The Kalevala (Crawford Translation, 1888) | Hacker News Reader

The Kalevala (Crawford Translation, 1888)

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142 pointsLAC-Tech63 comments

As a Finn it's both delightful and also bit sad to read the translation. First of all it's great that this is available for international friends but it's sad how much is lost in translation and how it's impossible to translate the beauty of ancient Finnish. It's quite far from the language we speak also and might be bit hard for us to understand but once you get into the flow (preferably by singing the poems in their original tones) there's nothing quite like them (judge yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRdCsEVFd4I)

Here's the first verses as an example. Hope someone can enjoy the rhymes and rhythm without understanding the language.

"Mieleni minun tekevi, aivoni ajattelevi lähteäni laulamahan, saa'ani sanelemahan, sukuvirttä suoltamahan, lajivirttä laulamahan. Sanat suussani sulavat, puhe'et putoelevat, kielelleni kerkiävät, hampahilleni hajoovat."

"MASTERED by desire impulsive, By a mighty inward urging, I am ready now for singing, Ready to begin the chanting Of our nation's ancient folk-song Handed down from by-gone ages. In my mouth the words are melting, From my lips the tones are gliding,"

It never ceases to amaze me how much "metadata" you can pack into the Finnish language, and how it directly affects one's thinking.

As a native Swedish-speaker, I occasionally find myself thinking in Finnish when needing to look at a problem from a different angle. One's sense how things are positioned and headed changes completely when describing thing's in Finnish than in Swedish.

Funnily, I do this with Cebuano (which is much more verbose than my native English) but the code switch is super helpful to reframe context and shed idiomisms.

Literally never heard of it so for any others in the dark

Cebuano (/sɛˈbwɑːnoʊ/ seb-WAH-noh), natively called by its generic term Bisaya or Binisaya (both translated into English as Visayan, though this should not be confused with other Bisayan languages)[5] and sometimes referred to in English sources as Cebuan (/sɛˈbuːən/ seb-OO-ən), is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebuano_language

What makes it verbose? Does it gain or lose anything by being so? (curious monolinguist is curious)

The grammar and vocabulary tend to require more syllables and letters (it uses a similar alphabet to English). So a book's printing might require 50% - 75% more pages.

But its not a universally longer language. As an example, prepositions are typically optional ('sa' being the generic preposition). So, texting from dual speakers (most Filipinos in the Philippines speak a local language, Filipino, and quite often English) mixes all three to become exceptionally compact. This intermixing from multiple domains for complete, almost fractal, symbology translates to a lot of domains. I've used code switching for system architecture and mathematical proofs approaches several times over the decades.

Translating Finnish poetry/lyrics into a more analytic language like Swedish or English is torturous. All the little helper words just feel so clunky.

And they used to say Finnish wasn't fit for poetry.

Well, it's got a higher vowel density than even italian, so it's fit for opera.

Please no, opera sounds awful.

Finnish has long and short consonants as well as long and short vowels. I imagine that can lead to a few "grass mud horse" incidents in song.

Using both long vowels and doubled consonants freely is one of the big problems foreigners often have with Finnish.

Is it, or is it that you aren't a professional poet? (no offence[1]). I imagine a poet trying to program something non-trivial and wondering how the IT guys get it just flowing off their fingers. Poetry done well takes skill, time and experience which maybe you don't have yet.

The pros do something I love and it seems like magic the way it comes out, but then, they do a very different job

   Green upon the flooded Avon shone the after-storm-wet-sky
   Quick the struggling withy branches let the leaves of Autumn fly
   And a star shone over Bristol, wonderfully far and high.

   - John Betjeman

rest at http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/art...

[1] maybe you are?

CS degree, work in manufacturing, interested in linguistics.

You can judge my skill here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640260

It may not be professional, but I don't think it'll be found wanting for much.

Note, though: I said translating things from an agglutinative language with very free word order into a more analytical one with restricted word order is torturous, not that you can't write good poetry in English. Merely that the translation itself is really, really hard because of the format differences.

I'm going to be really brief here and careful also as I'm in no place to critique or even comment being a monoglot non-poet, so take this as intended... English word order and general form can be messed with and twisted perhaps more than you think, even if it will never be another language. Look at the Graves poem here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pararhyme

I can't take a better shot at what you've written in your other comment because I can't get a whole picture of what it's trying to say, it seems a rush of images rather than a scene, but as one image that makes sense (gold corrupting, I think)

   I bowed to gold, bowing to gold I grasped at the netherworld

then

   I bow low to gold, and bowing, seize the underworld

Or perhaps not. Anyway that's too much from me already. I probably deserve the coming downvote.

