Silmarillion - Ainulindale

[Child of the 7th Age]

Has anyone looked into the Kalevala? It seems to me that the power of song might well form a strong component of some of those myths.

Squatter - I think you are right to look in that direction. I am no expert but did invest in a paperback English translation and am enjoying sitting down and reading these poems.

I see one definite similarity between the Kalevala and Tolkien's creation myth. Song stands at the center of both. At the beginning of the first poem even before the creation is discussed, Lönnrot speaks long of his desire to compose a song that recalls the old days and the things his mother taught him:

It is my desire,/it is my wish
to set out to sing,/to begin to recite,
to let a song of our clan glide on,/to sing a family lay
The words are melting in my tongue,/being scattered about on my teeth.

The word "song" and "singer" are repeated numerous times.

Lönnrot also placed song at the heart of his actual creation through the character of Väinämöinen. He is son of the primal goddess Ilmatar, and was said to possess a potent, magical voice. He was floating at sea, when a bird came and laid eggs on his knee. These eggs were destroyed by a wave, but their pieces became the world. The upper cover became the sky dome, the yolk the sun. My words fail to do justice to the beauty of his poem, even in English translation:

Then I heard the a song being sung,/knew a lay to be composed:
in loneliness do the nights come upon us,/in loneliness do the days shine
bright upon us;
in loneliness Väinämöinen was born,/the eternal singer emerged
from the maiden who bore him,/from his air spirit mother.

Other than that, for the duration of the first poem, Lönnrot constantly employs terms related to water and the seas: bubbles, open seas, hidden reefs, misty billows etc. With all these references to water and eggs, I had clear images in the back of my head of a baby being born. This is beautiful stuff but more grounded in the earth and perhaps less ethereal than Tolkien.

To anyone out there who enjoys the Silm but hasn't read Kalevala, I would urge you to try it. It is sad that so few of us English speaking readers are familiar with it. And now perhaps there are some Downers out there with a background in Finnish who can speak to this poem with greater authority?

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I am not saying that Iluvatar the One and the primal Ilmatar are the same, but it's interesting how their names sound vaguely similar. I wonder what Ilmatar's name is in the original Finnish?