Finlande Traduction de Jean-Luc Moreau Trésor de la poésie populaire finnoise et soeur jumelle du Kalevala, la Kanteletar, publiée à Helsinki en 1840-1841, réunit les chansons, complaintes et ballades collectées par Elias Lnnrot, le « second père de la nation », au cours de ses randonnées et voyages à travers les marches orientales de son pays. Faits pour être moins dits que chantés, ces poèmes ont été élaborés par des générations de paysans et paysannes pour la plupart anonymes. Ils reflètent leur vie quotidienne et une vision du monde où croyances ancestrales et légendes chrétiennes se côtoient et souvent se confondent. Leur remarquable unité formelle est l'aboutissement d'une tradition dont les racines se perdent dans la nuit des temps.

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lnnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. It is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. The Kalevala played an instrumental role in the development of the Finnish national identity, the intensification of Finland's language strife and the growing sense of nationality that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. The first version of The Kalevala was published in 1835. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty songs. The title can be interpreted as "The Land of Kaleva" or "Kalevia." If the rhythm of the poetry sounds familiar to American readers, it is probably because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow borrowed its trochaic tetrameter form for his famous "Song of Hiawatha." Of the five complete translations of the Kalevala into English, it is only the older translations by John Martin Crawford and William Forsell Kirby which attempt strictly to follow the original rhythm of the poems. Modern writers influenced by the Kalevala include J. R. R. Tolkien, whose epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy make use of both style and content from the Finnish work.