of the epic (second, extended edition) into Russian. As Belsky himself later described in an article published in the Valvoya Finnish magazine, it was Buslaev who gave him the idea of ​​translating Kalevala; he constantly communicated with him and supported him in the process of five years of work. Buslaev was the first to read the completed manuscript of the translation, gave me a commendable review about it (the other reviewer of the manuscript was J. Groth). The translation was published in 1888, and Belsky provided him with a poetic dedication to Buslaev, his mentor. The translation was recognized, it was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and its literary life turned out to be extremely durable. When re-published in 1915, Belsky introduced some improvements in the translation; then his translation was repeatedly reprinted and improved by other editors; he has continued to be republished for almost a century, and in the Soviet period, he went on for far more extensive print runs than before the revolution.

Belsky's translation, of course, is not ideal, such translations apparently do not exist at all, but he has his undoubted and weighty merits. The main advantage is that Belsky managed to convey the ancient epic style of Kalevala, a special epic intonation of the narrative. Belsky tried himself to write poetry, although he did not become a major poet. This is partly felt in his translation of Kalevala. After all the corrections in his translation, there are still traps that may seem heavy. However, as a result of the patient efforts and labors, Belsky felt the world of Kalevala well, penetrated deeply into her spirit and managed to convey this to the Russian reader. In the best places, and there are a lot of them in his translation, the Russian verse sounds exactly like an epic Kalevalsky verse - weighty and majestic, it has transparent simplicity, and high solemnity, and tragedy, and humor - as all this is in the original.

Over time, there was a need for a new translation. O.V. Kuusinen submitted the initiative when he compiled the collection “From the Poetry of Kalevala” to the Russian reader. The work was performed by a group of Karelian translators - poets N. Laine, M. Tarasov, A. Titov, A. Khurmevaara. Translators, they said, sought to translate the epic "into the most lively modern literary Russian language." The translation came out in 1970 and provoked contradictory responses in print. One he seemed closer to the modern reader compared with the translation of Belsky, others found in him an excessive literature and lack of ancient folklore epic. The difference, different handwriting of several translators also affected. The attempt was repeated in 1998, a translation was made by folklorist E. Kiuru and poet A. Mishin

The study of E.Lonnrot's biography helped to understand how the material was collected for the creation of the book, and that his long hard work, during which the passing oral works of Finns and Karelians were recorded, helped to preserve very valuable historical information. And the reaction of the world cultural community to the output of this work confirmed its importance and uniqueness. We saw that the author did not immediately come to the idea of ​​creating the Kalevala, and it will be further expedient to explore in more detail the evolution of the author’s intention during his work on the Kalevala.

In the early years of traveling for folk songs, Lennroth thought that he would be able to put together pieces, fragments (in the form of folk songs) of some great folk poem that existed in antiquity, which eventually crumbled. As we already know, Portan, Gottlund, Kekkman supported the idea at different times. But soon Lennroth was convinced that this was absolutely unfeasible. He reasoned like this: even if the poem was and crumbled, then over time the song fragments moved away from each other, changing in the mouths of the new generations of rune singers. And the mechanical combination of folk songs of the poem did not give birth. It required a different, creative approach to the material. It was most fully manifested when working on an expanded version of the epos. Now Lönnrot begins to write a poem with folk lines, editing them, enriching, in particular, alliteration. Knowing perfectly the features of song traditions, remembering all sorts of ready-made lines - clichés, formulas worked out over the centuries, he created episodes and conflicts that did not occur in the material he collected.

To show this technique more specifically, let us give the following example: In 1834, Elias Lönnrot wrote down the final lines from Archippa Perttunen:

Even the best songwriter

Songs of all not singing.

Even waterfall agile

All the water does not pour out.

For good rune singers.

The last three lines of the song by A. Perttunen entered the Kalevala version of 1835 without any changes, but in a different verbal environment:

Only all the same, but still

i sang the rune, the song sang,

i cut the branches, I marked the way.

for good rune singers,

for singers more skillful

among growing youth

ascending generation.

In the final version of "Kalevala" of 1849, the lines appeared in the following form:

Only all the same, but still

i left the ski run for the singers,

the way has broken, he has bent down the peak

chopped off along the branches trails.

The road has now passed here

new path has opened

for singers that are capable,

boarders that better

among growing youth

rising people (rune 50).

Comparing the two versions of Kalevala, we saw how carefully selected individual lines and words were subjected to selection. There was a replacement for a more accurate, resonant, giving the text a deeper meaning. The seven-line closing song of A. Perttunen cited above gave impetus to the final song "Kalevala" (107 lines), where Lennrot used many lines of other rune-singers and designed their own. So did all the other episodes of Kalevala grow. As the researcher of Kalevala, Väino Kaukonen, who studied her line by line, noted, “Kalevala” in Kalevala is not something that is similar to folk poetry, but that it differs from it. ”

It should be noted that with this approach to the folklore material not only the plots, but also the portraits of the characters were modified. They were more and more individualized, certain actions were assigned to them. Väinämöinen at Kalevala is a skilled singer who made kantele, first out of pike bones, and then from a birch tree, Ilmarinen, a skilled blacksmith who bound the firmament and a wonderful mill. Lemminkäinen is a careless warrior, a woman’s favorite who comes to others' feasts without an invitation, Loukhi is the clever and cunning mistress of the country, where the bride’s heroes go to and from where Sampo is abducted. The tragic figure in the poem of Lennrot is the slave Kullervo, who committed suicide for his grave sin.

Famous saying that there is only one Kalevala created by Lennroth, there is only one ancient Kalevalian epoch made up by Lennrot, which is confirmed by the runes' plot character. Then, before each chapter, there was a brief summary of it. As is well known, this method was typical of the traditions of the Western European novel. events for the event, from hero to hero, were carefully prepared by previous events, outlined by the narrator himself, whose presence is felt in the text. Kalevala   this is manifested in the words of the author at the beginning and end of the work. And also in his attitude to the heroes of the runes.

Fundamentally, the understanding of the author's attitude to the historicity of the runes. Lönnrot adhered to the theory of the Karelian origin of the runes. Even the rune about the kidnapping of Sampo he considered to some extent a historical reality. He saw the prototype of Pohjola in the Biarmia mentioned by the Scandinavian sources, which, in his opinion, was located at the mouth of the Northern Dvina. In one of his articles, Lönnrot wrote that Holmgard from Scandinavian sources is in fact Kholmogory on the Northern Dvina and the same name in translation sounds like Sariola - the center of Pohlyola. And in his dissertation, Lönnrot viewed Väinämöinen as a historical person, as a certain ancestor who taught the people of the North to maritime and agriculture. Lönnrot also denies the divine origin of the images of Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen and sees in them the personification of the people of labor: blacksmiths and boatmakers.

The views of Lönnrot on the history of the Karelian-Finnish epic for his time were progressive. He did not doubt the Karelian-Finnish origin of the Kalevala runes. Completely rejected the idea of ​​the emergence of this epic among the West-Finnish Vikings. Considering the rune of Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen as the works of the ancient Barmetians, Lönnrot thought that the runes of Lemminkainen and Kullervo arose later.

Historical reflections in the Karelian-Finnish epic Lonnrot considered complicated and clouded due to the emergence of a large number of variants of the runes on the same plot. Lönnrot sees the historical basis of the epic not in the relationship between the Karelians and the Finns with Lapps, but in tributary relations with the ancient Barmeians. Proof of this is the plot in which Lemminkäinen brings oats to the north. In the preface to the first edition of Kalevala, Lönnrot wrote: “It seems to me that Kaleva was the very first Finnish hero. Perhaps he was the first resident of the Finnish Peninsula who had settled down firmly, the kind of which then spread throughout the country. ” Thus, Lönnrot saw in the runes a reflection of the historical reality of the era of the tribal system.

