The Story of Kullervo

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  18 swart and illfavoured. It is Tolkien’s invention to have his hero’s angry and resentful internal emotional state externalized in his dark and ugly outward appearance. In Kalevala, Kullervo is described as handsome and yellow-haired. Folio 23 recto contains the marginal note ‘Kullervo ugly’ and beneath it, also in the margin, ‘Mauri black’.

  20 thralldom. Slavery, serfdom, state of bondage. From Anglo-Saxon thræl, from Old Norse thræll, ‘servant’.

  daughter [of] Koi Queen of the marshlands. The smith’s wife, in Kalevala called Pohjan neiti, ‘North maid, North miss’, is unnamed in Tolkien’s story, identified only as the daughter of Koi. In Finnish koi is not a proper name but a word meaning ‘dawn, daybreak’, so this usage is Tolkien’s invention. Although Koi does not appear in the story, Tolkien describes her in the name-list as ‘Queen of Lōke’ (see below). Tolkien clearly means the character to be equivalent to Louhi, a major character in Kalevala, where she is a sorceress, the Mistress of Pohjola the Land of the North, and the scheming mother of the North maid. The name Louhi is a shortened form of Loviatar, minus the feminine suffix tar. In Kalevala, Loviatar is called Death’s daughter, the half-blind daughter of Death’s Domain. One of Tolkien’s name-lists identifies ‘Louhiatar’ as ‘name of smith’s wife’ (see entry for ‘Kivutar’ below).

  Puhōsa. Untamo’s homestead. Also called Puhu, perhaps as a diminutive.

  21 blue woods/Blue Forest. Finnish sininen salo translates literally as ‘blue wilderness’, but is often translated ‘hazy blue wilderness’ or ‘blue woodland haze’, the result of rising mist in forested areas and especially in low-lying ground. Tolkien associates the colour and the phenomenon with mystery and magic – blue Puhōsa, the blue woods round Untamo’s dwelling, the Blue Forest of Kullervo’s wanderings.

  22 Ilu the God of Heaven. Also called Iluku and sometimes confused with Ukko. In Tolkien’s list of names in Folio 6 (see below) Ilu is identified as the God of the Sky. Contrast with Malōlō below. It is worth noting that Ilu is also the initial element in Ilúvatar, the Elvish name for the godhead of Tolkien’s mythology, the ‘Silmarillion’.

  Manatomi. Sky, heaven, also called Ilwe, Ilwinti.

  Guard my kine. The longest of Tolkien’s ‘chunks of poetry’, this charm to protect cattle follows closely the incantation of equivalent length by the smith’s wife in Runo 32 of the ‘Kullervo’ portion of Kalevala, which Tolkien calls the ‘splendid kine-song’ (see essay and Notes). He clearly felt it to be an important element in both Kalevala and his own story. Both passages are testament to the importance of animal husbandry in a subsistence economy, and both, by their naming of the many woodland and nature spirits (though here Tolkien allows himself some poetic invention), give a good picture of the pagan Finnish worldview.

  23 daughters of Ilwinti. Apparently air spirits, perhaps breezes. Ilwinti is formed from ilma, ‘sky, air.’ The mother goddess in Kalevala is called Ilmatar, ‘Maid of the Air’ (Magoun), or ‘Daughter of the Air’ (Kirby); literally ‘air maiden’ from ilma (‘air’) plus tar, the feminine suffix.

  Manoine. From its context with ‘daughters of Ilwinti,’ ‘blue meads of Ilwinti,’ and ‘white kine’ (clouds), Manoine is likely to be equivalent to Manatomi as sky or heaven (see Manatomi above).

  Ukko. The ancient Finnish thunder-god. The name means ‘old man’, and the diminutive, ukkonen, is a term for thunder. See ‘Ilu’ above.

  children of Malōlō. Folio 6 identifies Malōlō as ‘a god, the maker of the earth’. In the preceding lines the daughters are called ‘maidens great and ancient’, and ‘mighty daughters of the Heaven’. They appear to be ancient feminine divinities or spirits.

  24 Palikki’s little damsel, Telenda, Kaltūse, Pūlu. Names apparently of Tolkien’s invention.

  Kame. Perhaps a variant of Kēme.

  25 Terenye maid of Samyan. Folio 6 lists Samyan as ‘god of the forest’, making him the equivalent of (or replacement for) Tapio, whose daughter is Tellervo, also called ‘wind spirit’. Terenye could then be either a forest spirit, a dryad, or akin to the daughters of Ilwinti.

