read the Kalevala

When I moved from Canada to the UK I sorted out loads of books and ended up getting rid of my copy of the Kalevala, on the grounds that I had never read it!

Oh well.

I’m sure I can get a copy from the library if I ever choose to read it.

I spent three days up here at my mom’s reading, and it wasn’t at all what i had expected, the translation we have is a bit choppy and some story elements strangely come and go throughout.
I think that once i got over the strange translated descriptions, i could start seeing the imagery, imagining my mom hearing these folktales in their little red house on the little green farm by the lake with the red squirrels and the tall trees all arround.

This would have been better had I been introduced to it when i was younger.
When i have kids, i’m for shizzle gonna import a less redundent (maybe they even have illustrated versions?) english translation of this.

:)

I want to learn finnish, but i will pick up some when i GO to finland eventually, and in the mean time this is an attainable goal.

When i was at mum’s for victoria day, i noticed a copy of the Kalevala in english translation on her bookshelf.

I would love to read the epic that helped inspire Finland’s push for independence.

There is a window of time before i move to the west coast that my mom will be away and i can stay at her empty place up north and seclude myself.

I plant to spend as many days there as it takes me to read and enjoy this.

My reason for this was to connect with my grandmother.
Unfortunately she passed away this january.

Before she died, we had a 75th birthday for her at the retirement residence and i was able to say

‘Hyva Syntumepiava Mummu’ (Happy Birthday Grandmother)

She said it sounded perfect… and i was proud for having tried.

I’ve learned little things here and there…
I can count now, and i have lots of opportunity to practice counting when i’m measuring out trims at work.

I love the way that the language rolls off your tongue… and it relaxes me to hear people speaking the language around me.
I think what i’ll do is to add this goal onto my ‘visit finland’ goal and hopefully the two will go together a bit.

i have this grandmother, who i can remember clearly having conversatons with when i was younger, but who has subsequently ‘forgotten’ every speck of english she ever knew..

I’m a bit sarcastic becase she’s also my ‘dying soon’ grandmother so who knows the real story.

I’d love to learn some finnish because i’m somehow the only one of my family that was never really arround finn, and i was never formally taught,

It would be great to know what’s being said at holiday dinners for one, for two, i would like to go to finland sometime and just hang out. i have a ton of family to visit there, and although they all speak english, i know i would be more comfortable to have a sense of what’s going on.

I’ve been doing the youtube sulkasiipii lessons, and i have a phrasebook that i’ve been using as well…

i’d love to blow muumu out of the water by having a (albeit limited) conversation with her again when i see her in a few months.
:)

shrug I thought it was…just okay. A lot of the short-story derivations from the original are done better than the version I read (Magoun translation). Still, if I were fluent in Finnish I think it would be worth it, just to get the “music” of the language in the thing. That’s kind of the whole point of the old runos.

Actually, a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge adventure got me interested in Kalevala many years ago, and now I have started to read the Kalevala itself.

I’ve had the English translation of this sitting on my shelf for about four months now and it’s so big I can’t bring myself to start it!

To read it will now be one of my goals for 2006- just imagine how impressed I’ll be with myself if I actually do it!

I’ve started reading the Francis Peabody Magoun translation.

No Finnish heritage here; it’s just something I’ve been meaning to read for a few years now, ever since a friend read a passage aloud to me.

I got myself a copy of the Kalevala a few years ago. Read and enjoyed a few chapters, but never got around to finishing it. Might as well take a poke at it sometime. I’ve always been very proud of the Finnish part of my heritage, and Finland’s pre-Christian stories are an interesting aspect of that heritage.