I just went to see a play of the Kalavala and :DDDDD
First, I’m mostly Finnish so it was nice to see things from my heritage as a part of something. For example, my aunt’s cat is named Sampo, and in the Kalavala the sampo is a device that can create unlimited wealth and food (its never specified what it looks like so I kept on picturing it as a cat). Also, my family practices lead fortune telling around the new year where you melt lead and pour it in water and divine things from how it solidifies, and the main character does it at one point to see how to bring the sun back.
Another thing about it was that they changed the gender of one of the characters, so that the blacksmith was a woman, who actively commented on some of the more sexist stuff of the source material (some of which was then avoided in the play). And, this character was also the only one who had a romance, so there were definitely queer undertones (wished it was more explicitly stated but it was really heavily implied). And, the lover, who was originally married off in the Kalavala, instead was the one who approached the blacksmith and wanted to learn herself how to blacksmith (and was taught at night in secret at first, and ;) “there’s not much blacksmithing you can learn that’s quiet you know”).
Unfortunately, the lover dies in the source material and the play but not before they have had a chance to be together and they have a whole series of scenes that are a slice of life take on her... apprenticeship, and when she dies they show the blacksmith grieving (and holding her lover’s body in her arms!) and making statues of the things her lover liked and talking about them before finally making a figuring of her. AND the play makes her death the reason why the blacksmith goes back to retrieve the sampo (she is the one who made it) from her lover’s mother (her men had killed the blacksmith’s lover in trying to take her back north). (In the source material she dies for other reasons)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I am so excite.
Also, this was some lines from the play:
Väinämöinen: (in a boat): What did we hit?
Lemminkäinen: A Pike. (as in the fish)
Väinämöinen: A what?
Lemminkäinen: A motherfucking Pike!
(To be fair it was a rather large pike that they then killed and Väinämöinen used its bones to make a musical instrument to put the village to sleep so they could steal the sampo)
Feel free to share this play was fucking amazing and I want to share it with the world. I am going to get a copy of the script!