The following interesting point in the analysis of the epic can be noted that the poemnost "Kalevala" is emphasized by its composition and architectonics. "Kalevala" is symmetrical in everything. The initial words of the singer in it correspond to his final words, the appearance of Vainamainen - his departure, the episodes about the birth of Vainiamainen - episodes about the birth of the "king" of Karelia who replaced him.

"Kalevala" consists of two parts, each with twenty-five songs (runes) that have a constant roll call. And each of the parts first tells about trips for the bride, and then - for the Sampo. In symmetrical places use the same line-cliche. So, in the 8th rune, Väinämöinen asks the maiden Pohjola to sit in her sleigh ("Sit with me, maiden, in a sleigh, get down in my koshevku") - in the 35th Kullervo asks about this same girl he met on the road, however in a few other words. Lemminkäinen in the 11th rune kidnapped the maiden of the island of Kyllikki, Ilmarinen kidnapped the second daughter of the hostess Pohela in the 38th. (In both cases, the girls are asked to use the same words to set them free.) Kyullicki’s “Treason” (she went without permission to play at the village games) caused Lemminkäinen to go to Pohjola for her second wife. The “treason” of Loukhi Ilmarinen’s second daughter (she laughed with a foreign man when the blacksmith was asleep) prompts Ilmarinen to take revenge on her, and then go along with Väinämöinen to take it away from the hostess Pohela Sampo.

There are quite a few such examples in the composition. At the same time, the compositional symmetry of the poem does not interfere with moving away from the main plot or even stopping the plot movement. The chapters in which the story of Ilmarinen and the maidens Pohjoly (21-25) are narrated do not help the plot. But these chapters help to better understand the influence of the author’s personality on the final version of the work. As he could see their real incarnation during his numerous expeditions in Russian Karelia, where they made a great impression on him. Wedding chapters (arrival of the groom, wedding, advice to the bride, advice to the groom, meeting of the young in the groom's house) have their own internal tension, because they are built according to the laws of drama, based on contrasts of episodic heroes.

Based on the above, we can draw the following conclusions:

) At the level of the plot and composition, Lennroth achieved that freedom, which was not, and could not be, of the folk singers: they didn’t strive for a coherent presentation of all the plots they knew underlying the Karelian and Finnish epic songs.

) Lennrot used with great freedom the material of lyrical wedding, shepherd, hunting songs and spells. He put the lines and fragments of them in monologues and dialogues, thereby deepening the psychology of the actions of the heroes, showing their feelings, their mental state.

) The mastery of Lennrot the poet is best clarified at the level of individual lines. The creator of Kalevala knew Karelian-Finnish poetry, its artistic features, and the peculiarity of its poetics. He used the entire arsenal of poetic methods (parallelisms, alliteration, hyperbole, comparisons, epithets, metonymy).

) The lines of recorded runes under his pen acquired a new meaning, a new sound writing. Any fragment of the song, falling into the text of "Kalevala", changed itself and changed the lines adjacent to it.

) However, the “Kalevala” by E. Lönnrot is a historical source. The basis of the work is drevnefinsk folklore and historical sources, allowing to reconstruct the past of the Karelian-Finnish people.

In the second chapter of our study, the focus was on issues such as the reasons for the emergence of the epos, the influence of the author’s biography on the text, the circumstances that shaped the final form of the work, the process of collecting material and, finally, the reaction of the world cultural community to the Kalevala publication. . What kind of answers were received. First, the Kalevala appears under the influence of the cultural processes that encompassed the entire European culture of the first half of the nineteenth century and logically continued them within the framework of the Finnish culture. Secondly, the historical conditions of Finland at that time additionally created an interest in such cultural manifestations. It can be said that in the society there was a social order for a work like “Kalevala”. And as recognized by all researchers, she played a large role in the formation of not only Finnish identity, but also became an example for other collectors of folklore. Thirdly, we tried to prove the point of view according to which “Kalevala” is an independent work, having one author E. Lönnrot. Of course. It is impossible to deny the fact that it was written on folklore material, but at the same time E. Lönnrot selected and built the runes on the basis of his plan. He also connected parts of separate runes in order to give them a look that was averaged for all localities, expanding or appending the plot he needed to link the runes into a single semantic and compositional whole.

Being an outstanding work of E.Lennrot "Kalevala" with the most important historical source, allowing to recreate the ancient and medieval picture of the life of the Karelian-Finns. The basis of the epos consists of numerous historical and folklore materials, much of which have now been lost. Hence the meaning of the Kalevala as a historical source.

Chapter 3. Daily life and religious representations of Karelo - Finnov

In the third chapter we will make a more detailed analysis of the text of the epic itself. It will consist of several stages that will help in solving the main tasks of the work.

3.1 The main plots of the epic

The main thread of the story can be divided into three macro plots. The most archaic plot is devoted to the origin of the world and the creation of all things. The cosmogony of the ancient Finno-Ugrians, reflected in the ancient epic songs, is interesting because the creation process was carried out with the help of a duck and its egg that was broken into pieces:

From the egg, from the bottom,

Mother came out - the land is damp;

From the egg, from the top,

The high vault of heaven arose,

From the yolk, from the top,

The sun was bright;

From protein, from the top,

A clear month has appeared;

From the egg, from the motley part,

The stars are made in heaven;

From the egg, from the dark part,

The clouds in the air appeared (Runa 1).

As we see, the picture of the origin of the world is shown rather flat and schematic. At the same time, unlike the traditional development of such a plot in most Indo-European myths, it is not so clearly involved the demiurge (creator) or the mother goddess. Their activity is more noticeable at the stage of arrangement and filling of the world, when the virgin Ilmatar rises from the depths of the waters and begins the process of creation:

Only stretched a hand -

Cape after Cape was erected;

Where was the foot -

Dug pits in fish;

Where the bottom of his foot touched -

Deep into the depths left.

Where the land touched sideways -

An even shore appeared;

Where the land touched the foot -

There salmon tony steel;

And where the head leaned

Small bay appeared (rune 1).

The creation of the world in the main zoomorphic character is one of the evidence that perhaps the Kalevala runes represent the most ancient epic recorded in Europe. He stands on the verge of shamanic myth and the epic itself. At the same time, we see anthropomorphic deities and recognize their names already in the first song,

Such myths serve as the basis for the ideas of this group of people about the world around them, for explaining the emergence of something new (animal, plant, social establishment). Their special function lies in the fact that these myths set forth a sacred history, narrates about an event that occurred in memorable times. beginnings of all beginnings . They tells how reality, through the exploits of supernatural beings, achieved its embodiment and realization. And this gives people a vital basis, self-confidence and frees up creative energy. It is thanks to this information that the myths in the pre-writing culture are an invaluable source for the formation of ideas about the worldview of the Finno-Ugric peoples in the II-I millennium BC.

Lönnrot begins the story with this plot, which is his tribute to the folk tradition, but at the same time he uses it to build a linear historical time: from the legendary mythological past to the more or less real present and future. Because of this, we see a logical explanation for the structure of the world, which, as a rule, is not at all characteristic of true myths, between which there is often no coherence. In all this you can find confirmation of the point of view in historiography that the Kalevala is a work of authorship. As we see, E. Lönnrot breaks the rhythm peculiar to the myths and builds them according to his plan, according to which he tried to combine all the plots into a single logical story. Also he can finish the runes, expand or narrow the lyrics. And according to his plan, he picked up the runes, it is known that out of the 100 thousand verses he wrote down, only 22 thousand entered the Kalevala.

The second macro story goes to the level of heroes. Such a division of the plots is characteristic of many world epics. The most characteristic examples of this statement can be found in Elder edda . In Kalevala, there are three main heroes: the singer-charmer Väinämöinen, the blacksmith Ilmarinen, the hunter Lemminkäinen. With their self-sufficiency, these characters are united by a single plot. Namely, matchmaking to the beautiful girls Pohjёly. This approach allowed the author to combine these heroes into a single thread of narration. Recall that initially he wanted to publish separate poems dedicated to each hero individually. But the fact that he made the theme of matchmaking one of the central ones in the epic allowed him to include in the text a large amount of material devoted to the wedding ritual. Perhaps he was inspired by such a move that during his expeditions he constantly witnessed village weddings, and thus decided to fix this important ethnographic material in literary form. It can be noted that he was completely successful. Since at the present time a large number of folklore events connected with the dissemination and preservation of cultural traditions are associated with Kalevala. And in them the epic is an example and a foundation.

