Kalevala-Finnish Folk Epic

Kalevala is a folk epic that tells the simple lives of northern people. This long song, written in a more realistic style than other epics, tells about the troubles of the people who have no source of life other than nature.

The most important feature of the Finnish folk epic Kalevala, of which we see traces in many contemporary literary works, from Tolkien's Silmarilon to Ursula Le Guine's Tales from Earthsea, that distinguishes it from other epics is "changing the world with words." The poet Väinämöinen, who appears in almost all of the 50 poems in the Kalevala, performs spells by singing, fights with words, or searches for words to build a boat. In the epic, which describes the process of the Finnish people's settlement in those lands and their transition from paganism to Christianity, unlike Homer's Iliad, it describes not only the conflict of two peoples, but also their friendships, marriages and the fusion of their cultures.

Kalevala has a special place in Finnish culture and Finnish national consciousness. Perhaps it is largely thanks to Kalevala that the Finnish people, who established an independent state for the first time in 1917, kept their language alive. Kalevala, which is a compilation of epics that have been told orally among the public for centuries, has many different versions. This book in your hand is the compilation of Lönnrot dated 1849 and is the only Kalevala that is official today. The Kalevala translation, made from its original language as a result of meticulous efforts, is finally meeting Turkish readers as one of the founding masterpieces of world culture, such as the Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Dough Type: 2nd Dough

Size: 13.5 x 19.5

First Printing Year: 2017

Number of Printings: 1st Edition

Number of Pages: 780

Media Type: Paperback