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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ค. 2012
- The Kalevala is Finland's epic poem. Rooted deep in the Suomi culture, everyone in the country knows the stories, the characters, the poetry...
But the English translations have never been an effective way to communicate the complexities and power of the epic poem. The English vocabulary can't seem to handle the poetics of the Finnish language, nor the forced 8-syllable structure of the Kalevala runes.
... Until now.
Rather than trying to modernise The Kalevala, in this performance Scott Sandwich brings to light the awkwardness and impossibilities of translating The Kalevala into English, exploring the difference in language and culture, in a fast-paced and energetic live performance. This is a unique take on academic poetry and performance, incorporating humour and a virtuosic handle on performance poetry.
This performance was created by Scott Sandwich (aka Tom Hogan) in January 2012, during his residency at Arteles, Finland. Scott Sandwich is an Australian performance poet who performs rants, readings and awkward hip hop, telling stories about dates, death and the apocalypse. scottsandwich.com - scottsandwich@gmail.com
Created by Tom Hogan in January 2012, during his residency at Arteles, Finland. Featured at the New Performance Festival, Turku (www.newperformance.fi/en/index...) - as part of MUU Gallery's "Performance Voyage II" (muu.fi/site/?p=5951&lang=en)
Visit scottsandwich.com
Visit tomhogan.com.au
Visit arteles.org - บันเทิง
Kalevala should be a tv series.
oldinion so should the Ring if the Nibelung and the Silmarilian.
I saw one back in the 80s. It was all in Finnish, of course.
That would be some trippy extended visual Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Maybe an AAA video game would do
@@huntersmith8586 I'd love to see a filmed version of the Ring with all the special effects that can't be done on stage, like flying horses, proper giants, dragon and everything.
You forgot to mention that when Lemminkäinen's mother stitched him back together, she used a bee to reanimate his lifeless corpse.
Sooo... My video of The Kalevala has just hit over 20000 views.
Weird.
I'm also really really happy about it.
this is the best. the actual best.
Now do the Mahabharata. Go.
Catherine Terracini That would be wonderful to watch
+Tom Hogan (Scott Sandwich) That's because it's brilliant, old man. This rocks!!! You make the meter work, it's excellent!
how da bleep ya from land down...
ah!! ... must b cultural insight by disobediance or fruit regulations.
So before you can really understand a lot of the stuff behind Kalevala you need to know what all the singing is about; as was the case in a lot of cultures back then, knowledge was passed on through song. Therefore the eldest men in towns and villages knew the largest parts of the song, and therefore they knew more of the world. From these wise men there grew the idea of magic; with the knowledge that the wise men (and women too I guess) could impart to the ones asking, "miracles" could be made.
There's two good ways of showing this from the Kalevala, the encounter between Joukahainen and Väinämöinen and the encounter between Väinämöinen and Antero Vipunen. With Joukahainen and Väinämöinen, Joukahainen hears of a wise man who is great at singing (AKA he has memorized many, many verses). Joukahainen goes to meet Väinämöinen and sings what he knows to him, but Väinämöinen says that what he sings is what babies would know already, then wrecks his shit by singing for ages and ages about all the knowledge he has, which is a large amount since Väinämöinen is the oldest human alive.
With Väinämöinen and Vipunen, Väinämöinen needs information on how to build a boat, and Vipunen the giant has this information. Therefore he meets Vipunen, and Vipunen sings him the verses he needs, therefore "gives him the magic". Väinämöinen now knows the parts that he needs to know about building the boat, and finishes his quest.
Kalevala seems very gnostic, and I suppose your first paragraph explains why gnosticism was such a popular idea. I'm Finnish but I didn't really think about that aspect of the Kalevala before reading The Silmarillion by Tolkien, where such ideas pervade the story everywhere (and which otherwise heavily and directly borrowed from Kalevala, for example of the song-battle between Väinämöinen and Joukahainen). I know this comment is 4 years old, but I'm interested if you think there's anything to this idea. Maybe I just see gnosticism everywhere.
Love your comment. Thanks for singing.
Both men and women sang these songs.
My English teacher showed this to our class (in Finland) and I'm only back here because I had to come and drop this video a like because this guy just compared Hotel California to Kalevala and to me that is incredible but also kinda insane because that song is a legend and when I heard the line about it dropped my phone in class and everyone thought I was weird and crazy. Anyway yeah great video and thank you for making it!!
You = Hotel California.
this guy deserves a beat producer to make some dope instrumentals tracks for his unique story telling interpretation of our Finnish epic
make it traditional: some sami-type hand drums, a mouth harp, spoons, some joiking. awesome.
