Chapter
1: The Kantele Traditions of
by
Carl Rahkonen © 1989 All Rights Reserved Back to Table
of Contents
Any
use of this material should contain a proper reference to this site.
I.
THE KANTELE AS FOLKLORE, SYMBOL AND
MUSICAL
INSTRUMENT
To the Finnish people the kantele
manifests itself in three separate ways.
First, it is a musical instrument, a type of zither which has been known
among the Finns and neighboring cultures for hundreds of years. Second, the kantele is a significant motif of
Finnish folklore. It is portrayed as
having a supernatural beginning and as an object of magic and power, but it is
also referred to as an object in normal reality. Third, the kantele is a symbol of Finnish
identity which evokes feelings of pride and solidarity among Finns. These three different ways of viewing the
kantele are closely interrelated and together they comprise a concept of what
kantele means to the Finnish people.
Perhaps the most significant body of
Finnish folklore is the collection entitled Suomen kansan vanhat runot
or SKVR [The Ancient Runes of the
Finnish People]. These runes relate epic
tales which were transmitted for centuries in singing rituals before being collected
and transcribed by folklorists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The great eighteenth century scholar, Henrich
Gabrial Porthan, describes rune singing in the fourth part of his Dissertatio
de Poesi Fennica (1778) and includes the following passage:
Whenever our fellow‑countrymen
entertain themselves with ceremonial singing, they most usually like to do it
to the music of a harp or kantele. If a
competent player is available, he accompanies the singers on a harp. If only one person is singing, then the harp
player assumes the function of a supporting singer and repeats on the harp the
melody which ordinarily is the charge of the supporting singer, the main singer
meanwhile keeping silent... (Lönnrot 1963:381‑82).
This
short passage provides one of the earliest indications that the kantele was
intimately tied to the art of rune singing.[1]
The kantele was tied to the art of
rune singing in two ways: as an instrument used to accompany rune singing and
as a significant motif of the runes. The
descriptions of eighteenth and nineteenth century travelers and explorers,
among them Joseph Acerbi, Carl Axel Gottlund and Elias Lönnrot, paint a picture
that the kantele was a typical artifact in the lives of the rune singers. The runes frequently contained motifs which
reflected the reality of life, so it is not surprising that the kantele became
a motif.
The runes which contain the kantele
as a motif tell two distinct but related tales:
The first tells the story of how Väinämöinen, the eternal sage, created
the original kantele and the second tells about his kantele playing. The "creation of the kantele" runes
are of two types: Some of the runes
relate how Väinämöinen created the original kantele from the body parts of
living things, such as its body from the jawbone of a great pike, its strings
from the hair of a maiden, and nails from the teeth of a great salmon. In other runes Väinämöinen created a kantele
from wood.
The runes dealing with Väinämöinen's
kantele playing portray Väinämöinen as a rune singer himself and the kantele as
one source of his magic and power. The
story of Väinämöinen's kantele playing has two parts: After Väinämöinen created the kantele, many
people tried to play it and fail. Then
Väinämöinen played and enchanted all the world's creatures with his
playing.
Shamanism
The interpretation of these runes
should be viewed in light of the purpose for which they were sung. It is believed that rune singing was
connected with shamanistic practices.
Ancient Finnish‑Karelian songs had
a mythical basis; they existed in association with cult practices and ritual
ceremonies. In former times, singing
them was not a leisurely pastime or art for art's sake, but an act of magical
significance. These songs contained the
most sacred and powerful knowledge that could be used to influence a man's
life. The song of Väinämöinen's kantele
music was used as a kind of incantation, now for fishing, now for hunting. Chr. Ganander wrote in 1789: 'Fowlers,
hunters, and woodsmen asked Väinämöinen to play his harp, so that its sweet
music would call forth all the game...' (Oinas 1978:296).
The actual manner of singing the
runes is also believed to be connected with shamanism (ibid:300). Two men, who represented the shaman and his
apprentice, would clasp right hands and alternate in singing lines. The shaman sang a line and the apprentice
joined him in singing the last two syllables.
