Albert Lange Fliflet 1967
The sky blue cover of the Norwegian translation in 1967.
Albert Lange Fliflet (1908–2001) was a Norwegian philologist and translator. His family was very interested in languages and when the Finnish geology professor, Aarne Laitakari, visited their home in 1923, the young Albert became inspired to learn Finnish. Later he became a teacher of Finno-Ugric linguistics at the University of Bergen.
Albert Lange Fliflet published a translation of the Kalevala in nynorsk (New Norwegian) in 1967. It was such a good translation that Fliflet the following year received the Bastian Prize by the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators.
Konrad Nielsen (1875–1953) had attempted to translate the Kalevala into Norwegian before Albert Lange Fliflet. Nielsen was a professor of philology at the University of Oslo. Nielsen had finished his translation, but he pointed out that it could not be used as such. Fliflet continued working on this draft after Nielsen’s death, but he found that it would, in fact, not be a question of finishing the translation by Nielsen, but instead doing a new translation.
Nielsen had tried to incorporate the vernacular style of his own home dialect from the coastal part of Helgeland in northern Norway as well as the archaic tone from the poetic work “Nordlands Trompet” by the northern Norwegian priest and poet Peter Dass. Fliflet, on the other hand, used the treasure chest of the folk poetry in the western Telemark region, a region that he knew thoroughly.
Albert Lange Fliflet writes about the parallel work in Finland and Norway when collecting folk poetry as well as about the background of Lönnrot’s work and the more general romanticism in the Kalevala. The Fenno-Scandian heritage binds Karelia and Telemark together.
Bergsland, Knut: “Kalevala norjaksi” – Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 49. Helsinki: WSOY. 1969.