But back to the consideration of the plot. With it, the characters of the heroes are revealed most fully. They become close to simple average people, that is, they acquire a utilitarian character. That once again shows us the everyday component of the epic. In connection with this approach, Kalevala can be viewed as a kind of encyclopedia of everyday life, hidden behind mythological images. In terms of historical information, this plot is revolutionary because it reflects an important change in family relationships. The heroes' journeys for the brides to the distant and dangerous country of Pohjel directly indicate the transition from endogamy to exogamy. Now marriages within the same genus are forbidden, and the march for the ungangled becomes an important and responsible action.

The following macro-plot is a reflection of the economic life of the Finno-Ugrians in antiquity. It seems quite archaic. Although Lönnrot chose the North Karelian from two variants of the plot development, which contains a reflection of the later processes. Here, the story of the creation of the magical mill Sampo and the struggle for its possession will be connected with the story of matchmaking in the exogamous family (Pohjel). There is a fusion of the myth of the origin of cultural goods with the characteristic motifs of performing difficult (or impracticable) assignments by the applicant in the hand of a girl. And at some point a task was added to them to forge the mysterious Sampo, or rather, it had already become mysterious, since its initial value as a repository or container of cultural goods (“every kind of life”) was clouded.

According to general notions, Sampo is a mill - self-watering, which is the eternal source of food and the guarantee of the prosperity of its owner and of the whole race. But originally the image of Sampo in the minds of people was not unequivocal. So a line of 10 runes in the description of this subject, tells us that he had a colorful cap. A similar epithet in runes is also inherent in the sky. Based on this, one can say that Sampo was a variant of the world tree, like Yggdrasil from Older edda . Especially since its three roots will be mentioned further in the text:

And one went root to the ground,

And the other - on the beach,

The third root is deep into the cliff.

In other places, the image of Sampo was associated with the unconscious and artistic processing of ideas about the origin of vegetation, grains, and the wealth of the depths of the sea. Naturally, over the centuries, not only the image of Sampo has changed, but also the myth itself, which constitutes the content of this epic plot. Together with the development of a more realistic understanding of the origin of natural phenomena, it first evolved, and from a certain moment the Sampo myth itself was destroyed, until it lost its original outlines. As a result, the runes that have reached us are preserved only by fragments of an ancient myth. We will return to that version of the plot, which was proposed by E. Lönnrot in the Kalevala. The idea of ​​creating this artifact belongs, the mistress of the northern country Pohjoly, the old Louhi. This should be a test for heroes who want to marry her beautiful daughter. Louhi offers a recipe on the basis of which Sampo should be made:

Taking the end of the feather of the winch,

Milk cows are impure

Together with the wool from the sheep

And with barley grain together (rune 7).

As we can see, the recipe is rather complicated and not clear, which is a reflection of fragments of the most ancient understanding of Sampo's image. Therefore, the image of Sampo cannot be perceived in monosyllables, it has a multi-level character. If we consider it as an object of national happiness and well-being, then it requires the merging of the three basic essences of the economy: hunting (winch feather), cattle breeding (milk and wool), and agriculture. The combination of these types of management was to ensure the proper organization of life. It is not surprising that in such a land quite poor in resources as Finland people always had a desire to make their lives easier, and Sampo was perfectly suited for this. A similar image of a wonderful mill that grinds the desired wealth can be found in Elder edda   at Songs about Grotti.

The richest in historical reflection of reality is that part of the rune, which describes the process of making Sampo. It is not enough to know the recipe, you need to find a master. For this you need cultural hero , able to create such a wonderful thing. It becomes the blacksmith Ilmarinen, known already for having managed to forge the sky. The process itself is quite complicated. After three days of blowing up the furs and maintaining the heat, the Onion from the flame appeared

The bow was beautiful in appearance,

But had a bad property:

Every day he asked for sacrifices

And on holidays and double (rune 10)

Ilmarinen broke the bow and threw it back into the furnace. Next onion:

A red sail boat came out,

The board is all gold decorated,

But had a bad property:

Himself went into battle (rune 10)

And Ilmarinen broke him, but he did not stop the work and the horn again burns for three days:

A cow is out of the fire

Nice cow with a mind

But she has a bad property;

Sleeps in the forest constantly,

Milk lets into the ground (rune 10).

Ilmarinen cuts the cow into small pieces, throws it into the fire. Once again inflate the fur, again three days pass, looks:

From the fire there is a plow coming out

In appearance, that plow was beautiful.

But had a bad property:

He plowed the fields of strangers

Furrowed pasture.

This plow was also thrown into the fire. Finally, after three days Ilmarinen saw that Sampo was growing up, a variegated lid had appeared. And then he began to knock with a hammer stronger and brought the creation of Sampo to the end.

Thus, we have a number of fantastic images - allegories. It is necessary to compare them with what was originally placed in the Ilmarinen furnace. All these objects symbolize certain types of farms and their characteristic forms of life. Consider them in more detail: Onions - a symbol of tribal strife, which are caused by the predominance of the hunting economy with its rigid distribution of forest land. Violation of these boundaries, as well as an increase in a certain norm of the number of people, can lead to mass famine. A shuttle is a Viking way of life, when a farm is added by plundering other lands. The sacred cow is an inefficient forest cattle breeding with elements of nomadic archaic, which appeared due to the displacement of steppe peoples into the forests. The plow is a migration to the lands of the Finns of the Slavs - farmers with an agricultural cult and their own way of life. Thus, in the mass consciousness of the people of that time, Sampo is the optimal organization of economic management coupled with happiness, which included the bow and the canoe and the cow and the plow organically, having lost their destructive qualities.

The next stage of the story is connected with the riches that Sampo gave to the old woman Louhi:

What flour one sideways,

And to others, the salt would be ground,

The third side is a lot of money (10 fleeces).

In this passage, we see the significance for the further development of the topic. While preserving the “fragments” of the myth of the clan society about the origin of cultural values, the Sampo image included not only the features of the epoch of its origin, but also signs of the later eras with developed commodity-money relations: after all, Sampo grinds not only “food” and “ on expenses in the house ", but also" for sale ". There is no doubt that the image of such a mill could arise only when all-consuming commodity-money relations penetrated the Karelian village, when money became genuine equivalents of goods, replacing the once-existing bread and salt.

Further, the third macro plot will be in the center of our attention. The idea of ​​two spheres of epic space is always present runes. Without this, epic poetry, the epic world is unthinkable. B.N. Putilov writes about this: “In any epic we are dealing with the relationship (most often - the conflict) of two opposing worlds -“ our own ”and“ alien ”. In this case, the actual spatial characteristics are included in a wider complex, being close to the characteristics of ethnic, social, less often - cultural and community. "

In the Karelian runes, the opposition of countries is expressed in archaic forms, but, nevertheless, it is present. Trying to interpret this confrontation not mythologically, but historically, Lönnrot partly admitted that Pohjola is Lapland (in the Lappi runes), but still more inclined to think that some Finnish tribe was meant by Pohjola people. Tribal relations could not but be reflected in the runes; without real "own" and "alien" tribes, the very mythopoetic confrontation could hardly have arisen. And so Pohjola in the runes has a dual character. Originally, this is a mythological country, a country of epic rival characters, a specific reflection and generation of myth consciousness, but over time this meaning was forgotten, and it was already rethought as a Saami country.