The apprentice repeated the line, with the shaman joining in again on
the last two syllables before going on to the next line. By repeating each line the apprentice would
learn the rune and the shaman was allowed time to recreate the next line. The singing may or may not have been
performed to the accompaniment of a kantele, but if a kantele was used, it was
usually played by a third person in unison with the singing. During the singing of runes the shaman
entered a trance state in which it was believed that his soul would assume the
form of a spirit animal and would travel to other realms. It was the duty of the apprentice to bring
the soul of the shaman back to the normal world.
Lapp and Northern Eurasian shamans
used a drum in their sacred ceremonies.
The frame was carved from wood usually in an oval or round shape, over
which was stretched the skin of a reindeer, elk or horse. The Lapps added a great deal of ornamentation
to the skin of the drum and to the "T"‑shaped drumsticks which
were carved from reindeer antlers. There
are several interesting parallels between the kantele and the shaman's drum.
Martti Haavio has pointed out a
parallel in the names of the instruments.
"[Another name for the Lapp shaman's drum is keure. Notice that the word keure corresponds
to the Finnish narrative rune word käyrä which means 'kannel' [i.e.
kantele],...]" (1967:300). He later
adds, "[The Kirghiz shaman (baqca) accompanies the calling song with a
string instrument (kobuz), an eastern Ostjakien shaman kantele‑type of
instrument ‑‑ this shaman is a 'kannel‑hand shaman' the same
as the Lapp shaman is a 'käsi‑kannus'.
The kannel brings Väinämöinen to mind, who, with his 'fisherman's words'
or 'hunter's words', plays the kantele and sings, until the animals of the
forest and water, birds and fishes, arrive to listen to him;...]"
(ibid:302).
Among certain shamanistic groups, there was a
ceremony to "animate" the drum.
Mircea Eliade describes this ceremony as follows:
The ceremony for 'animating the drum' is
of the highest interest. When the Altaic
shaman sprinkles it with beer, the shell of the drum 'comes to life' and,
through the shaman, relates how the tree of which it was part grew in the
forest, how it was cut, brought to the
village, and so on. The shaman then
sprinkles the skin of the drum and, 'coming to life,' it too narrates its past. Through the shaman's voice, the animal whose
skin has been used for the drum tells of its birth, its parents, its childhood,
and its whole life to the moment it was brought down by the hunter (1964:170).
Vilmos Dioszegi describes the
reviving ceremony among Siberian shamans in reverse order. "The shaman must look for the spirit of
the animal which gave its skin to be stretched over the drum. He must follow the path where the animal had
wandered, right back to its birthplace, because only there can its spirit be
caught" (1960:74).
From these descriptions we see the
first essential element of the reviving ceremony: the capture of the animal
spirit in order to give the drum life, which takes place by reciting the past
history of the animal. It is not certain
whether the kantele, when it was used in a shamanistic context, has a similar
reviving ceremony. But, there is a
seeming parallel in the "origin of the kantele" runes, because they
describe the mythical animals from which the first kantele was believed to have
been made.
Dioszegi adds a significant detail
to the description of the previous ceremony.
"Although the drum might be finished, it is still unusable, first
it must be given to a small child to play with for a few days and then the so‑called
'reviving' ceremony must be performed" (ibid:74).
He
reiterates:
This last information was of an
extraordinary value, because there is no mention of such a procedure in the
scientific literature. -‑ As soon as the drum is ready, the shaman
revives it. The drum before its revival,
must be given to a child to play with before falling asleep, for three days.
(ibid).
The practice of allowing a child to
play with the magical instrument has a seeming parallel with the second part of
the kantele rune sequence. "'Now
the kantele was ready; the young played it, the old played it, the maidens, the
young boys, the unmarried men, the married men; the joy did not feel like joy,
nor the music like music'" (Haavio 1952:154). Eventually Väinämöinen played the kantele
producing music which enchanted all who heard.
Since Väinämöinen was the "eternal sage" every other person
who tried to play the kantele in the rune was inexperienced, like a child.