  And the women fire will kindle. On Finnish farms smudge fires were lit in the evenings, creating smoke to keep away mosquitoes which bothered the cattle.

  26 Honeypaw. Certain wild animals in Northern Europe, such as the bear and the wolf, were considered so powerful that to speak their names was to invite their appearance, with predictable danger to human life. Thus circumlocutions, by-names or descriptions were often used, such as ‘honeypaw’, or ‘bruin’ (brown) or ‘winter sleeper’, or ‘woodland apple’ for the bear. All of these appellations are applied to bears in Kalevala, where the actual word for ‘bear’ is karhu. Tolkien would use this name himself in a 1929 ‘letter from Father Christmas’, in which the North Polar Bear reveals his ‘real name’ as ‘Karhu’. In Tolkien’s poem the smith’s wife calls the bear ‘Uru’ (bear) but she also flatters him with an affectionate-sounding nickname.

  27 Kūru. In Folio 6 called ‘The great black river of death’ with possible variant Kuruwanyo. Finnish kuolema is ‘death’, and Tolkien may have formed the name from that base.

  30 neatherd. An old word for cattleherder. The word neat is archaic and obsolete, but is specific in distinguishing cattle (cows) and oxen from other domestic hoofed animals such as sheep or goats.

  31 Amuntu. In Folio 6 identified as Hell.

  Nyelid. The list of names on Folio 6 gives Nyēli as a by-name for Kampa, which is itself a by-name for Kalervo. Nyelid could mean something like ‘of the clan of’. But see ‘The Etymologies’ in The Lost Road, where NYEL- is glossed as ‘ring, sing, give out a sweet sound. Q nyello singer; nyelle bell; T Fallinel (Fallinelli) = Teleri [PHAL]. N nell bell; nella- sound bells; nelladel ringing of bells. Q Solonyeldi = Teleri (see SOL); in Telerin form Soloneldi’.

  32 Men shall hither come from Loke. A place-name apparently equivalent to Lohiu. The similarity to Loki, the name of the Old Norse trickster god, may be intentional. An etymological relationship between Loki and Louhi has been suggested, but cannot be demonstrated.

  But shall shudder when they hear them. This and the following two lines are syntactically awkward, and seem to require emendation. The fact that they are also metrically irregular begs for poetic as well as grammatical smoothing. The word I have transcribed as ‘hear’ (and it certainly looks like it) yet has the ‘h’ ascender firmly crossed like a ‘t’. Logically, ‘hear them’ should be followed by ‘of’: ‘hear them of thy fate’, but ‘of’ is not there. ‘To’ is jotted in the margin to the left of, and (confusingly) between, the last two lines. It is capitalized, as if beginning a sentence, but it works better after ‘Woe’, and the final word (or words) is/are illegible. A workable emendation would be ‘But shall shudder when they hear them/ [of] thy fate and end [it is written ‘and’] of terror./ Woe to thou who ...’

  far Lohiu. Etymologically similar to ‘Louhi’ and ‘Louhiatar’ but here clearly referring to a place, not a personage. See entry for ‘Lōke’ below.

  33 Jumala most holy. In Kalevala Jumala is a sacred being, often translated as ‘God’, ‘God on high’, or ‘Creator’. Perhaps originally a pagan figure but assimilated to Christianity.

  34 I was small and lost my mother father / I was young (weak) and lost my mother. Cancelled in the manuscript, the lines are a near direct quote from Kirby’s translation of Kalevala: ‘I was small, and lost my father, I was weak, and lost my mother.’ They are retained here as a possible indication of Tolkien’s personal interest in what he called ‘a very great story and most tragic’. The parallel with Tolkien’s own life – his father died when he four years old, his mother when he was twelve – is self-evident.

  Blue-robed Lady of the Forest/Woman of the Forest/Blue Forest Woman. The first title follows that of Kirby’s translation, and Tolkien has added variations on the epithet. Magoun’s translation has ‘green-robed maid of the thicket’, Friburg’s has ‘blue-robed matron of the forest’. The mistress of the for
est, traditionally named as Mielikki, is the consort or wife of Tapio, a major woodland deity. The world of Kalevala is full of nature spirits, woodland demi-gods who appear when needed. This one has a particularly portentous role, since it is when Kullervo disobeys her instructions to avoid the mountain that he has the fated meeting with his sister.