In runes and spells, the mistress of Pohjola, the sorceress Loukhi, appears with constant epithets-formulas that emphasize her physical inferiority, evil temper (wild, ferocious, mad), and even female weakness. Also constantly in the text of the runes, you can see how the heroes disparagingly speak about this region, considering it to be poorer and more backward. Historically, this is explained by the fact that in more northern territories the archaic elements of life continue to exist for a longer time. So in Pohjel is still strong the power of women and the true mistress of the clan is the old Louhi.

As for the epic country of Kalevala, in the actual folklore tradition, this name is found very rarely in this form (only in one of the ballads and in wedding songs). But quite often and geographically widely (in Karelia, South-Western Finland, Estonia) there are mythological legends about the “sons of Kaleva", the mighty giants who demonstrate their extraordinary power. For the first time the "sons of Kaleva" mentioned M. Agricola in the list of pagan deities in Karel in 1551

The clash of these two worlds will occur on the basis of the question of the possession of Sampo. Starting with 39 runes this is the main plot. The heroes of Kalevala and the people are going to hike behind the mill, because they consider it not right that only Loukhi, the owner of Pohela, owns it. Some researchers tend to see in this story a historical reflection of the process of changing matriarchy to patriarchy. But there is another point of view, according to her, the plot with Sampo reflects the time of the penetration of agriculture to the more northern tribes in Pohjela, in the seaside Sariola. The mistress of the North urges the southerners to make Sampo for her people, and when she gets a magic mill, she says:

Why not live in Pohjel, If Sampo is in Pohjel? There are arable lands there, there are crops there, Unchanged benefits are there. Now, after receiving Sampo Loukhi, the mistress of Pohela owns both livestock and grain: “I examined the flock in the barn, read the grain in the barn”.

The struggle for Sampo is obviously the poetic expression of the clashes of the southern tribes with the northern ones because of the agricultural lands, the struggle only personified by the “mill” as a symbol of good in general. The expedition of the people of Kaleva to Pohjelu for Sampo does not look like a military enterprise, but as the resettlement of colonists to the north; boarded the ship intended for the cruise: One hundred husbands holding oars.

On one side of that boat. Well done, handsome sat down. On the other side of the boat Boarded girls in ringlets. There at the bottom sat the elders.

In this part of the study, we reviewed in detail the main themes of the Kalevala epos. What did it do to solve research problems? First, it proved once again that the runes belong to different periods of history from ancient times to the new time. Moreover, their combination can occur in the same runes of the same plot. From this follows the second conclusion that such a situation could arise in cases where the epic has a direct author (E. Lönnrot) and he has a large number of variants of runes, from which he takes pieces that are most suitable for the development of his plan. In the third plots are arranged in chronological order from the most ancient to the events reflecting the adoption of Christianity. Many runes in a form in which they are represented in Kalevala have never been performed by the rune singers. Moreover, the plots are interconnected among themselves and often one flows from the other, which makes the epic look like a novel. As for the historicity of these scenes, they are easily guessed as the events of the II-I millennium BC, and the Middle Ages and the new time. Accordingly, the status of a historical source can be recognized behind the Kalevala, since we do not have written sources of these times, and archeological data cannot completely reconstruct the picture of life.

3.2 Heroic Images of the Kalevala

The next moment of interest will concern the heroes of the epos and their specificity in comparison with other epics, and above all with Elder edda . The epithet "heroic epics" is usually added to the epics of different nations. But the heroism of the Karelian-Finnish national runes and the Kalevala is special, not yet associated with military exploits, fighting squads, princes, royal families, antique kings, early slave or early feudal forms of statehood. There is nothing of this in Kalevala, although swords and spears are mentioned.

In Kalevala, heroic is mythological, the struggle is still fought with mythological monsters, sorcerers and sorceresses, and with the help of not so much weapons as magic spells. The heroes of the Karelian-Finnish folk runes and the Kalevala are special “cultural heroes” inherent in ancient myths - pagan semi-deities — semihumans, revered as the first ancestors and founders of this clan, tribe, or ethnic group. Sacred memory is preserved about them because they created and arranged the world, laid the foundations of life. In the runes they celebrate the feats of outstanding heroes endowed with extraordinary qualities.

The ideal hero of the epic is always the most powerful, wise, skillful. No one but Väinämöinen can push a boat made by him into the water; no one except him could cut a huge pike with a sword, for which the boat caught in the sea; only Väinämöinen is able to make kantele from pike bones, and he also extracts the first sounds from the instrument. The reflection of primitive clan thinking rests on the heroes themselves, they are glorified as the ancestors and forefathers who laid the material and spiritual foundations of the life of this clan community. They are the first and the best, and in this first-born quality they and their deeds are sung in the epic.

For all the fantasticness of the images and events, the epic tells about the real occupations of ancient people, about the real ancient life. Epic heroes catch fish, hunt animals, build boats, forge iron, cut podsek, sow bread, brew beer, woo brides, mourn the dead children - everything seems to be like ordinary people. And at the same time, these ordinary activities are unusual, they are fanned with heroic and full of high, solemn meaning, just because they are performed for the first time and in line with cosmogonic events. These everyday activities are also an act of the first creation of the world, of life on earth. And everything in this act is both simple and majestic, and full of miracles.

Just as the wisdom and power of Väinämäinen, Ilmarinen’s high mastery symbolizes the vitality of the whole family, so in the aesthetics of folklore and epic poetry, the general prevails over the particular. Hyperbolas, as well as constant epithets, are designed to give a generalized and stable idea of ​​a hero or object, they indicate its most common feature. Väinämöinen is a staid and experienced old man, Lemminkäinen is endowed with the beauty of youth, each character has his own leading trait. The most archaic hero of the epic is Väinämöinen - the famous chanter. He becomes the victorious representative of his people in the struggle against the black forces of Pohela. In the runes, he also acts as an employee endowed with the most diverse abilities: a plowman, a hunter, a fisherman, a creator of cantal, a healer for the sick, a boat builder, and an experienced sailor. But above all, he is an incomparable songwriter. In the singing competitions, in which Väinämöinen was caused by the poetic booster Joukahainen, who envied him of art, envied him, but Väinänmöinen’s singing is so powerful that:

Foam water in the lakes,

Clouded the earth everywhere

Mountains of copper swung.

Glory Väinämöinen is based not only on the art of singing, but also on the depth of his knowledge. Among the people, he is known as a “soothsayer,” who has the ability to look into the past and the future. The following rune describes his journey in search of knowledge. Behind the words "about things of origin," he went to the underworld to giant Antero Vipunen and brought out ancient runes and spells from him. A similar story is found in the "Young Edda", where Odin makes a journey to the source of wisdom, which is under the protection of the giant Mimir, and for the opportunity to drink from it leaves his right eye.

Knowledge of the origin of the world or things of origin, gives the possibility of power over them. This, as it were, means seniority over a thing, and seniority in a generic society meant power. Therefore, knowledge of the origin of the world and things has never been a mere whim; it implied omnipotence. Therefore, the antiquity of the origin of Vainamainen means its mythological significance. He appeared before all other people, he himself is both a god and a man, he turns out to be both young and old and immortal.

Very vivid and character Väinämöinen. We see him: tormented by sea waves, crying from powerlessness in the seventh rune, but we also see him standing firmly on the stern of his canoe during a raging storm (rune 10th). Sometimes he appears as a keen fiancé (rune 8th), and at another time a mentor to the people. Now he gives in to the power of gentle melodies of his kantale, then he, like a courageous hero, rushes into battle.

Courage and determination are combined in Väinämöinen with calm judgment. He is the embodiment of wisdom. When in the rune it is called "old, faithful", then by this, obviously, it means that he is experienced and reliable. Thinking a great thing, Väinämöinen carefully prepares to commit it. At the moment of danger, he acts decisively and boldly, and then it turns out that this old hero is valiantly superior to others (the 40th rune).

He is the initiator and leader of the campaign of the heroes of Kalevala behind Sampo. His wisdom and exploits are crucial at various stages of this campaign, as well as in all subsequent battles to save the people of Kalevala from Loukhi’s wiles.