@@angelinejohnson9511 nice idea💡... anyways, our Finnish epic Kalevala is maybe more associated with Carelian instruments, like Vainamoisen's string instrument Kantele, with it's typical sound, accompanying the Kalevalan story telling style of allitteration, parallelism, rhythms etc. The traditional sami joiking would do of course as well as the artistic form is always free. ( the Sami people's northern areas in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia are a regional independent part of itself)
I am absolutely dying, here. 100%. Excellent.
But I'm trying to help you LIVE.
@@TomHogan and live much richer lives, indeed.
1:36
I'd like to add that väinämöinen bled the equivalent of 7 boats.
The original English translation contains 8 syllables to every line, in rhyming couplets, for 1000 pages. I pretty much stick to that structure in this translation, but as it's being performed, I naturally vary and colour certain phrases. :) (However, the installation text version I composed is much more strict in form.)
The kid in the end represents Jesus. In the end of the poem Väinämöinen leaves and says that he will come back when he is needed and this newly born kid becomes the King of Carelia. It reflects the situation when christianity came to Finland and our ancient gods were set aside and partly forgotten.
Jewsus
HBO, just do it.
So its all in the Game of Thrones! This guy has some serious teaching skills.
Loved this! It's extra funny when you've read the Kalevala and know this is pretty much what happened. (I never understood why people believe old epics to be boring.Just look at all this wonderful weirdness!) Using the same metre as the poem is a really nice touch, BTW.
That was the hardest part! Thanks for noticing. :)
hahaha.. best compressed form of kalevala i have ever seen/heared well performed..
best regards from finland
I really love this. This was my first introduction to the Kalevala before I picked up the actual text, you perform it so well!
This is brilliant. Love this rendition
That was awesome. Love it.
I've been meaning to read Kalevala. Thanks for this.
That was awesome!!! :D
I like this version! With love from Finland :-)
I love your translation...brilliant - Thank you
Also Väinämöinen was also already an old man when he was born because he was in there for so long
I relate.
Thanks.a.lot.!
Amazing !!!
That was very, very entertaining!
Completely and totally amazing.
Truly brilliant! I've always wondered about that story but could never quite make it out...
I wondered myself all the time if the background is real or just a photo.. Thanks for solving it. :D
Awesome!
awesome work thankyou :)
A wonderful satire by some-one who really knows and loves the epic!
Love it!
I thought it was a photo in the background. But the ancient epic bardic awesomeness of the Kalevala turned it into a real forest, so you walked into it. That's what happened, right?
+HooDatDonDar I do it everywhere I go. My living room is just a green screen, and every morning I just recite the epic narrative of my workplace.
I have tried reading this and just couldn't get into it-thanks for the translation-it was much funnier than I thought-loved it
Amazinginen
Actually, with Kullervo it was both wolves and bears that he made into cattle, but otherwise a very good video, I just had to be a bit nitpicky :D Plus it sounds cooler to control both wolves and bears.
+KaregoAt Agreed, obviously. But the bear gets a highlight at the end, so I was holding poetic restraint :) Cheers!
Man, I really need to go read that damn book already.
Yes, yes: the Mahabharata! Pleeeze...
This was the best.
Awesome! Some shrooms back then
loved it, kept it 95%-correct all the way :) and in under 10 minutes... well done
i want to mention about the ending:
after the 2-week old baby spoke to people against väinämöinen, a man (of a cross) stated the baby is now king of karelia etc.,
väinämöinen got upset, he walked to sea shore, and sung/ manifested a copper boat (umpipursi), sat on back and sung as he drifted off:
"let the time go by, and i'll be needed again, to bring a new sampo, new song, new moon, new day, when there's no moon, sun, no free fun..
from there he sailed to upper (hmm..) earth wombs, to lower skies, there he stayed, and for the finnish people he left the kantele and powerful songs"
It's so lovely! And weird. And lovely!
Miracles are made
This should have 1,000,000 views. Bullshit that the world hasn't seen this.
I've closed the gap on this comment. Getting closer!
Didnt know this tale.. but i sure like Kalevala the band.🇨🇦👍
This is fucking brilliant.
I`m a Finn, but I have never been that familiar with Kalevala, so this was really amusing to watch/hear.
I actually need to do a work on The Kalevala at school and I did'nt know what it was at all but some kind of poem or epic thing and... omg, if what you say is totally correct then, 1st, wow you're so good man ! what a crazy memory and all !, and 2nd, I'm in the biggest sh*t ever...
Makes sense, at least for us Finns. The hairbrushing puzzled me too, but I found out that Elias Lönnrot, at that time, had misused some hair products even earlier.
I was doing research on the kalevala and was dreading reading the whole thing this has saved me so much time
Really like it :), Maybe the next Hollywood Block-buster with some wre-written scenes. T: Fin :) Son of Wäinämöinen
Wish this would've been around years ago. Way better than reading the fucking thing.