I would translate the the beginning of the first poem in Kalevala as like this.

My mind wants, my brain thinks,

to go singing, to go saying,

to spout the family hymn, to sing song of my species.

Words are melting in my mouth, speech is falling out,

emerging in my tongue, busting up against my teeth.

(I think the Kalevala Melody and singing could make a good rap)

Amorphis wrote some songs/albums allegedly based on the Kalevala

Yes, one of their songs is literally called "The First Poem" (or the First Rune, maybe, which is an oft used and awful translation, IMO. In modern Finnish, "rune" very firmly means ᛋᛏᚢᚠᚠ᛬ᛚᛁᚲᛖ᛬ᚦᛁᛋ)

This is of course (understandably) missing the alliterative phrasing that’s present on almost every line and is a major ingredient of the Kalevala poetic form.

    MIeleni MInun tekevi
    AIvoni AJattelevi
    LÄhteäni LAulamahan
    SA’ani SAnelemahan

and so on.

I use to joke that all the Finnish I know I learned from reading product labels. Here in Scandinavia, for a lot of convenience store products they don't bother making different boxes for each country, so there's a "Nyhet! Nyhed! Uusi!" breakfast cereal from Nestlé containing "Havre/Havre/Kaura" etc. And of course "Ei saa peittää" (do not cover!) and "Ei lapsille alle 3 vuoden" (not for children under 3 years).

But these words are familiar, and they're not from product labels! Turns out I heard them in a Rajaton song ("Nouse Lauluni"). I should have guessed it was from Kalevala!

Hee, yeah, Rajaton samples a lot from Kalevala, its "sister work" Kanteletar [1], and from Finnish folk poetry in general.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanteletar

sounds inspiring enough to learn finnish language

If you want to be uninspired, look up verb conjugation and noun cases.

The more difficult part about Finnish is that it exists in a state of diglossia. The spoken language is not written, and the written language is not spoken (apart from formal settings, such as the news and such).

I don't think the cases are ultimately the difficult thing - it's some upfront work, but ultimately Finnish is agglutinative. That is, one adjustment to a word does one thing, and no more, unlike Romance languages.

The langauge is also pretty regular, and whether you're using puhekieli (lit. spoken language) or kirjakieli (lit. "book lamguage"), what you see written is what you can say and be understood.

Some often not mentioned difficult parts include the fact that Finnish has both front and back vowels, and that the language allows you to use long vowels and doubled consonants very freely, which makes it difficult for a foreigner to pronounce.

How about our rock music?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REI0BDJRJDs

Unelmien nukkuja

  Ulvoin kuuta mustaa, ulvoin kuuta, kutsuin kuolemaa
  Ei kiiras roihua kuin minä roihuan
  Tusina sakaraa on liikaa kaikkeutta kuvastamaan

  Kumarsin kultaa, kultaa kumartaen tartuin tuonelaan
  Ei valo lankea kuin minä lankean
  Siivetkin kutittaa voi hetken, voi, minä en!

  Niin tiimalasi kääntyy, kääntyy alaspäin
  vanhin voitehista kanssa veren käsikkäin
  Hiekka valuu maahan kylmään uinumaan, vaan
  ei unet idä ilman unelmien nukkujaa

  Kiitin hulluudesta, kiitin julmuudesta jumalaa
  Ei meret kuohua kuin minä kuohuan
  Aallot voi armoaan pois jakaa, voi, minä en!

  Niin tiimalasi kääntyy, kääntyy alaspäin
  vanhin voitehista kanssa veren käsikkäin
  Hiekka valuu maahan kylmään uinumaan, vaan
  ei unet idä, idä ilman, ilman unelmien, unelmien nukkujaa

  Niin tiimalasi kääntyy, kääntyy alaspäin
  vanhin voitehista kanssa veren käsikkäin
  Hiekka valuu maahan kylmään uinumaan, vaan
  ei unet idä, idä ilman
  ei, ei, ei unet idä, idä ilman unelmien nukkujaa

Attempt at proper English:

Dreamer of dreams

  At the black moon, I howled, at the moon I howled and called for death
  Blaze the Fire won't, like I blaze
  A dozen aisles is too much, to depict creation

  I bowed to gold, bowing to gold I grasped at the netherworld
  Fall the light won't, like I will fall
  Even wings can tickle for a moment, but, not I!

