Eino Friberg 1988
Eino Friberg’s Kalevala is illustrated by Björn Landström.
In 1988 Eino Friberg’s complete translation of The Kalevala Epic of the Finnish People from Finnish to English was published. Friberg was born in Finland but lived in the United States. This translation was published by Otava and carried out with funding from the Parliament. It differs from previous translations as it was an edition implemented in Finland. It was a product of Finnish book culture. Other complete translations had been done and published in New York or London. The book includes a foreword by Friberg and a chapter on the structure of the poems written by Friberg and Scott Davis. Furthermore, Friberg’s book contains a long introduction by Georg C. Schoolfield, a professor of German and Nordic languages at Yale, in which he presents a comprehensive overview of the history of the translations of the Kalevala. Schoolfield also discusses the importance of the national epic for the Finnish people and its role as a cornerstone of the national culture in Finland.
The book was the fourth complete translation of the Kalevala from Finnish and it was in many ways compared to the previous translations by Crawford, Kirby and Magoun. Compared to Magoun’s prose translation, Friberg’s translation presents itself as a translation in poetic meter. In his introduction, Schoolfield finds the translation by Friberg to be of high linguistic quality compared to Crawford’s (1888) and Kirby’s (1907) translations. In the introduction these are described as monotonously even translations in trochaic tetrameter. However, Friberg’s translation was based on the notion that the English language has the capability to be written in the form of poetic meter in the same way as the Finnish language. Alongside the Finnish Kalevala meter, the hope was that the loosely translated text by Friberg would work particularly well, because of his flawless use of American poetic language. Schoolfield appraises that Friberg has managed to “capture both the homey and funny and always lovely nature of this great work of poetry” and the book was not “a boring read”.
In his introduction, Georg W. Schoolfield not only underlines its linguistic merits, but also describes the actual aims of the translation. He emphasises the need to also translate the mindscape of the Kalevala, the feeling it evokes and its special characteristics as for example humour and cheerfulness. The Kalevala is not a tragic collection of poems, even though it contains occasional tragedies. It describes the world as a good and bright place. The sun and the moon are being rescued from captivity.
Cecilia Af Forselles: ”Englanninkieliset käännökset. Kalevalan muuttuvat ylikansalliset tehtävät” – Kalevala maailmalla. Helsinki: SKS. 2012.