Another interesting parallel comes
to light when comparing the sound holes of the kantele and the decorations of
the Lapp shaman's drum. The
Swedish-speaking Finnish ethnomusicologist, Otto Andersson, in his dissertation
Stråkharpan (1923) (English translation: The Bowed Harp (1930))
includes an appendix on the topic of kantele sound holes. He says that the cruciform‑ and cross‑shaped
sound‑holes served no acoustical function and were there merely as
ornamentation, but their purpose was more than mere embellishment and
"there is complete justification for interpreting the cross‑shaped
sound holes both as symbolic signs and as magical protective marks" (1930:
288, 300). These sound holes match many
of the decorations painted on the skins and carved on the drumsticks of the
Lapp shaman's drum (Illus. 1 and 2).
Little is known about the role of
the kantele in the actual production of trance.
While the kantele is mentioned prominently in runes as a source of power
by which people are put to sleep or animals are enchanted, there is very little
evidence outside the runes themselves.
The kantele may have served a
function similar to that of the Lapp shaman's drum, as a source of sound upon
which the shaman could focus to help achieve a trance state. Undoubtedly, the kantele held special
symbolic significance to the shaman, as the magical object mentioned in the
runes, which also existed in tangible reality.
Illus.
1. Kantele sound holes (from Andersson 1930:280,284).
Illus.
2. Decorations on Lapp shamans' drums (from Manker 1938:239).
Myth
and Reality
According to the Finnish folklorist,
Martti Haavio, the "creation of the kantele" runes are related to the
international tale type 780 "The Singing Bone." The motif of "the jawbone of a
pike" cannot be found in the inter-national tale. On this subject Haavio says "The motif
of the kantele made from fish bone clearly owes its origin and preservation to
a poet or an adapter whose interests lay in fishing" (1952:152). Haavio hypothesizes further that the
fish-bone motif may come from mythology since many musical instruments in myths
were made from the body parts of animals, such as the Greek lyre being made
from the horns of Apollo's oxen.
A similar approach to the kantele
runes has been taken by Matti Salo:
"The big pike, formerly sturgeon, of the poetry is the mythical
world‑supporter fish, which has played such a prominent part in the
cosmological beliefs of the Mordvin and of which many traces remain in the SKVR
[Ancient Runes of the Finnish People]." (1967:38).
Mythological theories provide only a
partial explanation of the "creation of the kantele" runes, since
many of the variants refer to the creation of a wooden kantele. The two following passages are typical of
variants found in the SKVR.
|
Vaka vanha
Väinämöinen Mistä kanteleh puut
on saaha? Mistä kanteleh
naulat saaha? Mistä kanteleh
kielet saaha? Hiien immen hivuksista |
Steadfast old Väinämöinen Where does one get the wood for the kantele? From the tailboneof a reindeer Where
does one get the nails for the kantele? From the large teeth of a pike Where
does one get the strings for the kantele? From the hair of the Demon's
virgin. SKVR I:579
(p.775) |
|
Itte vanha
Väinämöinen Teki kalliolla
kandeletta Kust' on koppa
kandelessa? Koivusta visa‑perästä Kust' on naulat kantelessa? Tammesta tasaiset
oxat Kust' on kielet
kantelessa? Jouhista hyvän
orihin |
Old Väinämöinen himself Made a kantele upon the rocks From what is the body of the kantele? From the curly end of a birch From what are the nails of the kantele? From the even branches of an oak From what are the strings of the kantele? From the hair of a good stallion. SKVR XII:80 (p.
51) |
The structure of these two passages
is identical, only the contents are changed.
By comparing the contents, a general principle concerning the kantele
runes becomes evident: they contain a mixture of myth and reality. They describe both the mythical kantele of
Väinämöinen as well as kanteles found in tangible reality.
Otto Andersson (1930:70‑85)
hypothesizes that many of the kantele runes may have originally referred to the
jouhikko (also called jouhikantele, a type of bowed lyre), rather
than the five string plucked kantele. As
part of his argument, Andersson relied on a view taken by C. A. Gottlund that
the jouhikko was an older instrument since it had horsehair strings and the
kantele had metal strings.