This is great! Can you also do the Bible? Would be awesome.
We saw this video on our English lesson
Yeah that happened
Bro you just spoiled the whole Epic :DDD
I'm happy beause we have a wonderful translation in Hungarian - much easier to do between related languages :D
You win. Does the translation work for you?
@@TomHogan We read this at university, and it's really good. Alliterations and everything :D I really wish this got a good adaptation, not some Hollywoodized mess.
The English translation of The Kalevala used the odd meter of trochaic tetrameter. Longfellow was inspired by it to write "Hiawatha", still the best known example of the meter. It's singsongy effect seems to give an Epic feeling to what is written in it. You come close to it in your fun re-telling of the tale. Could you re-record it, sticking exactly to the meter? It would be truly awesome.
I like to play with it, but not stick to it, you know? I turn it into mostly 8 syllables, but toy with bending it a lot more than the original did. It is still in the heart of it though! I just bend the rules to suit the Aussie instincts :)
I feel culturally enriched after listening to this.
ahhh NOW i get it. excellent. much sisu tom hogan and sandwich
bombadil is actually a good match indeed.
I like the jacket.
Just came back to TH-cam to let you know I finally got rid of it this week.
Tried reading it several times, still thoroughly confused ;)
If it helps, I still don't get it :)
It's like our ancestors had the description of a music video written down.
I believe ancient civilisations invented MTV around the year 11000BC, so this all checks out.
Ha ha ha ha!!! I love it!!! LOL
jop, a true story.
Fucking brilliant!
Nice performance! Are there that many iambs in the original?
i'm so confused right now
know places where one can do seerious research on the ancient gods, and is there a community in finland?
Gilgamesh is a doozy! I've got a few projects at the moment, one is Gilgamesh heavy - not sure if it'll be up on TH-cam though, and it won't be in the same style I don't think. I don't want to be a one trick pony. Not yet, anyway.
- SS
Tom Hogan So have you done it yet? I really hope so. 🙏🏻
That was awesome. Do Tolkiens works next!
Wow I use the same type of synopsis to explain Othello. Do you think you can do Gilgamesh next?
in Scott´s honour, I laid my Akubra over my Kalevala, here in Finland. Pretty awesome!
wow that was a trip =)
I'm just here to learn the story of my people.
I'm from Minnesota, United States. my heritage is finnish, so my last name is. I understand it as an uncommon last name in finland as well. Also hoping most Finn's aren't as racist as your handle.
Not sure what the racist handle is! But hooray for Tuura's everywhere!
Who is this beautiful man-beast??
Can you please put the text here or subtitle the video cause australian is not my mother language and its too speedy for me.Thanks
You should be able to activate the captions in TH-cam - there should be options to have captions in Finnish & English.
Otherwise, it's also at the video captioning page at DotsHub here: dotsub.com/view/ba8059a7-0b68-4d0b-99ad-270f2aa08995
I love this! :D xD
Lacuna parts in Gilgamesh would be interesting to listen.
He .... ate ...
Enkidu ....
... went there ...
watching this in half speed makes it sound more like an incredible drunken slur.
I will respect you if you do it.
Where's his pipa and tumput? That is, hat and gloves :)
To be honest, it's far from everyone who has read it or remembers what happens in it. :) It's a bit of a slog, but the language really is quite... epic.
100% true story
(HBO plz do a show)
It's been three years and they haven't approached me yet. Maybe I gotta pitch it to Netflix.
@eightsixzero as I cannot use a direct reply to "old" YT comments.
The last canto with the virgin birth from a berry is indeed a christian allegory that has nothing to do with the original myths. Lönnrot just made it up to tie the epic to the conquest of christianity.
The "baby Jesus" does NOT kill Väinämöinen. Väinämöinen just gets pissed of these new foolish ways and the brat's insolence and sails away to the West (akin to Avalon or similar myths), promising that when the Finnish people TRULY need him again, he will return. Akin to Arthur. All he leaves behind are his kantele and his songs, so we will always remember the Old Ways despite christian invasion.
Joona Vainio Can you prove this? Do you have a link to the original version that you say differs from this one? Thanks.
Louhi, Louhi, oh mama! We want a Sampo! Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya!
I want this to be translated in Finnish.
