Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), born at Sammatti in southern Finland, took his doctorate in medicine at Helsinki in 1832 and served for about twenty years as district physician at Kajaani. From there he made collecting journeys into Finnish and Russian Karelia, writing down the songs of rune-singers such as Arhippa Perttunen, and arranged them into the Kalevala of 1835 and the enlarged edition of 1849; he also published the lyric collection Kanteletar and was professor of Finnish at Helsinki from 1853 to 1862. The lines are overwhelmingly from oral tradition, but their ordering into one plot, and some linking verses, are his. John Martin Crawford, an American, published his complete English version in New York in 1888.
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“Mastered by desire impulsive, By a mighty inward urging, I am ready now for singing, Ready to begin the chanting Of our nation’s ancient folk-song Handed down from by-gone ages.”
The Kalevala is the national epic of Finland, compiled by the physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot from oral songs he and others gathered in Finnish and Russian Karelia. Its fifty runes, or cantos, follow the deeds of the people of Kalevala, chiefly the old singer and sage Väinämöinen, the smith Ilmarinen and the reckless Lemminkäinen, and their long rivalry with Louhi, mistress of the cold northern land of Pohjola.