  Thus the hourglass will turn, turn downwards
  The oldest of medicines, hand in hand with blood
  The sand pours to slumber on the cold hard ground, but
  dreams won't sprout without the dreams' dreamer

  Thanked for madness, I thanked God for cruelty
  Seas won't foam, like I foam
  Waves can give away their mercy, but, not I!

  Thus the hourglass will turn, turn downwards
  The oldest of medicines, hand in hand with blood
  The sand pours to slumber on the cold hard ground, but
  dreams won't sprout, won't sprout without, without the dreams', dreams' dreamer

  Thus the hourglass will turn, turn downwards
  The oldest of medicines, hand in hand with blood
  The sand pours to slumber on the cold hard ground, but
  dreams won't sprout, won't sprout without, 
  no, no, no dreams' won't sprout without their dreamer

This is fantastic. I get Lovecraft Country vibes.

The inspiration isn't really from country, it's more from rautalanka style instrumental rock like The Shadows and from Finnish schlager.

Another by the same composer, more on the rautalanka and schlager end, less on the (speed) metal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQNMjacgeu8

Hautajaissydän

  Päivä päättyy hurmeiseen punaan
  Hurmaavampaan purppuraan
  Silti seisoo naulittuna
  Hahmo surullisen prinsessan

  Harvoin puhuu, harvemmin hymyilee
  Häävalssit häntä ei vie
  Sydänystävinään saattoväk',
  Kirkkomaa ja hiekkainen tie

  Lailla päivänkorennon liitää
  Hän päällä vaienneen veen
  Kun pilvien viulut hetkeksi tanssiin saattelee

  Ja kun musiikki päättyy hän laskee
  Päästänsä hiljaisen seppeleen
  Josta auringonkukat ja kuutamonliljat varisee

  Akkunalla pisara veren
  Kruunu keisarin seuranaan
  Sydämessä on pauhu veren
  Rantakalliot kasvoinaan

  Hän hennoilla harteillaan kantaa
  Mekkoa kuin maailmaa
  Perintönään raskas mieli on
  Ja aatosten autiomaa

  Lailla päivänkorennon liitää
  Hän päällä vaienneen veen
  Kun pilvien viulut hetkeksi tanssiin saattelee

  Ja kun musiikki päättyy hän laskee
  Päästänsä hiljaisen seppeleen
  Josta auringonkukat ja kuutamonliljat varisee

  Lailla päivänkorennon liitää
  Hän päällä vaienneen veen
  Kun pilvien viulut hetkeksi tanssiin saattelee

  Ja kun musiikki päättyy hän laskee
  Päästänsä hiljaisen seppeleen
  Josta auringonkukat ja kuutamonliljat varisee
  Pois varisee

Funeralheart

  The day ends in a gore-tinged red
  In a more charming crimson
  Still stands as if nailed in place
  The figure of a mournful princess

  Rarely talks, less still smiles
  Wedding waltzes don't lead her
  As her soulmates, mourners  
  The churchyard and a gravelly road

  Like a mayfly she glides
  Over waters that've fallen quiet
  When the clouds' violins lead into a dance for a moment

  And as the music ends she lowers
  Off her head a quiet bouquet 
  From which fall sunflowers and moonlilies

  On the sill a drop of blood
  As its company a kaiser's crown
  Her heart's filled by the roar of blood
  With shorecliffs for a face

  On her frail shoulders she carries
  A dress as though it were the whole world
  Her inheritance a heavy mind
  And the barren land of thoughts

  Like a mayfly she glides
  Over waters that've fallen quiet
  When the clouds' violins lead into a dance for a moment

  And as the music ends she lowers
  Off her head a quiet bouquet 
  From which sunflowers and moonlilies drizzle

  Like a mayfly she glides
  Over waters fallen quiet
  When the clouds' violins lead into a dance for a moment

  And when the music ends she lowers
  Off her head a quiet bouquet 
  From which sunflowers and moonlilies fall
  Fall off

Translator's note: "Verenpisara" (lit. "bloodsdrop" is a name for fuchsia. "Kaiser's crown" is also a flower)

Lovecraft Country is a horror show that played on HBO's streaming service, HBO Max.

Regardless, I greatly appreciate the additional passage!

Ahh. Yeah, the band's not really about horror, so much as romantic melancholy.

