Public-domain ebook
by R. Eivind
Language: en3,713 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Mythology, Legends & Folklore
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #24948.
Finnish Legends for English Children is a retelling of the Kalevala, the Finnish epic, aimed at young readers. The volume begins with an introductory essay that explains the purpose of the work, notes its reliance on T. M. Crawford’s metrical translation, and sets the stories within a framework narrated by “Father Mikko,” an old storyteller who arrives at a northern cabin and is welcomed by a family eager for tales of creation, heroes, and magical objects. The opening pages present a list of proper names with pronunciation guides, followed by a vivid scene in which the family gathers around a fire, prompting Father Mikko to promise to recount the myths from the world’s beginning onward. This establishes the book as a collection of mythic episodes rather than a continuous narrative, inviting children to explore each legend as a separate adventure.
The prose reflects a late‑Victorian sensibility, with formal diction, elaborate sentence structures, and occasional moral commentary on Finnish character and the political climate of 1890s Russia. The translation retains many Anglo‑Swedish spellings of Finnish names, softened for a child audience, while still preserving the exotic flavor of the original. Readers who enjoy richly detailed folklore, historical introductions, and a narrator’s gentle, didactic tone, particularly those with an interest in mythic poetry or cultural heritage, will find this work engaging.
The opening · free to read
As this book is only intended for children, it would be out of place to discuss the age, etc., of the Kalevala. Only it would seem proper to state, that while the incantations and some other portions of the text are certainly very old, some of them no doubt dating from a period prior to the separation of the Finns and Hungarians, yet, as Professor Yrjö Koskinen remarks, "The Kalevala in its present state is without doubt the work of the Karelian tribe of Finns, and probably dates from after their arrival in Northern and North-Western Russia." This will of itself largely justify the making Kalevala synonymous with the present Finland, Pohjola with the present Lapland, Karjala with the present Karjala (Anglice, Karelia) in South-Eastern Finland, etc. But even if this were not so, yet the advantage of such localisation in a book for children is of itself obvious.
As the land and people with which the stories are concerned is so unknown to English children, it has seemed best to have some sort of introduction and framework in which to present them, and therefore "Father Mikko" was chosen as the story-teller.
If this little volume may in any degree awake some interest in the Finnish people its author will be amply satisfied, and its end will have been attained.
R. EIVIND.
April 1893.
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