A translation of the Kalevala with a foreword by the Queen of Denmark

The first edition of the Danish translation of the Kalevala by Hilkka and Bent Søndergaard was published in 1994 and it was illustrated by Heli Hyytiä. In their foreword, the translators write that they wanted to present the Kalevala to the Danish people explicitly as literature: As a written product which is supposed to tell us a story. However, at the same time they had to solve problems, in the same way as other translators, concerning the archaic language of the Kalevala and its world, the parallelism that is an essential part of the poems, their rhythm and alliterations. After a decade’s work the Søndergaards were contemplating that a translation is always, more or less, an impoverished version of the original. If you want to learn to know “the real thing”, you should read the book in its original language. The Kalevala in Finnish, the stories by H. C. Andersen in Danish.

The translation by the Søndergaards received such positive response that it was awarded the Kjeld Elfelt award by the Dansk Oversætterforbund (The Danish Association of Certified Translators and Interpreters) shortly after it had been published, in 1995.

The second edition in honour of the centenary of Finland’s independence

The first edition of the Danish version of the Kalevala that was published in 1994 was sold out and the publication of the second edition was scheduled for an important occasion: The centenary of Finland’s independence, on December 6, 2017.

In order to make the version readable, Hilkka and Bent Søndergaard had left out the 23rd poem, which is part of the wedding poems, from their translation. However, this poem was also translated for the second edition. It was translated by Erik Skyum-Nielsen, who is not only a translator but also an expert on literature history.

The edition from 2017 is a veritable celebratory book: it has been wonderfully illustrated with Kalevala art by Akseli Gallen-Kallela and the preface was written by Margrethe II, the Queen of Denmark. She reminisces on how she first heard about the Kalevala when she was on a state visit to Finland in 1958 with her parents King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid. Finnish girl scouts gave them a copy of the Kalevala both in Finnish and in Swedish and on her way back home to Denmark the princess, who was 18 years old, started to read the epic. She was fascinated by the rolling rhythm and the repetitions in the poems, as well as by the unusual Finnish names, Ilmarinen, Kullervo and Väinämöinen. They made Margrethe think of even more unfamiliar ancient times than the Scandinavian Eddas, to which she could at least to some extent relate. It felt as the verses of the poems held the lifeblood of Finland.

The grand celebratory book was given even more value with the indexes of names and words and three extensive added articles: Ulla Piela, the Executive Director of the Kalevala Society (in 2002–2019), has written about the mythical world of the Kalevala and Jens Fleischer has written about Akseli Gallen-Kallela and his paintings of the Kalevala and about the watercolours in the Suur-Kalevala or The Great Kalevala, Gallen-Kallela’s unfinished major work.