Andersson's views caused a sensation in
Finland at the time because there was an ongoing struggle for national
identity. The Swedish-speaking element
of Finnish society did all it could to promote those aspects of the culture
believed to come from the west, from a Swedish influence, such as the jouhikko. It had always been assumed that
"Väinämöinen's kantele" was the plucked psaltery known among all the
Eastern Baltic peoples. But Andersson's
research showed that bowed instruments, probably the jouhikko, played a role in
at least some of the kantele runes. More
recent archeological finds in Gdansk and Novgorod seem to show a possible early
connection between the bowed lyre and the Baltic psalteries (see Simon 1957;
Emsheimer 1961; Tõnurist 1977a; Povetkin 1982).
The Finnish ethnomusicologist, Armas
Otto Väisänen, wrote a significant article (1928b, 1938) in reply to Andersson
in which he emphasized that much of the folklore concerning the kantele had a
basis in reality. Väisänen reviewed the
known variants of the kantele runes, Estonian as well as Finnish, and came to
the conclusion that most referred to the plucked kantele. Only some referred to a bowed instrument and
those most likely come from a later date.
The "wooden kantele" runes give an accurate picture of the
materials and building methods. The
runes which portray how Väinämöinen played the kantele provide a realistic
account of kantele playing, as Väisänen himself observed in the field. For example, the following passage accurately
describes the playing position:
Sitte vanha
Väinämöinen Then old Väinämöinen
Istuxen
itek ripahan Sat
himself upon a handle
Otti
soiton sormillehen Took the
instrument in his fingers
käänsi
käyrän polvillehen turned the curve to his knee
kantele kätensä alle The kantele under his hands
SKVR
XII:74 (pp. 46‑7)
Kantele players generally played in
a sitting position with the kantele held by the pressure of the hands in the
lap or across the knees. The word käyrä
[curve] most likely refers to the curved end of the kantele, the ponsi,
which is believed to have functioned on older kanteles as a support on the leg
or knee.
Other runes accurately mention the
use of five fingers, presumably to play the five strings of the oldest form of
the kantele.
Tuopa oli vanha
Väinämöinen There was old Väinämöinen
Otti kantelon
käsillä Took the kantele
in his hands
Poikin
puolin polvillahe Across the knees
Viisin
sormin soittamahe Playing with
five fingers
SKVR
VI:155
Even certain details about playing,
such as the important use of the thumb on the highest pitched string come to
light.
Soitteleepi
Väinämöinen Väinämöinen played
Käsin
pienin, hoikin sormin With small hands, and thin fingers
Peukalo
ylös keveni The thumb up
lightly
SKVR
XII:75 (p. 49)
On Väisänen's interpretations of
these passages, Martti Haavio has remarked, "The description of the
kantele players movements is realistic, actually ethnographic. The kantele now being played is not a
mythical kantele but an ordinary, Finnish, five‑stringed finger
instrument." (1952:158).
Väisänen later published an article
showing that the kantele was also spoken of in realistic terms in Finnish
riddles (1933). One example is the often
quoted riddle:
Metsässä syntyy Born in the forest
Metsässä kasvaa Grows in the woods
Seinällä seisoo, Stands on the wall
Polvella laulaa Sings on the knee
[What
is it? A
kantele]
The lines "born in the
forest" and "grows in the woods" allude to the fact that the
kantele is carved from wood and may have been made while in the forest. "Stands on the wall" refers to the
practice of storing the kantele by hanging it on a wall, something which is
still widely practiced in Finland today.
"Sings on the knee" refers to the playing position of the
kantele.
Väisänen's article included a
lengthy chart comparing a large number of variants of this riddle which show
that most variants described the kantele in realistic terms. For example, some variants of the first two
lines are kotona syntyy [born at home] or kotona tehtyy [made at
home] referring to the place where the kantele is made. The third line has variants such as naulalla
nukkuu [sleeps on a nail], presumably the nail from which the kantele
hangs. The fourth line has variants such
as pöydällä pörää [buzzes on the table] because the Finnish kantele,
besides being played across the knees, was frequently played on top of a table.
