We learned from the master.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.They are delicious
. Also, the tagline is "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own".
I want to see a strip where Sweden drops Fennoswede off at Finland's place, and dryly tells him not to get drunk this time.
Cue Finland putting down his knife and vodka, before immediately reciting the Kalevala to an entranced Fennoswede.
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I'm not even from the region, and I was entranced by the tale... as told through a Don Rosa comic. It's one of the coolest things I ever read.
For me it's mostly very boring - but that's because I don't like reading long poetic (by which in this case I mean "observing a metred verse") narratives. Even if I like the verse and the story I'll probably dislike the work, especially if it is very repetitive (as narratives that are (derived from) oral traditions often are, as the repetition is a method that is used to help remember each part.)
This is precisely the reason I didn't like Dante's Inferno even though the translation was done by one of the most important and talented poets in Finnish history (Eino Leino.)
In my opinion the Don Rosa version is better than the original - though I must admit I've never read all the way through Kalevala. I've only read most of the important bits.
I suppose it's a bit like the Bible - people know it's hugely important for Western literature, yet most haven't read it all the way through. I've read most of the Bible by now, but not all of it. (I tend to read individual books of it if there's a reason for it but I don't really care very much about reading all of the more tedious bits. The only reason I ever read any of it is when I know that a bit of it is being referred to in another work and I want to read the corresponding bit(s) from the Bible.)
edited 3rd Aug '13 1:08:22 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Wikipedia says it's about 500 pages.
(That's also from Wikipedia; "runo" is Finnish for "poem.")
It's divided into 10 cycles, each describing a single story. Not all of the cycles are the same length, but if there are 10 of them and the whole work is composed of 50 poems you get an average of 5 poems per cycle. (Yeah, I'm a maths genius.)
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I'm roughly familiar with the story about the Sampo, but that's it. I've always thought it would make a great Disney movie, what with its Power Trio of heroes and a villain who goes all One-Winged Angel toward the end.
The rhyme schemes are different and there are lesser cantos, but I think it's of the same size as Os Lusíadas (Portugal's national epic, for those who don't know), so, I think I'll handle it good.
Well, Don Rosa was the good side of Disney (among other authors who cared about telling a good story). But, yeah, a Disney movie would disrespect the Kalevala. A more serious movie, on the other hand, could do something good.
edited 3rd Aug '13 1:55:42 PM by Quag15
When discussing the Kalevala everyone always focuses on the story of the Sampo - mainly because it's way more interesting than anything else you'll find in the book. But there are some pretty good bits other than that story, actually - but as you might expect from an epic they don't make much sense.
For instance there's a bit where a young man named Joukahainen wants to challenge the mighty wizard Väinämöinen. So Joukahainen challenges Väinämöinen into a duel of songs (in Kalevala songs have magical powers) and he manages to annoy Väinämöinen to such an extent that the old wizard sings a song that causes Joukahainen to sink into the earth all the way to his shoulders or so. Eventually Joukahainen offers his sister, Aino, to Väinämöinen; the offer is accepted and Joukahainen released. (Obviously this is wrong in a multitude of ways that were probably not taken into consideration when the original stories were invented...)
Aino is so distraught over her family's insistence that she marry Väinämöinen that she ends up drowning herself rather than submitting. The only consolation for a modern reader is that at least Aino's mother finally comes to her senses and laments the fact that the family's insistence on the arranged marriage forced Aino to such a resolution.
In another story a young man named Lemminkäinen, through a sequence of events that I won't go into, ends up killed by a sea serpent and then cut to pieces and pushed into the river of the underworld (Tuonela.) His mother hears of this and reacts in a surprising manner; she goes to the land where her son died, interrogates the ruler of the land for the location of her son's body, and with help from the sun eventually finds the river. She then gets a giant rake from the smith who made the Heavens, and with that rake she is able to dredge up the remains of her son. She then glues them together with the wax of a bee, bringing her son back to life.
My point is that if you want to read Kalevala you should be prepared for events that make no sense whatsoever. If there are any rules that the story consistently follows I'm not able to identify them.
edited 3rd Aug '13 2:19:04 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.That's
. I'm used to imagine that sort of thing, but I didn't knew that Kalevala had such a thing.
As for things that make no sense, I like to read those kinds of things, as long as they're not utterly stupid or obnoxious.
BTW, some of the scenes in the Don Rosa story were based on famous paintings about the stories of Kalevala by an artist named Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
For instance, you might be able to see some similarities between this
◊ and this
◊.
edited 3rd Aug '13 2:46:16 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Perhaps the artist based her appearance on that of a harpy. If I didn't know that was from the Kalevala, I would assume she was a harpy.
You know what's kind of sad? I have more interesting conversations about the comic here than at the forum at the actual comic website.
edited 3rd Aug '13 10:04:01 PM by Karalora

England's photoshoot. Sorta
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