Väinämöinen leaves the stage, according to the last rune of the epic, after the birth of her son Marjatta, who was born from the berries of the cranberries she swallowed. When the son of Marjatta was baptized "by the king Karjaly, the bearer of all power", deeply offended, Väinämöinen floats away on a copper canoe, leaving "the people eternal joy, great songs to the descendants".

As he leaves, he, however, predicts that he will return in the future:

A lot of time will pass

Days will be replaced by others -

And I'll be needed again,

Wait, they will look for me here

To make Sampo again

A new song would sing

New moon would get

The sun would have rescued again.

The image of Ilmarinen, the famous blacksmith of Kalevala, is closer to reality than the image of Väinämöinen. Although many wonderful things accompany this popular image in many epics of the world. Since his birth:

Grew up in a coal meadow,

And in his hand he holds a hammer

In the fist forceps squeezes.

Dark night he was born

In the afternoon he builds a blacksmith.

This image was created by the author mainly on the basis of the South Karelian runes. Where a very detailed description of his appearance and character. This is a handsome man of blooming age. He is silent, calm and always serious. Ilmarinen is slow in action and not easily taken on a new business if it does not apply to blacksmithing skills.

But in the blacksmith he is in his element. He forges all day, often forgetting about the world around him for a long time. He forges swords, spears, plows, scythes, if necessary, even rings and other women's jewelry. In his craft he is a true virtuoso who, in his work on his best creations, is embraced by creative inspiration. Once Ilmarinen made a real sculpture of gold and silver - a beautiful girl, looking at whom he himself admired. The greatest creation of Ilmarinen is Sampo.

In Kalevala, he narrates about his other exploits, thanks to which he received the hand of the girl Pohjola: how he plowed a snake field, bridled a terrible bear and how with the help of an eagle forged from iron he caught a monstrous pike in the river Manala (rune 19 I). During the campaign for Sampo, as in other cases, Ilmarinen is the closest ally of Väinämöinen. He is not endowed with the qualities of a leader, but he is a courageous and unshakable warrior, not to mention his indispensability as an excellent weapon master of the Kalevala people.

The image of the Lemminkäinen, a young daring fighter, is more close to the classic character of a hero - an adventurer and a favorite of women. The mother obviously indulged him as a child, and he grew up as a carefree and windy young man:

He was beautiful in appearance

The height is also excellent.

But he was not without blemish,

Life he led not without errors:

I was very fond of women.

But at the same time, he is an excellent skier and skillfully wields a sword. He is a fearless daredevil, going to meet dangers. But he lacks the judgment of Väinämöinen and the seriousness of Ilmarinen; besides, he likes to brag. However, Lemminkäinen has a vividness and sense of humor, qualities that Ilmarinen is not gifted with. But, despite the weaknesses and shortcomings of the character of Lemminkäinen, people clearly love this hero. But at the same time, Lemminkäinen’s recklessness and carelessness, his boastfulness, do not approve. The epos does not directly blame him for this, but it shows how Lemminkainen’s rash acts lead to dire consequences.

So, during the first hike in Pohjälä, when Lemminkäinen, on the insidious proposal, Louhi goes on a hunt for the "swan of death", and he falls into a trap and almost says goodbye to life. Only the selfless efforts of the mother bring him back to life (Runa 15th). The consequence of his second campaign is a large retaliatory attack by Pohjel's warriors, who destroy his home to the ground (Runa 28th). On the third trip he sets off without sufficient preparation in case of frosts, and his prow freezes into the ice of the sea, while he himself almost dies (the 30th rune). Returning from the campaign for Sampo, Lemminkäinen, despite Wäinämöinen’s warnings, began to sing - to bawl, causing the crane standing on the shore to get scared, flew to Pohjelou and woke the sleepy Louhi (rune 42nd). For the heroes of "Kalevala" is equipped with a chase. True, during the attack of Louhi, Lemminkäinen boldly wielded his sword, but Sampo sank into the sea. For bragging people punish him by often putting him in a ridiculous position. Nevertheless, Lemminkyäinen’s flaws and weaknesses are spoken in Kalevala with good-natured humor - after all, be that as it may, he is an “excellent husband” when he has to fight Pohjel’s army.

It stands apart in the epic Kullervo, the image of a slave, avenging the whole world for his troubles. The name Kullervo entered the history of Finnish literature, making up its tragic layer. This image is complex, multi-valued, it combines the motifs of fairy tales and songs about the birth of a strongman boy with traditional shepherd's songs, where the shepherd boy is most often a being destitute. The Ingermanland plot about the enmity of two brothers because of land shortage was also used.

In the epic, the runes are devoted to him from 31 to 37. From the very birth, Kullervo is a slave to Untam, his uncle. Untamo with an armed detachment destroyed the house of his parents and killed, as expected, all of his relatives. Subsequently, however, it turns out that Kullervo’s parents, brother and sister managed to escape and hide in a deep forest. Fearing that an avenger could grow out of Kullervo for his clan, Untamo wanted to kill him as a child, but he could not do it at all. The ancient runes tell of the miraculous rescue of a boy from death in the sea, in the flames of a fire, and even on the gallows (rune 31st).

Soon Kullervo grew older and became an unusually strong young man. Untamo thought that in his face he would receive a “slave worthy of a hundred strong” (Runa 31st). But Kullervo spoiled all work by excessive application of forces, - his protest against slavery was so defiantly manifested. Untamo, in order to get rid of the slave who had become burdensome to him, sold him to Karelia Ilmarinen.

After a series of misadventures, finding his parents and dishonoring his own sister, which he did not recognize after a long separation, Kullervo concludes that Untamo is to blame for all the misfortunes of his family. Despite the requests of the mother goes on a campaign against Untamo. Along the way, he receives news of the death of his relatives, but only the death of the mother touches him. But this message cannot force him to return home. He rushes forward and achieves his goal: destroys the housing of Untamo and all that was there.

But after achieving his goal, Kullervo finally found himself outside of society. He is completely alone. His path lies in the deaf taiga, where he throws himself on his sword. This is the end of this hero is logical, according to the author. In the speech of Väinämöinen, we see that the reasons for such behavior of the hero are rooted in the fact that he was brought up by strangers. So in a peculiar form the ancient ethics of family upbringing reaches people.

All these heroes are temporary layers, reflected in the epic. Beginning with the archaic epic of the forefather Vainamainena and ending with the late medieval slave Kullervo. At the same time, they fully correspond to the specifics of this epic. Many researchers emphasize the fact that these heroes are more people than gods. A description of their life provides rich material for reconstructing pictures of everyday life. talks about the primary allocation of handicrafts from agriculture. It shows various levels and statuses in society and, finally, bears in itself the most part of sacral information and representations of Finns and Karelians.

3.3 Daily life in the Kalevala runes

Turning directly to the analysis of the content of the epos, our goal will be to reveal the wealth of information contained in this source, i.e. Based on the information presented in the runes, we will try to reconstruct the daily lives of people, with their occupations, customs and beliefs.

In Kalevala there are no traces of the presence of a state or a structure that is similar in function, we do not observe rulers and the control system, there is also no division of society into social groups. The basis of everything is a large family or in a more northern version (Pohjela) race. As a rule, such families live in a separate, extensive estate with numerous buildings. The family consists of 3–4 generations and includes up to 20 relatives. There are frequent references to servants. These are mainly young girls and girls doing simple work at home:

Hey you, baby girl,

You, my servant, slave!

Bring in the pot edible,

Bring you a beer to the guest (rune 27).

If we talk about slavery, it is more like a patriarchal than a classic. This theme is devoted to the cycle of runes on the hero Kullervo. He became a slave, because his mother was in slavery and was subsequently sold as a careless worker. But this state of affairs is noted only once. There is also a category of employees:

Inflate slaves made

For daily payment (rune 39).

But their social status is rather low, since the same term is used as for real slaves. Such workers, of course, are not allowed to agriculture, and are engaged only in the most difficult and dirty work.