Symbolisms
The kantele runes became widely
known among Finnish upper classes at a time of growing nationalism. This nationalistic movement focused upon folk
traditions, most significantly rune singing.
Rune singing was believed by Porthan and subsequent scholars to date
from antiquity. They believed that the
contents of runes represented a pure and uncorrupted reflection of the Finnish
national spirit. The runes, as well as
other folklore such as proverbs and riddles, began to be collected and studied
and used to argue against the political domination of Finland by Sweden and
Russia, and to raise the Finnish language and culture to its proper worth (see
Wilson 1976).
Because of the close connection of
the kantele with rune singing, both as a musical instrument which accompanied
the act of rune singing and as a motif within the runes, it became a strong
symbol of Finnish national identity. As
one contemporary source put it:
"Since the early nineteenth century rune singing and kantele
playing have together been a concept, symbolizing for the Finns all that is
intrinsically Finnish, something unique that has distinguished them from their
neighbours and also made them aware of their own national identity"
(Asplund 1983b:79).
There are at least four major
symbols connected with Finnish folk runes.
The first three are inseparably connected, while the fourth is somewhat
different.
The first symbol is Väinämöinen
himself. Väinämöinen is described in the
runes as an old, bearded and powerful sage, the spiritual leader of the people
and the one who possessed the greatest knowledge. Väinämöinen practiced his magic and power
through rune singing, so even though he did not exist in present reality, he
existed to some extent in every practicing rune singer. Many rune singers, as well as scholars who
believed in the historicity of the folk runes, believed that Väinämöinen might
have actually existed at some time in the past.
These singers saw themselves in a direct line of tradition back to
Väinämöinen.
The second symbol is the kantele,
which is almost always associated with Väinämöinen, as one source of his magic
and power. The kantele was also a common
artifact in the lives of rune singers.
Everyone knew what the kantele looked like. In eastern and northern areas of Finland, it
was practically in every home. In the
cities, it quickly became popular museum artifact. So, of the four most significant symbols of
Finnish folk runes, the kantele was the most accessible and the easiest to
depict visually.
The third symbol is the act of rune
singing itself. Rune singing, like the
kantele, is something which existed in reality and also is a significant motif
of the runes. Many of the runes relate
stories of supernatural feats performed by rune singing or of competition
through rune singing. Rune singing has
always been an implied part of the Väinämöinen/kantele symbolism.
The fourth symbol is the Sampo, the
magic mill which produces endless supply.
According to scholars Uno Harva and Felix J. Oinas, the Sampo represents
the pillar of the world around which the dome of the sky seems to turn
endlessly, thus evoking the idea of a gigantic mill which produces anything
wanted by its owner (Oinas 1978:291).
Although we know what the Sampo is and what it does, no one knows
exactly what the Sampo looks like, so it has rarely been depicted in visual
form.
The various symbols from folk runes
had a profound influence on the literature and fine arts of the Finnish upper
classes, because reference to these symbols was believed to instill the essence
of Finnishness in any creative work. A.
O. Väisänen, in a slightly humorous article (1925), has shown how Väinämöinen's
kantele was depicted in the fine arts.
Väisänen discussed the works of great artists of the era, such as Akseli
Gallen-Kallela, R. W. Ekman, S. A.
Keinänen and others, who were inspired by the Väinämöinen/kantele
symbolism. Some paintings were quite
accurate in the depiction of the real Finnish kantele, while others attempted
to picture Väinämöinen's mythical kantele or some other instrument. The paintings show the combination of
Väinämöinen, the kantele and implied rune singing as a kind of metasymbol
(Illus. 3).
Illus.
3. Painting by R. W. Ekman "Väinämöinen's Song" which shows the
combination of the old sage, kantele and rune singing (from Väisänen 1925:200).
Art music was also influenced by
folklore-centered nationalism, especially after the publication of the Kalevala,
the national epic of Finland. Various
Finnish composers used themes from the Kalevala as bases for their
compositions, the most famous being Jean Sibelius, of whom the Finnish
musicologist Eero Tarasti has said:
... characters from the Kalevala became
the heros of literature, painting and music.
