The Kanteletar

This is the first appearance in English of The Kanteletar (1840-1), the companion volume to the Finnish national epic poem The Kalevala.

Based on Finnish oral tradition, The Kanteletar (roughly "zither-daughter", a kind of muse) is a selection from a treasury of nearly seven hundred lyrics and ballads that celebrate the everyday life of a rural society at work and play. The ballads range from a beautiful sequence of legends about the Virgin Mary, through the grim tales of Elina, to a hilarious account of a dragon that refuses to devour its victims.

• Author
• Elias Lönnrot, Keith Bosley

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 224

• Publisher
• Oxford University Press, USA

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780192828620

• Genres
• poetry, classics, mythology, folklore

• Release date
• 1992