Some of the best bluegrass-style pickers played with the Mappets, a band formed around Mappe Saukkonen, a red-headed mother of four. Mappe played a solid boom-chuck guitar in the big jam we had the first night in Ruotsinpyhtää. In conversation at the bar later, she told me in her halting English that she grew up in a house where both parents frequently sang Finnish folk songs. Mappe writes her own country-flavored songs in graceful and flowing English. But at the bar, she sang for me in Finnish a few verses of the Kalevala that she’d learned from her parents.

Mappe Saukkonen in a bluegrass jam (click to enlarge)

The Mappets on the main stage (click to enlarge)

The Kalevala is a multi-faceted tradition of sung poems comprising over two million verses collected from traditional singers and old printed sources over the course of several centuries. The epic adventures of Väinämöinen and other ancient Finnish heroes, lived for centuries in the performances of folksingers from Finland, Estonia and Karelia (the latter was partitioned between Finland and Russia after World War II). In 1835, Elias Lönnrot, a pioneering folklorist, compiled 22,795 verses, divided into fifty cantos, into a coherent narrative. The publication of Lönnrot’s Kalevala was one of the foundations of Finnish nationalism and the emergence in 1917 of a sovereign Finland, independent from Sweden and Russia.

On our first day in Finland, we four Old Town School teachers stumbled upon a monument dedicated to Elias Lönnrot and his unification of the Kalevala. Little did I suspect that the next night, I would have some verses from the epic sung personally for me by a singer who heard it sung at home by her mother and father.

Kalevala monument on Lönnrot Avenue (click to enlarge)

Väinämöinen, hero and shaman (click to enlarge)

The Kalevala tradition is larger than even Lönnrot’s 19th century compilation. Old songs and folk poetry dating from the misty beginnings of Finnish culture and history survived in oral tradition. Such rune songs or songs in the Kalevala metre contained charms and beliefs as well as legends and tales. The old songs expressed collective joys and sorrows, and belonged with the daily tasks, community celebrations and social rituals (particularly weddings) of the herding, fishing and farming peoples who lived in Finland, Karelia and Ingria.

Väinämöinen was not the only hero of this ancient tradition. But he was, indeed, a favorite. As a shaman he held sway over nature through his playing of the kantele, a five-string plucked zither often regarded as the Finnish national instrument.

In this song, from a CD published by the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Finnish Literature Society) in Helsinki, Iivana Onoila sang about how an old man who had a grudge against Väinämöinen could not shoot him else all the world’s songs would die. Instead, he shot ‘s boat and left him to the mercy of the seas, where he floated for six years.

Maailman Synty (The Birth of the World)

This short excerpt of “Maailman Synty” was recorded in 1905. Nearly a century later, Holtti, a group of women singers from Central Ostrobothnian University arranged some verses from the Kalevala to music composed by Pauliina Kumpulainen, a member of the trio. All were students in a folk music education program at the school

En ole syötävä soria

Another singer from the group Holtti is Kaisa Pudas, an accordion player who became amusical companion and friend as I continued my quest for traditional Finnish folk music. More to come on the kantele, jouhikko, and Torupill (Estonian bagpipes). And, of course, on Finnish fiddling.

Kaisa Pudas (click to enlarge)