The basis of life is farming. Each family has its own plots and they own them as owners. And such a mention is found in the text.

The whole island was divided,

All sizes are glade,

The forest was distributed by lot

All the meadows are already at the owners (Runa 29).

But at the same time, farming remains quite primitive - slash-and-fire. The whole second Fleece is devoted to his epic description. For a long time it was the main way of cultivating the land, since the forests in these places are very dense. At first, Väinämöinen finds “seven seeds, six grains” of oats and barley on the seashore. He collects them and puts them in a bag of forest pelts. Then the bird gives him good advice to him:

Barley will not rise at Osmo,

There is no cleared field there

There is not a forest for arable land,

Good fire is not burned (rune 2)

Väinämöinen follows her advice and soon there is a rich harvest on the arable land of Kaleva.

From the passage it is clear that the main crops are unpretentious oats and barley, ideal for the local climate. And only once there is a mention of wheat in the rune 21.

In the runes we find references to ancient agricultural implements. For plowing the land used wooden or even stone plow.

In the Kalevala there is often an image of a “fire plow”, this is due to the custom used in antiquity when a wooden plow was burned. In rune 10 there is a hint of the appearance of plow farming, since it is said that the smith Ilmarinen forged a plow. Accordingly, the main force was the horse, and the main transport was the sleigh. Grain processing is simple, to match the very agriculture. To grind the grains using the hub, pestle, millstones:

Isotru while stone,

Crumble as long as the pestle

Explaining the mortar,

Check out the heavy millstone.

In the Karelian-Finnish epic songs, there is a peculiar reflection of the ancient forms of cattle breeding. Since the herd is often portrayed as large, huge, it can be assumed by analogy that it is a common herd of a whole genus. So in response to the request of her father, to look at whom the dog barks, the girl responds:

I already have a case

I look after the big herd,

I clean the cows shed.

The communal nature of ownership is confirmed by the fact that the common herd in the runes is called “ours”, and by the fact that the room where there is a large herd of the Pohjola kind is depicted as huge. With these images echoes the image of a big bull, which the old woman Loukhi wants to slaughter in order to make a feast at her daughter's wedding. But not all heroes can do it, and only "together they kill the big bull" (rune 21). Cattle is also a symbol of well-being, prosperity in the house, it is judged by how rich the race is. Therefore, Kyllikki does not want to marry Lemminkäinen, considering that there are no cows in his house, and therefore no food. In the 32nd rune, we read that the wife of Ilmarinen, sending cows to the pasture, asks the spirits of the forest to protect her flock and protect her from harm. This once again proves how much the Kalevala people valued their herds, once they called the spirits for help, feeling that they were not able to protect all domestic animals themselves.

Further, in essence, the plot, we touch the issue of the allocation of crafts from agriculture. The blacksmith Ilmarinen mainly deals with his direct duties. But at the same time he is a master of all trades and fishes, and makes boats, plows, and also participates in the military campaign in Pohjola for Sampo. What can be said about the still very low craft specialization?

And it was during this period that the historical conditions for the emergence of the runes about the birth of iron were formed. According to studies by Finnish ethnographers, the image of methods for iron mining, despite the fantastic nature of the images of the 9th rune, is in fact fundamentally realistic. Conducting the motive of collecting bog iron ore repeated in numerous variants of this rune in the footsteps of forest animals:

AND waves of waves bog,

And the bear swamp tramples.

Iron rises (rune 9).

They are not without reason see here an ancient reflection of reality. Since bog iron ore, which is usually located under the top layer of marshy soil, without specially organized mining, it is easiest to detect on the tracks left by swampy soil on a bear or other heavy animal. In the rune about the birth of iron, the primitive technique of processing iron ore into "pasty" iron was also reflected. At the same time, separate, accidentally formed pieces of cast iron were considered spoiled, people still did not know what to do with them. In addition to iron in the course were products of tin, copper and bronze. Basically it was simple women's jewelry - rings, clasps. Ritual weapons were made of precious metals:

Golden ax he holds

with a copper handle (rune 16).

and more complex, so-called ceremonial decorations:

And found under the colorful cover

Golden six halters,

And gold pendants,

And silver kokoshnik (rune 4).

A confirmation of the hypothesis that the recent transition from stone to metal production is reflected in the runes is the large distribution of stone tools. This is explained by the fact that the technical characteristics of the iron tool for a long time significantly inferior products of stone, bronze or copper. In addition, in the minds of people, stone tools were endowed with mysterious sacred power. What products are still made of stone. There is a mention of stone tips:

Death in the seeds of Suur,

In the evil tips of stone (rune 8).

From stone tools of labor there are those with the help of whom the forest was cut:

Made a stone

Handle made of pine,

Let here cut down the subcut (rune 2).

But mostly these are tools that are associated with fishing (hooks, sinkers).

If we continue to search for information about other crafts, then there is no mention of them in the epic, except for weaving, but it is still considered as the household duty of women. Judging by the description of the loom, it acquired a more modern vertical shape, becoming very similar to that used by our peasant women in the villages. In addition to the main activity, taking into account the specifics of the surrounding nature, hunting and fishing were of great help in the Finnish economy. Let's start with fishing. In the epic reflected the technique of manufacturing boats, which plays a crucial role in fishing. In ancient times, among the ancestors of the Karelians, fire was used to make boats. The tree fired on only one side fell down and was subjected to gradual burning of the core. The Karelian-Finnish epic song about searching for a tree for a boat also indirectly reflects the motive of making a boat from a whole tree. Also, the technique of making boats from animal skins has gained some acceptance. In this regard, a strange at first glance motive connected with Antero Vipunen is explained, according to which, for the manufacture of the boat, Väinämönen needed:

Kill herd of deer

Shoot a bunch of squirrels.

In many runes, when describing a boat, the epithet “big”, “one-key”, “stobort” is used. This probably indicates that the boats were in common ownership and were made collectively, which in turn could really lead to the manufacture of large boats:

Boat from Pohjola

A hundred oars are hitting the sea

Hundred husbands are sitting by the oars

Thousands sit there in the boat.

But not only the boat, but also other fishing tools are realistically depicted in Karelian-Finnish epic songs. In particular, fishing nets and seine are mentioned here:

And the nets lay in the boat,

Neva had been in the boat,

On the sides are staves and nets;

On the benches the hooks lay ...

With the help of runes, we can find out who the Karelians and Finns caught in their rivers and seas. This is mainly whitefish, salmon and, of course, the queen of the underwater world, Tuonela’s big pike, which caused a lot of trouble to Ilmarinen. For her capture, he created an iron eagle. This motive of creating or transforming a hero into an eagle belongs to the ancient period of the Finno-Ugric community (the 19th rune). the image of hunting in the Karelian-Finnish epic is much less common than the image of fishing. The plot of the hunt is primarily related to the hero Lemminkäinen, because during his matchmaking in Pokhёl, the bride's mother sets a number of tasks for him. He must catch the moose, the horse and the swan. For this, Lemminkäinen:

Hastily

Squatted on a quick dart.

He pulled the string and he

Cooked arrows for bow (rune 13).

But also for a successful hunt he needs skis. Their production was considered difficult, and such masters were respected among the people. All this tells us that hunting was still one of the most important industries, despite the development of agriculture. In the rune of the 46th we see the attitude of the Kalevala people to the forest owner - the bear. On the one hand, he is a coveted object of hunting, and on the other hand, a respected beast, bearing traces of totemism, a clan cult, affectionately called: “Otso, forest apple, Beauty with a honey paw”.

The real source of information on the peculiarities of the life of the Karelian-Finns are the runes from 20 to 25. In their value they are comparable to Speeches High   of Older edda . But there is one big difference. In them we see the advice given by the young mistress after the wedding. It is easy to imagine how the housekeeping was conducted, what was the relationship between relatives, and how it was necessary for the young wife to behave in order to win the approval of the new kindred:

You do the bows below

Spend better words!

