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Professor Kari Sallamaa, guest speaker 28 February 2010 |
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Professor Sallamaa is one of the foremost scholars in the Finnish national epic Kalevala and therefore an excellent choice to speak in our club meeting on the Kalevala Day (28 February). In his highly interesting talk he described the creation process of the epic around 1830-1850, in the formative period of the Finnish nation which was looking for glorious historic roots, and found one of its cultural cornerstones in the Kalevala epic which Dr Elias Lönnrot edited and composed from an enormous wealth of popular poems and songs of the oral poetic tradition particularly prevalent in the Carelian region, now Russian territory. Influences and repercussions of the Kalevala epic in all parts and aspects of Finnish culture and society have been overwhelming.
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