They were often taken to symbolize various aspects of the Finnish
character at a time when nationalism, the Finns' awareness of themselves as a
nation, was gaining strength.
Sibelius was the first Finnish composer
to capture in music the spirit of the original folk song and to depict the
characters by purely musical devices -- just as realistically as Akseli
Gallen-Kallela in his paintings.
Seldom have different artistic genres been in such close contact with
one another as in the atmosphere of Karelianism and symbolism in Finland in the
1890s (Tarasti 1985:15).
The kantele, however, was spurned by
most composers since it was considered too limited an instrument to play art
music. Jean Sibelius did not write any
compositions for the kantele nor did he allude to it.
A significant work describing the
influence of the kantele runes on Finnish literature is an article by Martti
Haavio (1970). Haavio describes how the
kantele runes had a profound influence on the writings of the late eighteenth
century Fennophiles and the early nineteenth century Turku Romantics. Many major Finnish literary figures used the
kantele symbolism in their works, such as Jaakko Juteini (1781‑1855) in
his poem Arvon mekin ansaitsemme, which was later set to music and is
still a popular national song today. A
portion of the lyrics read:
Opin
teillä oppineita Scholars
on the path of learning
Suomessa
on suuria In
Finland there are great ones
Väinämöisen
kanteleita Väinämöinen's kanteles
täällä tehdään uusia are made here anew
Valistus
on viritetty The light
is ignited
Järkihyvä
herätetty Minds well
awakened
Among
many other famous literary figures influenced by kantele symbolism were Sakari
Topelius, Arvi Jannes, and Aleksis Kivi (ibid:101‑102). The kantele became such an important symbol
that it was chosen as the central feature of the seal of the Finnish Literature
Society (Illus. 4).
Illus.
4. Seal of the Finnish Literature
Society.
The nationalistic movement which
increased the symbolic significance of the kantele culminated in the activities
of Elias Lönnrot. While still a student
Lönnrot was aware of the kantele's importance as a motif within Finnish folk
runes. In his dissertation of 1827, he
devotes an entire section to the analysis of the "creation of the
kantele" and "Väinämöinen's kantele playing" runes. A portion of the section is given below:
For no other accomplishment ... is Väinämöinen
more famous than for the art of playing music, to which he seems chiefly to
have owed his immortality and divine honors after death. Before we treat of the praise which he
obtained by this skill, there seems to be a few matters to be dealt with concerning
the origin of the particular instrument to the accompaniment of which he sang
and of which he was not only the maker but, according to the view of many, the
inventor too.
In some accounts it is said that this
instrument or harp [Latin nablium], called by our people kantele, rarely
harppu, was made by Väinämöinen from the bones of a pike, elsewhere even of a
duck; what might have been its structure
or form, however, we are less willing to struggle to determine since it has not
been very carefully described by a singer and since the materials from which it
was made would frighten us away from so arduous an undertaking! Another type of harp ... also called kantele
and perhaps not unlike the harp still used by our people, he made belly‑shaped
from a very tough kind of birch, fitting to it pegs made of very smooth oak
twigs and strings from horsehairs, or, according to others, from the hairs of a
virgin sprung of the family of the divinity Hiisi, 'Demon'... (Lönnrot 1969:284‑85).
These passages show that Lönnrot was
thoroughly familiar with the kantele as depicted in the folk runes. It is not as widely known that he also became
acquainted with the kantele as a musical instrument. It is traditional practice, up to the present
day, that Finns hang their musical instruments on the walls of their
homes. So it is significant that
Lönnrot, on his first rune collecting journey to Karelia in 1828, made the observation in his memoirs: "Kanteles on the walls of every
home" (Haavio 1970:85). Lönnrot
played the kantele and was involved in developing its form to facilitate the
playing of western music (see Grot 1847, 1983:106; Anttila 1931:205; Laitinen
1982c:45).
The significance of the kantele to
Lönnrot may be seen in the fact that he named his earliest published rune
collection, "[Kantele or Old and Newer Poems and Songs of the Finnish
People]" (see Kaukonen 1979:33‑7).
