News
28/02/2022. Elias Lönnrot. Trips to Karelia
February 28, 2022:
On the International Kalevala Day, many friends and admirers of Karelian national culture and the Karelian and Finnish epic poem came to the National Library of Karelia to take part in the traditional event «Let’s Read the Runes of Kalevala».
That day, the library offered readers a cultural and educational program «Elias Lönnrot. Trips to Karelia». During the program, the visitors made a virtual expedition to the rune singers’ villages and memorable places of Elias Lönnrot, a scientist-folklorist, writer, doctor and the creator of the Kalevala epic poem.
At the event, the folk ensemble Peregudki (Petrozavodsk K. E. Rautio Music College) and Igor Solovyov, a teacher of Petrozavodsk State A. K. Glazunov Conservatory, performed runes of the epic poem in Karelian.
Nadezhda Kuptsova, a teacher of Petrozavodsk secondary school #2, read runes from the epic poem in Mari, and young readers of the Children’s Library read runes in Russian (Medvedevo, the Republic of Mari El). We thank them for the creative reading of the runes of the main book of Karelia!
During the program, the audience listened to the excerpts from travel diaries by Elias Lönnrot, saw videos dedicated to the memorable places of the folklorist and Karelian rune singers.
At the end of the evening, the members of the Art Group of the Blind Society with kantele accompaniment by Irina Shishkanova, the Honoured Artist of the Republic of Karelia and Russia, played an excerpt from the premiere performance Louhi by Yana Zhemoitelite, a Karelian writer and a specialist of the National Library.