Learn new ways,

Forget the old manners:

It is safe to say that such tips can be useful in modern life. The image of the wedding ceremony is given in these runes. Everything begins with preparations for a big and rich wedding feast. This episode is also interesting because most of it is devoted to the process of making beer and the recipe is similar to the modern one. In fact, episodes with the theme of food are rarely seen in epics. Here in Rune 20 are presented many dishes of the Karelian-Finnish cuisine:

Baked big loaves,

A lot of oatmeal cooked,

Gave them meat in chunks,

Gave beautiful gingerbread,

They gave them some beer,

Pies are in pieces,

Oil is put in parts,

Whitefish are broken into pieces

And cut salmon (runes 20 and 25)

This is followed by all the steps characteristic of the wedding ceremony: meeting the groom, a feast, gathering the bride and a list of instructions on how to behave, combined with traditional crying, which is a traditional reflection of the notions of the bride’s death for her family and her rebirth in the new quality of the wife in her husband's family. The next stage is the meeting of the bride in the groom's house. Here the description of the dowry of the bride is most valuable:

She brought with her fur coats,

Brought with her dresses

And the cloth is pretty with her (rune 25)

But all this information lies on the surface. What other conclusions can we find here? E. Lönnroth included in the epic narrative not his usual material female folklore , and thereby significantly expanded the value of the Kalevala as a historical source. Interesting observations related to the dual and controversial position of a woman throughout life. Some women are slaves of their husbands, families of their husbands, but other women are heads of clans, and occupy the highest places in the social hierarchy. Here is how they say about the position of the young daughter in the spouse's house:

Here you will know, shame,

You will test you

father-in-law jaw bone,

mother-in-law stone

devere tongue is frosty,

the proud temper of the sister in law.

Eternal slave to be in-law,

In eternal slavery by the mother-in-law (Rune 22).

From the above lines it can be seen that the young woman occupied the position of a slave, farmwomen in the house. But unlike the slave she could not complain, for that was her kind.

In the matter of matchmaking, the opinion of the girl was important, it was believed that the groom should like her, but the final word remained for the parents and the choice of the groom. And if he does not love her, then she has only one way to refuse marriage - her own death. Such was, for example, the choice of Aino, the sister of Eukahainen, who redeemed with the promise to give her in marriage to Vainamainen's own life. Aino's mother was very happy to intermarry with the great rune-singer and the sorcerer Väinämöinen, she didn’t want to listen to any objections. Also in the poem there are examples and the conquest of a girl forcibly married to her spouse. Such is the story of Kyllikki and Lemminkäinen.

Lemminkäinen was a lecherous and cheerful man who never left any girl without attention. And here, once he heard rumors about the greatest beauty, who lived in the same village. And he went there to take her as his wife. But the beauty Kyullikki was impregnable. Then the hero solved the problem simply: he kidnapped her. But who so oppresses a young woman? Loving spouse? Perhaps he, too, but mainly the mother-in-law is another woman. That she is the mistress of the house. And not only by name, but in the most real way. She knows cattle, supplies, workers, the whole family. In song 32 there are lines confirming this statement. Here the hostess decides where to identify the worker, and appoints him a shepherd. Those. she knows both farm laborers and herds in the household. Thus, the status of a woman was not permanent and could change drastically throughout her life.

But at the same time, in the sacred sphere, all the elements in the world of the Kalevala have exactly the Hostess, not the Host (as in Russian folklore, where the brownie, water, wood goblins are all men). Kuutar - Virgin of the Month, Vellamo - Mistress of Water, Ilmatar - Virgin of Air and Mother of Water, Mielikki - Mistress of the Forest, Osmotar - a beer maker and the wisest of wives, Tuoni - the mistress of the afterlife. And in the harsh northern country of Pohjöl, the reflection of the ancient high status of women is most visible, since it is the woman who controls all of us, the strong and evil sorceress Louhi.

So, in the course of her life, a woman goes through a number of social stages. Being born, a girl, and then the girl was a child in the parents' house, for her everything was what her parents owned. But by marrying and becoming a woman, she abruptly changed not only her status, but also her actual position in society. And only having started her own house, separated from her husband's parents, the woman became the Mistress. The mistress of the house, the mistress of all good. And now it was her turn to fill with young daughters-in-law, who were brought into the house by her sons.

But this way   was not strictly defined. If the man who took the girl for a wife already lived in his own house (like the blacksmith Ilmarinen), then his wife immediately became the head of the house, bypassing the position of the worker.

After a detailed study of Kalevala as an information source. We can recognize that, despite the specifics of mythopoetics, much of the information about various aspects of the life of ordinary ordinary people was reflected in the verse lines of the epic: the peasants, the first artisans, fishermen and hunters. We see a detailed description of their occupations, tools, relationships. Additionally, there are data about their life, types of dwellings, costumes, decorations, holidays, rituals, customs. Of particular interest is the practice of treating diseases, based on the ancient ideas that knowledge of the origin of the disease gives power over it. But at the same time there are references to very specific medicines consisting of honey and herbs. And the content of such small facts in the epic is large enough to create a voluminous picture of the life of the Karelian Finns, and to confirm the view that the Kalevala is not just an epic, but an encyclopedia of the life of ordinary people.

3.4 Religious Representations

In the last part of this study, we will discuss the totality of the gods and spirits of the Karelian-Finns, as well as the practice of beliefs. The mythological characters of Kalevala and Karelian folklore reflect the development of folk beliefs from totemism through polytheism to monotheism. All three types of beliefs are reflected in this epic, thus summarizing the religious practice of many centuries.

There are several types among the mythological characters of Kalevala.

The first can be attributed to the characters of the most ancient level, the most archaic myths, from the images of which only fragments have survived. In the runes of Kalevala, they are clearly faded. This is a huge eagle, and a big bull, on whose horns a squirrel has to ride for several days and nights, and the image of a girl-salmon, and the wonder-image of Sampo, and the revered Otso bear, in whose honor even a real ritualized holiday was organized. This type includes opposed images of the "little bee-man" and the evil hornet. This is the most mysterious mythological slice of the Kalevala, it has a vivid imprint of the most ancient totemic beliefs of the Karelians, when a person was looking for a patron among the living and inanimate nature surrounding him.

The next group of mythological images is represented by the characters of lower mythology and polytheism. V. V. Ivanov compared inferior mythology and polytheism with the unofficial and official cult. In the Karelian mythology, the overwhelming majority of the pagan divine pantheon was male, the spirits were parallel to both male and female, and the most important of them, the mother of the earth, did not have a corresponding male incarnation at all. Among the lower mythological characters that are present, both in folklore and in the "Kalevala", we can distinguish the owners and the spirits of various elements: air, earth, water. Their abundance in the Kalevala is striking. Many of them were invented by Lönnrot, but the overwhelming majority penetrated the poem from incantation poetry, or rather, along with it, since Lönnrot included a lot of plotting runes in the latest edition of Kalevala. From the ancient spells Lonnrot took and bright color painting, typical of the description of certain spirits, and many brilliant, voiced epithets and metaphors, and an extensive system of names.

Spirits in Kalevala, as well as in conspiracies and mythological prose, are both good (Sun Maiden, Virgin of the Month, Maiden of Rowan Mountain), and evil (Syuyatar, who created the serpent, or “Virgo of Tuoni, the mistress of the afterlife, Loviatar, the originator of all evils and diseases). But in mythological prose sometimes there is no absolute division into absolutely good and evil spirits. For example, the owner of the forest, Tapio, is considered very dangerous, but he can give a moose hunter, the mistress of the house mainly patronizes the residents, but, offended for something, can begin to harm them. Therefore, in almost every rune there is an appeal to the spirit with a request for protection or patronage.

