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3.0
I recently finished The Kanteletar, which is a collection of Finnish folk songs and poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot, the same fellow who compiled Finland’s epic, The Kalevala. The works vary widely in age, as many of the poems have been passed down in folklore for hundreds of years, but Elias compiled them in the 1800s. I’m a big fan of Finnish poetry and mythology, but I get the feeling not a lot of other folks are these days, outside of Finland; getting my hands on a copy of The Kanteletar took some work. Most Finnish poetry is written in trochaic tetrameter, which is the same foot used in Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” and the effect is hypnotic, especially in longer works like the The Kalevala. Kanteletar means (more or less) “zither-daughter,” a sort of muse. Some of the poems are beautiful, some are just bizarre outside of context, and they’re all intriguing.
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