That is great to know. I can imagine he had collected way more than he could put in a single book. How he chose what to include and what not to inlcude might be interesting to find out. As I said in the video, Lonnrot spent years on it so I think he did a good job giving the book structure and make it into a coherent story that now people can enjoy.

You’re absolutely right. I think with many cultural myths and legends they take new layers as they travel through history and places. I’m not 100% on this but I think Lonnrot was trying to appease the Orthodox Church who were against anything non-Christian or nationalistic. Kalevala is beautiful and if you read a few times you kind feel the voices of the people who sang the songs or composed the poems. It’s like a shaman connection to the very early ancestors of the finish people.

in my opinion -- almost all human characters or god-like biengs in Kalevala are the real ancestors or real characters who lives in North-East region of Europe in pre-Chrisianity era...they live many many generations ago and they are not just "absract personification"....Kullervo..Vanamoinen..Antero Vipunen I suppose they are the ancestors

Thank you for the feedback! Really appreciate it.

Thank you!

It’s fun to read snippets from it from time to time.

Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi is a fantastic novel. Also novels by Tove Jansson. I will spend this winter in russia, am afraid. With some detours in Europe and south America.

@@Fiction_Beast Lucky you! I was in the Baltics for the start of the last winter before Covid and loved it, but I've never been to Russia.

Not so lucky I meant to read and reread some Russian novels lol

That makes more sense because the result of its loss was poverty above all else. Something a mill or pillar that connects the sky with earth, rain with crops.

@@Fiction_Beast I"ve also seen it referred to as "The Sampo with the painted lid."

Like Aladdin lamp. Except it doesn’t look like a lamp.

I think that's the Donald Duck version of it, no?

It’s a theory-I agree with you on that. Whether the two peoples’ connection is a good thing or not, I can’t judge because that’s more political. I like the idea of finding connections between people. I think differences are easy to see but similarities are harder I guess. The whole human species as one and differences are pretty minute. Thank you for the comment.

@@Fiction_Beast It's not political. The Altaic language family has been debunked too. Ural-Altaic was never a popular theory and it's been debunked at least 50 years ago. I think only in Turkey the Ural-Altaic and Altaic theory is still supported. I hear this from Turkish people often.

@@Aurinkohirvi I appreciate you taking the time to answer. I need to study it a bit more:)

Thank you for comment. Linguistics or history language is very hard to be definitive about unless you have texts to study. In this case there is no texts so scholars come up with some good educated theories and other scholars agree or disagree. Ural-Altaic is a theory. I didn’t come up with it. My example in the video was just an example. These theories stand until there’s definitive evidence to suggest otherwise. Most of the time unfortunately it’s political. Some people don’t like to be associated with other people. Or they want to find ways to be close to other people. I’m neither Turkish nor Finnish by the way.

@@Fiction_Beast I have studied prehistory for 20 years, and although I'm not a linguist, I run into linguists and their theories all the time. You don't use texts to construct proto languages. The proto-languages are built based on grammar and sound changes. Sound change according to laws, and them laws influence all the words, so when you know the laws, it becomes possible to construct proto-languages based on existing languages. You need to do some research. Linguistics is not as hard science as physics, but it is a science and you can be proven right or wrong. I do not trust very far to linguists. And they do debate a lot, but they can also prove each others right or wrong. Even if one cannot be quite sure what proto-languages thousands of years ago were like, you can achieve enough accuracy to tell if two languages can be found relatives.

@@Aurinkohirvi I definitely need to study more. I love language history but not familiar with non-indoeuropean language families.

@@kotikunnas1291 Not at the same time. Turkic people came millenias later to the Central Asia. Finnic languages don't have a Turkic loan word layer either, but we do have Indo-Iranian, Baltic, German, Novogorod dialect (Russian) and Swedish loan word layers.

I think there might be a linguistic connection. I don’t know about DNA tests and frankly I’m not interested in racial connections because it’s often used for political purposes . I’m more interested in language. Language can be more inclusive because anyone can learn a language but you can’t change your race.

@@Fiction_Beast One word or two doesn't make any connection.

@@Fiction_Beast I am not interested in what is considered political or not.

@@KajDalfall agree the connection is pretty thin and not everyone agrees on, so we can't be 100% certain either way.

@@KajDalfall we're on the same page.