News
30/03/2022. Elias Lönnrot's Trips: to the 220th Anniversary
March 30, 2022:
The National Library of Karelia held a traditional local history event dedicated to the 220th anniversary of Elias Lönnrot, the creator of the epic poem Kalevala, scientist, doctor, cultural influencer, musician and a very multifaceted person.
At the meeting “Elias Lönnrot's Trips”, the lecturer spoke about 11 expeditions of the folklorist, which he made from 1828 to 1844 to the territories of Finland, Karelia, the Leningrad and Murmansk regions, Lapland and Estonia.
Excerpts from the scientist's travel diaries were presented. The lecture was accompanied by photographs and videos dedicated to rune-singers’ villages, rune-singers, traditional holidays and genres of Karelian oral lore, as well as memorable places of Elias Lönnrot in Karelia, Finland and Estonia.
The participants in the meeting were interested in the audio recording of yoik, a disappearing unique folk song genre of Karelia, performed by a famous rune-singer Maria Mikheeva from Kalevala. Elias Lönnrot was the first who made recordings of yoiks in his expeditions.
In the Electronic Library of the Writers of Karelia, there is an article Incomparably Modest Elias Lönnrot and a Pine by a A. P. Perttu, a writer and a member of famous rune singers’ family Perttunen.
In the Electronic Library of the Republic of Karelia, there is a book in Finnish «Kalevalan laulumailta : Elias Lönnrotin poluilla Vienan Karjalassa» (Eng. From the Kalevala Song Country: Lönnrot’s Footsteps to the Folk Singing Villages of Archangel Karelia) written by I. K. Ihna, an ethnographer, journalist and photographer, who made a trip to the places of E. Lönnrot (free registration is required) in the end of the 19th century.
We invite you to refer to full-text electronic resources.
The Collection of Full-Text Documents on the Theme of the Epic Poem Kalevala contains electronic copies of the most valuable editions of Kalevala in Russian and other languages and also presents full texts of textbooks and literary documents dedicated to the theme of the Karelian and Finnish epic poem, and also handwritten notes by composers of the republic containing musical works based on the Kalevala.
