BBC Radio 4 „In our time“: The Kalevala

„Melvyn Bragg and guests dis­cuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Fin­land, part of the Russ­ian Empire and until recent­ly part of Swe­den.
The com­pil­er of this epic was a doc­tor, Elias Lön­nrot (1802–1884), who had trav­elled the land to hear tra­di­tion­al poems about myth­i­cal heroes being sung in Finnish, the lan­guage of the peas­antry, and writ­ing them down in his own order to cre­ate this land­mark work. In cre­at­ing The Kale­vala, Lön­nrot helped the Finns realise they were a dis­tinct peo­ple apart from Swe­den and Rus­sia, who deserved their own nation state and who came to demand inde­pen­dence, which they won in 1917.
With Riit­ta Val­i­järvi (Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in Finnish and Minor­i­ty Lan­guages at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don), Thomas Dubois (The Halls-Bas­com Pro­fes­sor of Scan­di­na­vian Folk­lore and Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son), and Daniel Abon­do­lo (For­mer­ly Read­er in Hun­gar­i­an at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don).“ (BBC)

Sie kön­nen die Sendung, die am 28.3.2024 in der Rei­he „In our time“ lief, über die Seite der BBC nach­hören oder als Audio­datei herun­ter­laden.
Auf der Seite gibt es auch eine Lit­er­aturliste zum The­ma.