  35 Louhi’s daughter. Almost certainly an error for ‘Koi’s daughter’, the smith’s wife.

  36 daughter of Tapio. A dryad, a woodland spirit.

  Tapio. God of the forest.

  37 the wife of Ilmarinen. A mistake for Āsemo. Ilmarinen is the smith in Kalevala and Tolkien originally kept the name, then changed it to Āsemo (see above).

  40 wailing ‘Kivutar’ Kullervo’s sister apparently was at one stage of composition to have had the name (possibly a nickname) Kivutar. At the top of Folio 22 verso is written a brief list of names:

  Kalervo > Paiväta

  Kiputyltö maiden of pain his wife;

  Kivutar daughter of pain his daughter.

  Louhiatar name of Smith’s wife

  Saari Kalervoinen the hero

  Both Kiputyltö and Kivutar are formed from Finnish kipu, ‘pain’. In his translation of Kalevala Friburg calls Kiputyltö ‘Pain Maiden’; Magoun calls her ‘Pain Girl’ and translates Kivutar as ‘Pain Spirit’ and identical with ‘Pain Girl’ (i.e. ‘maiden of pain.’). Kirby leaves the names untranslated.

  Introduction to the Essays

  Unlike the story, Tolkien’s essay on the Kalevala exists in two states, one a rough draft manuscript with paragraphs numbered for reorganization, and the other a fair copy typescript. They are catalogued together as Bodleian Library MS Tolkien B 61, folios 126–60. The manuscript, in ink over pencil and heavily emended, consists of twenty-four not always consecutive pages plus an additional, smaller folio (not included here) containing fragmentary jotted notes on both sides. The typescript, which has only occasional emendations in ink, is on lined paper with ruled margins. The text comprises nineteen single-spaced pages, and breaks off in mid-sentence at the very bottom of page 19.

  The hand-written title page to the manuscript (Plate 6) reads ‘On “The Kalevala” or Land of Heroes’, and also bears the notations ‘(C.C. Coll. [Corpus Christi College] Oxford ‘Sundial’ Nov. 1914)’ and ‘Exeter Coll. Essay Club. Feb. 1915’, the two dates on which Tolkien is known to have delivered the talk. The November 1914 presentation, given a bare month after his October letter to Edith, and the February one given a scant three months later, clearly belong to the same period as the story.

  No firm date can be assigned for the somewhat revised typescript draft, which has no separate title page, but only the heading ‘The Kalevala’. A reference in the text to the ‘late war’ would place it after the World War I Armistice of 11 November 1918, and an allusion to the ‘League’ (presumably the League of Nations formed in 1919–20) would suggest 1919 as a terminus a quo. On the basis of comparison with material in Tolkien’s early poetry manuscripts and typescripts Douglas A. Anderson suggests 1919–21 (personal communication), while Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond propose a somewhat later, admittedly conjectural dating of ‘?1921–?1924’ (Chronology, p. 115). Anderson’s date would place the revision at a time when Tolkien was still living in Oxford (he was on the staff of the New English Dictionary from November 1918 to the spring of 1920), while the Scull-Hammond three-year time frame would push it to the period when Tolkien was Reader in English Language at Leeds University. In either case, there is no available evidence that this revised version of the talk was ever given.

  As with The Story of Kullervo, I have edited both essays’ transcriptions for smooth reading. Square brackets enclose words or parts of words missing from the text but supplied where necessary for clarity. False starts, cancelled words and lines have been omitted. Also as with the story, I have chosen not to interrupt the texts (and distract the reader) with note numbers, but a Notes and Commentary section follows each essay proper, explaining terms and usages, and citing references.

  6. Manuscript title page of the essay, ‘On “The Kalevala”’, written in J.R.R. Tolkien’s hand [MS Tolkien B 61 folio 126 recto].

  On ‘The Kalevala’

  or

  Land of Heroes

  [Manuscript draft]

  I am afraid this paper was not originally written for this society, which I hope it will pardon since I produce it mainly to form a stop-gap tonight, to entertain you as far as possible in spite of the sudden collapse of the intended reader.