Almost all of these spirits have families, children, servants, and maids. Sometimes in the runes, they do the most ordinary work. When Vainamainen gets into Tuonela, he sees that “Tuoni is a little maid, a short servant, was engaged in washing dresses.” At the same time, the ordinariness is mythologized, Ilmarinen’s wife asks the Maid of the South and the Maiden to warm her aprons and hems to cover the cattle from rain and wind. Spell poetry, and mythological prose, and epic songs demonstrate the people's belief in spirits, in the owners of nature. But each genre has its own narrative goals. Archaic conspiracies certainly included the history of the origin of a phenomenon - a disease, wound or other scourge, and then tried to defeat it, destroy it, or, conversely, summon the appropriate spirit, master, to help. In other words, the healer and the sorcerer required the protection of spirits. In Lönnrot, spirits are often represented as creatures with a highly developed sense of beauty. An example of this is the admiration of the Spirits of earth, air and water by the game of Vainamainen on the kantele. The description of their anger brings to the grotesque.

Belief in the characters of lower mythology as an unofficial religion is widely prevalent in folklore and in our days. On the official religion of the Karelians of the first half of the 2nd millennium AD. the most complete picture can be obtained from the preface of M. Agricola to the translation of the Psalter, written in 1551. The famous preacher of Christianity indicated in it the worship of the people to the eleven pagan gods Yame and the twelve Karelian. As Agricola, he mentioned Vainamoinen, who “forged the songs”, Ilmarinen, who “created the sky and the world and brought them to the place of travelers”, “the sons of Kaleva” who mowed the meadows, Tapio, who hunted animals in the forest, and Ahti, who got fish from the water . Also as the “idols that the people worshiped before” are Turisas, Lieckio, Cratti, Tontu, Rachkoi, Capeet.

The most famous names from the list of Agricola are the two main characters of Kalevala - Vainamoinen and Ilmarinen. But neither in the national runes, nor in the Kalevala, they are perceived as gods. This is, first of all, cultural heroes who have made a lot of pioneering objects. And in southern Karelia Ilmarinen is more often given priority (Ilmoilline).

The water deity Ahti and the deity of the Tapio forest are widespread in folklore and in the Kalevala. Here Lönnrot is faithful to his contemporary folk tradition. These are not gods of the middle of the millennium, but they have completely retained the rights to own the territory under their control. We find out the conditions in which their families live. And at the same time, these deities in their functions are almost identical to the Spirits of the forest and water.

From the Karelian pagan pantheon Agricola in folklore and "Kalevala" there are five characters. Wedhen Erne is the mother of water. Her image is comparable to Ilmatar, whom Lonnrot, unlike the popular runes, gave primacy in the creation of the land from a duck's egg. She is in “Kalevala” - “the mother of water and the maiden of heaven”. Wedhen Erne is the only deity that no matter how named. Therefore, it can be compared with the Mistress of water, which Lönnrot, following the rune singers, raised even higher than Ahto. Nyrckes, who, according to Karelian beliefs, "gave the forest squirrels," is comparable to Nyuriki, the son of the god and master Metsola. Khiisi, a deity from the Agricola list, is widespread in almost all genres of folklore. Khiisi is the personification of the evil, unlike Tapio, the owner of the forest. He is very close to the image of kara, pira, that is, the devil. Therefore, in parallel with the name Khiisi, the name Lempo, or Utases, evil spirits that inhabit the mountains, and water, and fire, and cemeteries, appears. from Agricol’s list is consonant with Virokannos from Kalevala and the runes. But this is a completely different way. In the 20th song, “Kalevala” is a butcher who stabbed a big bull, and at the end of the poem is a priest who baptized Marjatta’s marvelous son (an analogue of Christ), who replaced Väinämainen. This is very symbolic, because Virokannos is like a bridge to monotheism, which has replaced pagan polytheism.

Similarly, Ukko is the supreme deity from the Agricola list, comparable to Perun, Zeus and Horus, according to the will of Lönnrot, the Christian biblical God. Thus, the Kalevala, like all Karelian folklore, demonstrates the development of folk beliefs from totemism to polytheism, and then to monotheism. At the same time, the system of characters of Karelian mythological prose is distinctive and diverse. On the one hand, it includes images that are not found in the neighboring peoples' folklore, but on the other hand, it does not contain, for example, such images as Mermaid, Kikimora, common in Russian folklore, no Saami gnomes and Lapland kuffitar.

Separately and in more detail I would like to dwell on the theme of the reflection of Christian motifs in the runes of Kalevala. The official baptism of ancient Karelia began in 1227, when the prince of Novgorod, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, sent priests "to baptize many Karelia; not all people are enough."<#"center">Conclusion

karelians Finns epic Kalevala

The study of Kalevala convinced us of the significance of this work for the development of Finland. The runes of the epos contain information about the history of this country, relating to a rather extensive period from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD. With the help of Kalevala, many norms of the Finnish language were fixed. In essence, the Karelian-Finnish epic is the first major work of Finnish literature. The appearance of the epic also contributed to the formation of the Finnish national identity. All researchers recognize the meaning of "Kalevala" for global culture

The issue of authorship of the Karelian-Finnish epic in historiography was not finally resolved in the 21st century. There are two main theories. The followers of the first theory find evidence that the Kalevala is a folk work, and E. Lönnrot simply collected, processed and published the runes. Supporters of the authorship of Lonnrot claim that he relied on the runes, but at the same time he changed them so much and subordinated to his plan that a completely new book turned out. The origin of the runes that make up the Kalevala epic is also controversial. Since they could arise both in Karelia and in the western regions of Finland. These questions are related to the problem of authenticity of the epos as a source, that is, whether the events described in it have a historical basis. Each researcher tries to find in the runes those or other moments that are consistent with the archaeological data and with the common European historical processes.

The study of the prerequisites for the appearance of the epic showed that the direction of romanticism, in the culture of Europe at the beginning of the XIX century, also affected Finland. Kalevala was the contribution of the Finnish people to the global culture. This was facilitated by the historical conditions in which Finland was located. Obtaining independence from Sweden and acquiring the status of autonomy within the Russian Empire created the necessary position for the formation in the society of a social order for the creation of a work like “Kalevala”. This epos, as recognized by all researchers, played a big role in the growth of the Finnish national identity. The example of Kalevala inspired folklore collectors in other countries who venture to create similar works.

Comparing the text of the rune of the epic with the original version received from the Karelian rune-singers, we came to the conclusion that Kalevala is an independent work, having one author E. Lönnrot. Naturally, E. Lennrot worked with folk material, but he selected the runes on the basis of his intention. He could add or change a poetic text, giving it a look averaged for all localities and linking the runes into a single logical composition. The great merit of the author of Kalevala lies in the fact that with his work he recorded invaluable material that was in danger of complete oblivion.

After examining Kalevala as an information source, we should note that the runes reflected a large amount of data telling about various aspects of the life of ordinary ordinary people: peasants, artisans, fishermen and hunters. We saw a detailed description of their occupations, tools, relationships. Additionally, there are data about their life, types of dwellings, costumes, decorations, holidays, rituals, customs. Of particular interest is the practice of treating diseases, based on the ancient ideas that knowledge of the origin of the disease gives power over it. But at the same time there are references to very specific medicines consisting of honey and herbs. The number of such small facts in the epic is large enough to create a voluminous picture of the life of the Karelian - Finns, and to confirm the view that Kalevala is not just an epic, but an encyclopedia of the lives of ordinary people.

In the study of Kalevala, we obtained an evolutionary picture of the development of the religious life of the Karelian - Finns from primitive beliefs (animism and totemism) to developed Christianity. The Karelian-Finnish epic confirms the view that in the north, remnants survived longer and harder. Since the runes, the components of the epic were recorded in the first half of the XIX century, but contained in themselves still quite pagan influence.

Thus, the stated purpose and objectives of the study were implemented. On this basis, we believe that the Karelian-Finnish epic Kalevala is a historical source. It reflects the history of the Finns and Karelians in the 1st millennium BC - the 1st millennium AD. in its various manifestations.

List of sources and literature

Sources

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