Home || Beyond the Movie: << Previous | Next >>
1-Intro | 2-Anglo Saxons | 3-Amoury | 4-Elves | 5-Kalevala | 6-WWII | 7-Expedition ||

Beyond the Movie

Kalevala

Narrator:

One of Tolkien's primary inspirations for Elvish is a language that still can be heard today in Viena Karelia, a remote region of villages and lakes spanning the Finnish and Russian border.
[Merja Soria sings in Finnish, / Woods, rivers/ Map of Northern Europe, the borderline between Finland and Russia, where Viena Karelia lies]

Narrator:

It' residents are mostly elders, who's children have moved away to the modern world. The epic song still heard here is the "Kalevala, The Land of the Heroes", a voluminous work, considering the expression of Finnish heritage.

Narrator:

As a teenager, Tolkien was enthralled by the Kalevala. He taught himself Finnish to better understand this monumental collection of ancient epic poems.
[images of Karelia]

Narrator:

Jussi Huovinen is Finland's last great rune singer. He has committed nearly the entire Kalevala to memory, learning it from his elders.

Wade Davis:

When Jussi passes on, it's gonna be the equivalence of a great library burying to the earth. That's what's it like when an elder like him dies.
[Wade Davis, anthropologist]

Narrator:

National Geographic Explorer in-residence, Wade Davis, has travelled here to listen to the Kalevala. He is an anthropologist with a deep concern about the loss of languages.

Wade Davis:

When You were born and I was born, there were six thousand languages spoken on earth. As we speak, fully three thousand of those six thousand languages are no longer been whispered into the ears of babies and not been taught to children. That means that effectively, if not something changes, they are already dead. There are languages in just a body of vocabulary and several grammatical rules that are flashes of the human spirit and when we lose a language we lose a final element of the human dreams.
[Wade Davis, anthropologist]

Narrator:

Music instructor Pekka Huttu-Hiltunen hopes to learn even a fraction of the lengthy Kalevala from Jussi.

Pekka Huttu-Hiltunen:

It was a very important moment for me about ten years ago when I met Jussi and when I first heard him to sing and then I sat down and realised that he has a whole lot to share . that he really is sitting here singing to me in the voice of my ancestors thousand years ago.
[Pekka Huttu-Hiltunen, music instructor]

Wade Davis:

How did You learn that sacred songs?

Jussi Huovinen:

I began to learn when I was a little child and having heard the elders sing the songs, which came from generation to generation. I realised that most of the events that a person can experience in his life are in this poem.
[Jussi Huovinen, rune singer]

Narrator:

The Kalevala parallels the history of the Finns, who migrated north at the end of the last ice age. Linguists believe the origins of the saga and it's language date back to a more nomadic time.

Wade Davis:

It goes back to the time of the shaman, it goes back to pre-agricultural time of Finland. It goes back to the time when people had no written word, when people lived by the poetry of an oral tradition. Where by definition the entire language was a vocabulary of the best storyteller.
[Wade Davis, anthropologist]

Narrator:

It is said that the Kalevala poetic meter came from the rhythm of singing while rowing on the lakes of Karelia. The tradition of the Kalevala was almost lost when the Swedes began their domination of Finland in the late middle ages. By the 19th century most educated Finns spoke Swedish. Then, a country doctor named Elias Linrod travelled to the wilds of Karelia in the 1830s. This was the last place on earth where the rune songs were still being sung.

Narrator:

By writing down the words of the rustic rune singers, something the Karelians have rarely done, Linrod saved the traditioNarrator: He organised the songs into a linear story and called it "The Kalevala". This mythology for Finland gave its people a sense of identity, which proved a special significance during the tumultuous 20th century.

Marku Nieminen:

If it wasn't for the Kalevala, Finland wouldn't have its independence, it's language and we were all speaking either Russian or Swedish.
[Marku Nieminen, Director of Kalevala Institute, Juminkeko]

Narrator:

Today, a small portion of the Kalevala is song at Finnish sporting events and children learn a few key verses at school. The Kalevala themes profiles the Festival of Light, when this land of incredibly dark winters celebrates the longest day of the year. J.R.R Tolkien was inspired by the Kalevala ant turned to it as he began inventing the languages of Middle-earth.

Tom Shippey:

He was trying to construct languages which have a similar inner field to something he admirers. Quenya, the elvish Latin, I think, is quite clearly based on Finnish. He very much liked Finnish; he very much liked the literary tradition, which is trickling from an early age.
[Tom Shippey, PhD, Tolkien scholar/ Legolas arriving in Rivendell / Arwen in the red dress in which she will appear in in TTT]

Narrator:

Tolkien was fascinated by more than the Kalevala's language. He found eternal themes and archetypal characters there as well. The Kalevala's hero is a wise old leader with magical powers.

Marku Nieminen:

The central figure is W„in„m”inen, a great shaman, who casts spells to achieve his goals and to prove his people's social conditions.
[Marku Nieminen, Director of Kalevala Institute, Juminkeko]

Narrator:

The obvious parallel is the wizard Gandalf, who also employs the power of words.

Gandalf:

You cannot pass!

Narrator:

The Lord of the Rings and the Kalevala share another key element: at the centre of both stories is a powerful forged object. In the Finnish poem it is called the 'Sampo'. Like the Ring, it brings its owner great fortune, but in the end is destroyed the secure the peace.
[The envelope that contained the Ring in Bag End, burns away/ Gandalf puts it into Frodo's palm]

Wade Davis:

What ultimately is the lesson of the Kalevala?
[Wade Davis, anthropologist]

Jussi Huovinen:

What I get most from the Kalevala poems is the emphasis on doing good for your people and doing things for their benefit and their joy.
[Jussi Huovinen, rune singer]

Narrator:

The themes of loyalty and sacrifice run deep thru the Lord of the Rings.
[Rivendell elves, who hasn't made it into the movie, either, Legolas joins them]

Liv Tyler:

It's so beautiful because for me, and I think for everyone, you can't do anything without the encouragement of your loved ones and friends to help you though things.
[Liv Tyler/ Legolas and Arwen greet each other by touching each other's jaws]

Wade Davis:

You know, in the modern world we cherish the individual of the expense of the community. When I look at photographs of Karelia a hundred years ago I get very much the same feeling that I did with Jussi. With him I feel if it were the presence of a thousand years of history in this one human being. And I also felt a deep sadness because I also felt there is the end point of that place. I felt that in the village that we visited, barely a village, a shadow of a former village, Jussi was the only person living there.
[Wade Davis, anthropologist]

Narrator:

The Kalevala like all mythology, depicts the struggle of good versus evil. In creating the Lord of the Rings Tolkien was keenly aware of this conflict experienced at first hand in World War I. But he could not imagine that an even darker and more destructive force was about to grip the world.
[Aragorn rides along with the Rohirrim]

Home || Beyond the Movie: << Previous | Next >>
1-Intro | 2-Anglo Saxons | 3-Amoury | 4-Elves | 5-Kalevala | 6-WWII | 7-Expedition ||