  I hope the society will also forgive besides its second-hand character its quality: which is hardly that of a paper – rather a disconnected soliloquy accompanied by a leisurely patting on the back of a pet volume. If I continually drop into talking as if no one in the room had read these poems before, it is because no one had, when I first read it; and you must also attribute it to the pet attitude. I am very fond of these poems: they are litterature [sic] so very unlike any of the things that are familiar to general readers, or even to those versed in the more curious by paths: they are so un-European and yet could only come from Europe.

  Any one who has read this collection of ballads (more especially in the original which is vastly different to any translation) will I think agree to that. Most people are familiar from the age of their earliest books onward with the general mould and type of mythological stories, legends, Romances that come to us from many sources: from Hellas by many channels, from the Celtic peoples Irish and British, and from the Teutonic (I put these in order of increasing appeal to myself); and which achieve forums, with their crowning glory in Stead’s Books for the Bairns: that mine of ancient lore. They have a certain style or savour; a something akin to one another in spite of their vast cleavages that make you feel that whatever the difference of ultimate race of those speakers there is something kindred in the imagination of the speakers of Indo-European languages.

  Trickles come in from a vague and alien East of course (it is even reflected in the above beloved pink covers) but alien influence, if felt, is more on the final litterary shapes than on the fundamental stories. Then perhaps you discover the Kalevala, (or to translate it roughly: it is so much easier to say) the Land of Heroes; and you are at once in a new world; and can revel in an amazing new excitement. You feel like Columbus on a new Continent or Thorfinn in Vinland the good. When you first step onto the new land you can if you like immediately begin comparing it with the one you have come from. Mountains, rivers, grass, and so on are probably common features to both. Some plants and animals may seem familiar especially the wild and ferocious human species; but it is more likely to be the often almost indefinable sense of newness and strangeness that will either perturb you or delight you. Trees will group differently on the horizon, the birds will make unfamiliar music; the inhabitants will talk a wild and at first unintelligible lingo. At the worst I hope, however, that after this the country and its manners have become more familiar, and you have got on speaking terms with the natives, you will find it rather jolly to live with this strange people and these new gods awhile, with this race of unhypocritical scandalous heroes and sadly unsentimental lovers: and at the last you may feel you do not want to go back home for a long while if at all.

  This is how it was for me when I first read the Kalevala – that is, crossed the gulf between the Indo-European-speaking peoples of Europe into this smaller realm of those who cling in queer corners to the forgotten tongues and memories of an elder day. The newness worried me, sticking in awkward lumps through the clumsiness of a translation which had not at all overcome its peculiar difficulties; it irritated and yet attracted: and each time you read it the more you felt at home and enjoyed yourself. When H. Mods should have been occupying all my forces I once made a wild assault on the stronghold of the original language and was repulsed at first with heavy losses: but it is easy almost to see the reason why the translations are not at all good; it is that we are dealing with a language separated by a quite immeasurable gulf in method and e
xpression from English.

  There is however a possible third case which I have not considered: you may be merely antagonistic and desire to catch the next boat back to your familiar country. In that case before you go, which had best be soon, I think it only fair to say that if you feel that heroes of the Kalevala do behave with a singular lack of conventional dignity and with a readiness for tears and dirty dealing, they are no more undignified and not nearly so difficult to get on with as a medieval lover who takes to his bed to weep for the cruelty of his lady, in that she will not have pity on him and condemns him to a melting death; but who is struck with the novelty of the idea when his kindly adviser points out that the poor lady is as yet uninformed in any way of his attachment. The lovers of the Kalevala are forward and take a deal of rebuffing. There is no Troilus to need a Pandarus to do his shy wooing for him: rather here it is the mothers-in-law who do some sound bargaining behind the scenes and give cynical advice to their daughters calculated to shatter the most stout illusions.

  One repeatedly hears the ‘Land of Heroes’ described as the ‘national Finnish Epic’: as if a nation, besides if possible a national bank theatre and government, ought also automatically to possess a national epic. Finland does not. The K[alevala] is certainly not one. It is a mass of conceivably epic material: but, and I think this is the main point, it would lose nearly all that which is its greatest delight if it were ever to be epically handled. The main stories, the bare events, alone could remain; all that underworld, all that rich profusion and luxuriance which clothe them would be stripped away. The ‘L[and] of H[eroes]’ is in fact a collection of that delightful absorbing material which, on the appearance of an epic artist, because of its comparative lowness of emotional pitch, has elsewhere inevitably been cast aside and afterwards overshadowed (far too often) has vanished into disuse and utter oblivion.