Walter Arnold

Walter Arnold was born and raised in Switzerland, in the village of Airö in the Leventina region, near the Gotthard Pass, historically the most important route through the Alps. The small Alpine language spoken there is one of his mother tongues. However, he left the world at an early age and has lived in many parts of the world. Walter first visited his current home country, Finland, in 1968. He has learned the language through practical experience – in addition to a year-long language course. Five decades is a long time.

Walter Arnold was first introduced to Kalevala while studying in the USA with Joseph Cambpell. His interest deepened when he later heard musician Heikki Laitinen recite Kalevala poems in a performance by dancer Reijo Kela. However, Walter cites his friend Reino Lehtinen, the grandson of artist Alpo Sailo, as the main source of his interest in Kalevala. Sailo was one of the founding members of the Kalevala Society.

At one point, Walter Arnold was considering whether to write a doctoral thesis on philosophy and psychology or to translate Kalevala. He chose Kalevala, a book with enough text and one that Walter believed would be of interest to the people of the valley.

Kalevala on the phone

Translating the Kalevala was a huge project that took Walter Arnold 13-14 years. He estimates the number of hours worked at around 20 000. Although the Swiss have no epic of their own and the epic world of the Kalevala is different from life in Alpine villages, it is also very familiar. “The linguistic landscape largely matches,” Walter sums up. For example, the different snow and sledge parts are important, the vocabulary of agriculture, farming and nature is shared. There are even bogs and lingonberries in the Leventina area.

Walter Arnold had originally read the Kalevala in the original language (“Yes, it was a tough job!”) and even when he started translating, he quite deliberately left the Kalevala translations of others unread before finalising his own. His starting point was the poetic style, rhythm and musicality of the Kalevala.

As the translation progressed, Walter made long dictionary calls to the village of Airö. He read the translation out loud to villagers over 90 years old, who were digging up the farming vocabulary of their childhood and youth, the names of plants, words for tools that could at best be found in a museum. The reminiscences of these living linguists were of great value to the translation, but the calls were also rewarding for the reminiscers. One of them thanked Walter for bringing back words his grandparents had forgotten.