The Kalevala

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Tue, 12/29/2020 - 11:00am to 11:30am
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Kalevala
a personal docu-play about the Finnish epic creation story

 

Dmae presents opens her audio archives vault to The Kalevala, a docu-play from her and MediaRites' series Legacies: Tales From America first broadcast in 1994. . This piece from veteran producer Alex Van Oss is a mesmerizing and experimental audio work that explores a Finish tale that might have inspired The Lord of The Rings. Perfect story for a winter's eve in front of a crackling fireplace or under a warm blanket. 

About the Producer: Alex van Oss is a long-time producer and reporter who has worked for National Public Radio, the Goethe-Institut, and many other entities. From 2002 to 2014, he coordinated Caucasus Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Alex van Oss grew up in Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific. He switched from microbiology to public radio in 1977, working as a producer, reporter, and editor at NPR (All Things Considered, Performance Today) and Monitor Radio. A resident of Washington, D.C., Alex travels widely in Scandinavia and the former Soviet Union.

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala and Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the mythical wealth-making machine Sampo, while mythology reaches its decision on the coming of Christianity.

The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland[Note 1] and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917.The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium (i.e. Middle-earth mythology).

The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories (Finnish: runot).  An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862.

 

 

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