In 1840, Lönnrot published a collection of lyrical runes which he
entitled "Kanteletar". In the
preface he explains:
[In Karelia, Savo and Ostrobothnia, where
especially in Karelia the old kanteles are still kept and kantele playing is
loved, they sing these songs occasionally with the help of the kantele's sound,
in other words, the singer sings and plays simultaneously. The kantele previously had its own Muse [haltianeitsensa],
which was called Kanteletar, or Kantele-hettar...] (Lönnrot
1840:LXXXII‑LXXXIII; Kaukonen 1984:CVIII‑CIIX).
According to Väinö Kaukonen
(ibid:21) Lönnrot invented the term Kanteletar as a counterpart to the folk
term Kalevatar. Martti Haavio has
said on the same subject that a Kanteletar Muse is not known in Finnish
mythology. It was created by Lönnrot as
a Finnish counterpart to the Greek Muse of epic poetry who was the mother of
Orpheus and who would sing lyrical runes to the lyre (1970:121).
In the original preface of Lönnrot's
most famous work, the Kalevala, he writes that among the various titles
he was considering for the work was "Väinämöinen's Kantele" (Lönnrot
1963:364). Both the Old and the New Kalevala
include the kantele prominently.
The Kalevala includes the stories of
Väinämöinen creating the first kantele from the jaw-bone of a great fish and
enchanting all the world's creatures with his playing. Alas, in the battle over the Sampo, the mythical
kantele is lost in the sea and Väinämöinen is forced to make a new kantele out
of wood. In the final section of the
Kalevala, immediately before Väinämöinen leaves in a copper boat to go to the
area between the earth and the sky, he "leaves the [wooden] kantele
behind, the fine instrument for Finland, the eternal source of joyous music for
the people, the great songs for his children" (Lönnrot 1963:337). In the Kalevala, Lönnrot raises the
kantele to the height of its symbolic significance, as the object most
immediately
connected with Väinämöinen and his parting gift to the Finnish people.
In creating his epic, Lönnrot used
the folk runes as raw material. He broke
the variants into their component parts, made changes and modifications, and
then combined variants when he felt it was appropriate. It would have been a simple task to have
combined the creations of the fish-bone kantele and the birch‑wood
kantele into a single story, but Lönnrot included both these two distinct types
of kanteles in his epic.
The Finnish writer J. L. Runeberg
has addressed the symbolic significance
of Lönnrot's two kanteles. He believed
that the first kantele, the mythical kantele which Väinämöinen loses in the
sea, represented the loss of a past great age.
The second kantele, which Väinämöinen fashions from wood, represents an
attempt to recapture that age, though it is never fully successful. Runeberg felt that the second kantele
symbolically pictures how the spirit needs to draw from the diversity of forms
in nature in order to discover its true expression. Thus, the second kantele is made up of parts
found in nature (Haavio 1970:111‑112).
Perhaps a simpler explanation of why
Lönnrot included the creation of both kinds of kanteles in his epic lies in his
understanding of the folk runes themselves.
Lönnrot was keenly aware of the symbolic significance of the kantele as
well as its existence as an object in reality, and that the folk runes
contained references to both kinds of kanteles. He therefore included the creation of a
mythical kantele in one section of the Kalevala and the representation of
actual kanteles in another. This
reflects well the Finnish concept of the kantele as being both symbol and
musical instrument.
Note:
[1] The use of the kantele to accompany
rune singing was also mentioned by Jacob Tengström in a talk entitled "Om
de fordna Finnars Sällikaps-Nöjen och Tidsfördrif" [Ancient Finnish Group
Entertainments and Pastimes] presented at the Royal Academy of Literature,
History and Antiquities in Åbo (
Please read the official
disclaimer.
URL=http://www.people.iup.edu/rahkonen/kantele/diss/Sym.htm
Page
created and maintained by Carl Rahkonen. ©
1989 Last modified 10/24/05
Comments
and/or suggestions may be e-mailed to: rahkonen@iup.edu