Finnish literature has through history always been well known in Estonia. Estonians have read Finnish literature both in its original language and as translated versions. Matthias Johann Eisen, Villem Grünthal-Ridala and August Annist translated the Kalevala and they were eminent experts on the Finnish language and folk poetry. The Estonians relationship with the Kalevala is particularly close because the Kalevala inspired the creation of their own national epic Kalevipoeg. August Annist wrote in 1935 that the Kalevala is no only “a masterpiece of our sister nation”, but a classic of the world literature and our “only mutual cultural epic”.
As far as we know, the Kalevala in Finnish came to Estonia in 1839. It was donated to Õpetatud Eesti Selts (ÕES, Virolainen oppineiden seura, in English: the Estonian society of scholars). As early as in 1840, summaries of the poems in the Kalevala and the sixty first verses of the first poem were published in Estonian and German in the first booklet of the society, called the Toimetised series. When Elias Lönnrot made his well-known journey to Estonia in 1844, he also visited the creator of the Kalevipoeg Fr. R. Kreutzwald (1803–1882) in Võru.
Kreutzwald did not know Finnish and he learned to know the Kalevala through the German translation by his friened, the scholar Anton Schiefner. According to Annist, Kreutzwald was, nevertheless, inspired even more by Christfried Ganander’s Mythologia Fennica, which had been presented in German by K. J. Peterson as early as in 1822. From Mythologica Fennica, Kreutzwald adopted the idea of a mutual Finnish-Estonian ancient religion.
Kreutzwald did not compile a collective epic tale based on real folk poems as Lönnrot did, but instead he wrote a romantic heroic story about the fateful misstep of the divine character and the punishment that inevitably followed this. Despite the differences in the literary nature of the Kalevala and the Kalevipoeg, they share a position as a founding pillar of the national literature and an appraiser of the national identity in their respective countries.
(Sirje Olesk: ”Vironkielinen Kalevala: August Annistin elämä ja työ” – Kalevala maailmalla. Helsinki: SKS. 2012.)