Understood. So is Lovecraft Country, despite it's universal horror. Well played in the Lovecraft genre.

Fifteen noun cases. Fifteen!

Well, you can give them the link to The Song of Hiawatha, largely inspired by Kalevala

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9b_VTW4FSE

I quite like the recording included on the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vaka_vanha_Vainamoinen.og...

I've seen the video before, but not the subtitles. They're some of the best flowing I've ever seen, highly recommended.

At once I leapt upon the poem

English only (to my sorrow)

For I know no word of Finnish

(Least no word that's fit for HN);

But the meter kept me nodding

Kept my head from being stable

As it cantered ever onwards

"It's the Song of Hiawatha!"

"Bastard nicked the walking rhythm

From Longfellow's long-ass poem!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Hiawatha

Kalevala is a weird and amazing work. It is somewhat disjoint since it is assembled from various oral traditional and made into a single "epic" narrative by Elias Lönnrot. Scholars are still arguing about how much of the writing is Lönnrot himself and how much is his sources.

The Kullervo cycle is a particulary harrowing sequence, which inspired Tolkien to write his own version of the story in English.

> Kalevala is a weird and amazing work.

Indeed! It’s a foundation of modern western fantasy. It is not really an easy read, but fascinating nonetheless.

> The Kullervo cycle is a particulary harrowing sequence, which inspired Tolkien to write his own version of the story in English.

Which in turn was an inspiration for his Túrin saga (Narn i Chîn Húrin).

The whole Kalevala had a profound effect on Tolkien, some patterns are also apparent in the Silmarilion.

Finnish scholars have said that "Kalevala is a prison of folk poetry" because it has become a canon that sidelined everything else. Kalevala contains what was considered great poetry in the 1800s. It has been sanitized to match norms of that time. There is much more more material.

Even the Kanteletar, the sister opus for Kalevala compiled by Lönnrot has been ignored.

That's a common complaint about collection work. I've heard it about an epic poem we have in Norway (not on the scope of Kalevala), Draumkvedet, or the song of the dream. Molkte Moe published a "restored" version in the 1890s, which I think is very good. But the purists complained that it supplanted the oral versions, of which there were many.

(The final part of Draumkvedet, the "beautitudes" section listing good deeds and their rewards in the afterlife, is conspicuously similar to the Lyke-wake dirge to me.)

Didn't Lönnrot basically live on skis for a few years, collecting material ?

And an outstanding symphonic poem by Sibelius. It's also a remarkably nuanced warning about the effects of child abuse.

Kalevala is a pretty extraordinary text. If you’re looking for an epub of the same translation I put one together for SE last year.[1] The Crawford translation was the most lyrical I could find.

It’s also worth reading up on Lönnrot’s linguistic / ethnological expeditions that he made to compile the text.[2]

[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/elias-lonnrot/the-kalevala...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_L%C3%B6nnrot#Linguistics...

Also, for those who speak Finnish, the materials that Lönnrot and others gathered are nowadays freely available online at the Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot database: https://skvr.fi/

The Kalevala played an important role in the development of Finnish national identity, which the Russian empire slightly encouraged in order to make it more difficult for the Swedes to retake Finland, which had only recently been ceded to Russia at the time. Which is kind of ironic in a way, given the events of 1917.

The epic heavily inspired Tolkien (who ended up adopting a number of Finnish influences in his elvish languages) and Jean Sibelius (himself born to a Swedish-speaking family, although Swedish-speaking Finnish nationalists were not uncommon), Finland's foremost composer after whom the both-loved-and-hated music composition software is named. His most famous work based on a story from the Kalevala is probably the Swan of Tuonela: https://youtu.be/HjyLWoJvtME

> His most famous work based on a story from the Kalevala is probably the Swan of Tuonela

Or Kullervo.

The radio series The Forum from the BBC discussed the The Kalevala in a 2021 episode (it's free to download). Three experts discuss The Kalevala with a stimulating discussion.

The Kalevala: the Finnish epic that inspired a nation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjws

Description:

"When the Kalevala was published in 1835, Finland had a distinct cultural and linguistic identity but it had always been part of either the Swedish or the Russian empire. Neither did Finland have much of a literary tradition, but as the 19th-century progressed the Kalevala took on a symbolic role as the representation of a Finnish identity that fed into the movement for Finnish independence. Rooted in the folk culture of the Karelia region, a travelling doctor shaped the song texts into a story in a way which is still being debated today."

