The Importance of Taking Care of Each Other and Building Community
Note on the text: I used Keith Bosley’s translation of Elias Lonnrot’s The Kalevala as published in 2008 by Oxford University Press.
What a really fun, engaging, lively piece of Finnish literature! The fact that it has a lot to teach us about the importance of building community and taking care of each other is a mere bonus. This is a really good book.
The lesson starts off in the very beginning where the unnamed narrator entreats the reader to join him: “Let’s strike hand to hand/ fingers into ginger gaps/ that we might sing some great things/ set some of the best things forth/ for those darling ones to hear/ for those with a mind to know” (1). What he is saying essentially is, let’s join together because together we can do great things.
The theme continues when, after the creation of the world, the protagonist, the wise bard and wizard Vainamoinen, upon recognizing that the birds have no place to rest, decides to leave a birch tree standing in a part of the forrest which he had just cleared so he could build his home. This act of kindness proves to be fortuitous because later in the story he requires the help of a bird to keep him from drowning an eagle tells him:
don’t you worry at all!/ Get on my back/ rise to my wingbone tips!/ I’ll carry you from the sea/ where you have a mind to go./ I still remember that day/ and think of the better time/ when you cleared Kaleva’s trees/ and slashed Osmo-land’s backwoods:/ you left a birch tree growing/ a fine tree standing/ for birds to rest on/ for me to sit on (70).
The same theme continues in an episode where Vainamoinen and his comrades fight Louhi, the goddess of death and disease, for the Sampo, a magical artifact that gives its owner riches, and all kinds of good fortune. During their fight however the Sampo breaks off into the sea and parts of it wash up onto the land. When Vainamoinen saw where those pieces wound up, the text says that he
was delighted/ and uttered a word, spoke thus:/ ‘Out of this a seed will spring/ constant good luck will begin;/ from this, plowing and sowing;/ from this every kind of growth/ out of this the moon to gleam/ the sun of good luck to shine/ on Finland’s great farms/ on Finland’s sweet lands! (570).
What he is saying here is that essentially the great blessings of the Sampo belong now not just to one person, or even a small group of people, but to all of Finland and how good that is.
This same theme then concludes, in a somewhat satirical fashion, at the end of the book where the unnamed narrator apologizes for being a bad poet but says that it’s ok because he has blazed the trail for other, better, poets to follow:
I’ve skied a trail for singers/ skied a trail, snapped a treetop/ lopped off boughs and shown the way:/ this is where the way goes now/ where a new track leads/ for more versatile singers/ more abundant bards/ among the youngsters rising/ among the people rising (666).
Even at the end of this beautiful epic poem, after all the adventures, after all the twists and turns, it all comes back to the theme of community. We need to live not only for ourselves but for each other. It’s only by becoming a strong, loving community and finding ways to uplift each other that we will, as a species, reach our highest potential.