Kalevala Day!
 

February 28th is Kalavala Day

Let's all marry our sisters, slay dragons and commit suicide!

On a more serious note, I never knew (but should have expected) that such a day existed, and it seems - as a primary inspiration and one of the original sources that kicked-off this whole Middle-earth thing anyway - that it's appropriate to have it mentioned here.

"Seek for me on Amon Rudh!"

I thought this would be a good occasion to actually go and read a bit more about what happens in the Kalevala, but all I can find on the web is the epic poem or the summary of such, which doesn't include a Turin story. It's a nice epos, but I really want to read the original Turin story. Does anyone know where it comes in or where to find it?

For lack of the Kalevala, I commemorated the day with exerpts of COH.

Unless I'm wrong, isn't the Turin inspiration in the Kalevala only the Kullervo cycle? Which is 31-36 in the overall thing. There's the wiki summary of that section. I'm not sure where a good translation of it would be.

Ah, thank you very much.

There's a much greater inspiration than just the Turin story. Tom Bombadil, as he appeared in the original poem, is very much indebted to the Kalevala's shamanistic hero, Väinämöinen and the Aino story . There's also the possibility of a link with the simarils. But even more so is the concept of a national mythology. Stylistically there's some relationship as well.

Read the edition with the illustrations by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, which are stunning. I don't know if Tolkien knew them, but it's a glorious riot of picture and verse. The edition which first inspired Tolkien to try his hand at Finnish did not have all the illustrations.

True, but I was commenting specifically to answer the question about where Turin's inspiration in it comes from. Though strangely, that's also the part of it that I'm least interested in, being very disinterested in Turin himself...

Maybe one day I'll be able to get a print copy of the Kalevala - right now, I just have a free internet copy. Which is not very interesting to look at. :P

Related book coming out
 

I thought I'd post this, to remind people interested in this thread of another one, dealing with the forthcoming release of Tolkien's The Story of Kullervo:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18920