This is pretty cool, seeing the Kalevala on HN. This book was in my childhood home all the time because of Finnish ancestry on my mother’s side and the fact that Eino Friberg [1] was my great uncle who wrote the 1988/1989 English translation. I have only browsed the contents of the book though. This reminded me that I should really take a look at it again!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eino_Friberg

I learned about the Kalevala through MST3K, of all things.

They did commentary on "The Day the Earth Froze", which is an edited version of the Soviet-Finnish film "Sampo" loosely based on the Kalevala.

See it yourself, at https://youtu.be/yRhXcxx1SwM?t=958 .

Haha my girlfriend and I still sing the Sampo song. That movie is so disjointed that I didn’t even recognize this was that.

And I still don’t know what the Sampo is!

> And I still don’t know what the Sampo is!

No one does. Sampo is basically just a magical MacGuffin that brings wealth to whoever has it. In Kalevala it is usually understood as a mill that creates infinite grain, salt and money, but different folk stories have different interpretations.

Don Rosa wrote a Kalevala-based Scrooge McDuck story (The Quest for Kalevala), and a "mill that creates infinite grain, salt and money" (gold) is of course an ideal object of desire for ol' Scrooge.

> And I still don’t know what the Sampo is!

You are not alone! Scholars are still debating it. It is some kind of magical device which create wealth, but there is a number of very different theories raging from a magical mill to the "pillar of the world".

A Sampo is just a sampoid in the category of sampofunctors.

You jest, but Sampo is clearly an instance of the cornucopia archetype.

I think I first made my entry into some Kalevalan topics from researching where the Forgotten Realms gods came from. Mielikki was somewhat literally taken, "Illmater" was a weird one, from a air goddess to a (male) god of suffering.

But yeah, the Russian movies from MST3K were some of my series favorites.

I remember it from watching some weird black and white movie as a kid on some communist TV station. There was a long haired old man chanting "Kalevala show yourself" over and over again (all foreign stuff was subtitled for us). Nothing else stuck :-)

(Edit: it's possible it was Sampo, even though that seems to be in color. We just didn't have color TVs back then).

FWIW, The Kalevala and Kalevipoeg, the national epic of Estonia, are linked in many ways (not surprising since we are neighboring countries, and the languages are extremely similar).

For example, Kalevipoeg swims to Finland over the gulf (50 miles) to find his kidnapped mother. He visits Ilmarine, the famous Finnish blacksmith -- also a character in Kalevala (Ilmarinen) --, wanting to buy a sword. A deal is made and followed by a feast -- during which, however, Kalevipoeg manages to fell the head of Ilmarine's son using that same sword. Ilmarine curses the special sword that took him 7 years to forge.

The opening strophe of Kalevipoeg also mentions Vanemuine, the god of music ("Lend me your zither, O Vanemuine!"), which is very probably derived from Väinamöinen. In Estonia, I suppose everybody knows this sentence; one may occasionally hear it paraphrased in spoken language. (So... If you come to Estonia to launch a startup, maybe greeting your companions with "Laena mulle kannelt, Vanemuine!" would break some ice... or, not.)

There's a great synopsis of Kalevipoeg on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevipoeg

An English translation of Kalevipoeg (1895, by W.F. Kirby) is available on Sacred Texts as well. Not the actual 19,000+ verses, but an apparently very deep contextual explanation of the myths and surrounding culture. Great addition, even if you're actually interested in the Finnish Kalevala: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/hoe/index.htm

Really interesting to see something like this on the front page of HN!

For getting the melody right when reading, try for example this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_bbYj8uxeq-fS62PGC0D...

I've read a Russian translation (or, better to say, adaptation for children) when I was 10, and even in an adapted form this stuff is dark.

Also, Turin's story by Tolkien was clearly inspired by Kalevala.

I'm Indian guy and I have always been super into mythology since I was a kid. I remember reading an English version of this when I was in 5th or 6th grade and it kind of traumatized me with some of the tragic aspects of the story, but overall it was awesome. It also got me into Ensiferum and various metal bands lol.

Huge fan of Indian, Egyptian, Nordic, and N. & S. American mythology.

Google is so much better than bloody Crawford: https://users-abo-fi.translate.goog/jhindstr/dfyr_ugh_irg/Ka...

Thanks for this, it is really very funny.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quest_for_Kalevala In case you needed it in a Donald Duck comic form.

I can't recommend Scott Sandwich's condensed, light-heated translation of the Kalevala enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZhf-AcnIyw

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