Karelia in the north. Springing from the same background as the more famous Kalevala, the Finnish national epic', the 148 poems in this book bring alive the vanished world of the hunters and fishermen of Karelia and the serfs of Ingria, bound to the land. From ancient myths about the origin of the universe to an eighteenth-century elegy sung to army recruits as they left home, the poems take the readers back to an age when shamanism was still prevalent and show how Christianity replaced the old beliefs. At the same time they are a testimony to the power of the human imagination and to man's need for art.

Hide more