Can someone sum this up?
lol! i'm not sure is it possible to sum it up better., it's like 300 pages of poems.. the big stories are effectively shortened in this video.. :D but hey i'll try
if you want to read individual stories, you can start with these:
creation of world, story of "miss" air (ilmatar) and water's mother (veen emonen), birth of väinämöinen, his journey from water to land.., lands were empty and pellervoinen is asked to come seed trees, great oak grows from ashes, it grow too enormous and a guy in copper outfit comes and cut it down..
then:
meeting/collision of väinämöinen and joukahainen.. väinämöinen ends up in tuonela (underworld maybe).. ilmarinen forges a sampo (sampo create wealth/ salt /flour /?) for the hostess of pohjola, because väinämöinen promised her for helping him out earlier and ilmarinen is granted to marry one of pohjola's hostess' daughters..
from there on, there's tales about all 3, väinämöinen, lemminkäinen and ilmarinen going to pohjola to get a wife, 2 of them have to do near-impossible jobs for the hostess of pohjola, in which lemminkäinen fails, but ilmarinen successes. väinämöinen can't get a wife from pohjola because he's too old to compete with younger ilmarinen.. lemminkäinen got shot during his last task because of his prior arrogance/pride of not even insulting a "wet hat" shepherd when he verbally attacked every other one in illmarinen's wedding.. anyway ilmarinen got a bride, lemminkäinen tried to mess up the wedding, and ends up in years of war with pohjola..
time go and somehow ilmarinen lost the bride(?), he forged a substitute-wifey from gold and silver and finds her too cold to sleep next to and then goes to pohjola to get the hostess' second daughter, and he ends up stealing the maiden, and on the way home the daughter insults ilmarinen, after which he turned the woman to a seagull.. all this leads to ilmarinen going to väinämöinen telling how they're living fat in pohjola with the sampo... they decide to get their 3-headed party of väinämöinen, lemminkäinen and ilmarinen and go to pohjola and rob the sampo to bring it to kalevala.. big magics and battling on land sea and air ends up breaking the sampo while on sea, and luckily waves brought some crumbs to shores of kalevala to enrich the lands.
hostess is angry afterwards and sends multiple deceases across world as well as captures the sun, the moon and all the fires from houses of kalevala.. then a fire spark (or a corpuscle) falls from sky to water, gets swallowed by a fish (the fish get eaten by another, and it gets eaten by another), väinämöinen and ilmarinen goes to catch the sparkle from the fish with a huge fishnet and eventually do it.. as the fishes get opened, the sparkle jumps out and burns lands out of control, until väinämäinen catches the fire corpuscle and brings fire back to houses.. they do healing from fire wounds, and after that ilmarinen starts forging a sun and a moon, which did not work as they thought it would.. väinämöinen goes head-chopping to pohjola to get the sun and moon back, but sun and moon are locked inside rock /mountain, behind many locks... väinämöinen goes back to kalevala and asks ilmarinen for metal weaponry with which to go force open the mountain ../ other story says that ilmarinen just starts forging shackles for hostess' neck., either way, after hostess hears this clanging in ilmarinen's smithery, she fears for her own life and lets the sun and the moon out to their original places..
so most of kalevala are going around these 4 characters, väinämöinen, lemminkäinen, ilmarinen and the hostess of pohjola, louhi. besides their story kalevala got story of kullervo, in my opinion separate from other kalevala, as well as story of marjatta, aka birth of jesus.. the story of joukahainen is kinda bit mystery to me but still very interesting.. and feels essential...
now, if you did read my little sum-up, you can try to figure the story on deeper level.. if these 4 characters were metaphors, like pekka ervast suggested.. väinämöinen as will power, ilmarinen as thought power, lemminkäinen as feeling power, pohjola as the subconscious mind (or night conscious), and kalevala as conscious mind (day conscious).., you'll get a whole new story..
dont talk to helpful girls... thats what i got outta this.
this is great btw
Prove it.
@@TomHogan prove what?
@@89burni haaa sorry I totally misread what you wrote! I didn't mean to come across like an ass :)
@@TomHogan hahah no worries hehe
not only Finland
it is karelian-finish culture
most of runs was collect in russian karelia
I had to watch this at 0.75x speed...
I'm still tired from performing it the first time :)
well
Ahhh... Finland.
he used words, that other yankees would understand. few people outside finland know what a kantele is. Harp is the next best thing ..
To be fair, it's a pretty nice hairbrush.
Because they're tough, independent and mean, cutting down men and horses alike, refusing to submit to anyone
i am me
Better story than the Original Kalevala! But I have to stay with the Original. No I dont! So go on have fun. Universal stories for all to share....
And Märkähattu is like ''Fuck Yeaah!''
I also am like that sometimes.
...I think something was wrong with the author who wrote this poem 0_o
Tell me about it.
@@TomHogan I'm honored by your reply
I can't understand it.
no one can...
Its all greek and Roman, with nordid twist...
Well it's all greek to me.
Do the same for singing the poem kalevala model. Thank you. ị m finnish.