Finnish Legends for English Children

THE following stories cover almost all of the songs of the Kalevala, the epic of the Finnish people. They will lead the English child into a new region in the fairy world, yet one where he will recognise many an old friend in a new form. The very fact that they do open up a new portion of the world of the marvellous, will, it is hoped, render them all the more acceptable, and perhaps, when the child who reads them grows up to manhood, will inspire an actual interest in the race that has composed them.
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As this book is only intended for children, it would be out of place to discuss the age, etc., of the Kalevala. Only it would seem proper to state, that while the incantations and some other portions of the text are certainly very old, some of them no doubt dating from a period prior to the separation of the Finns and Hungarians, yet, as Professor Yrjö Koskinen remarks, The Kalevala in its present state is without doubt the work of the Karelian tribe of Finns, and probably dates from after their arrival in Northern and North-Western Russia. This will of itself largely justify the making Kalevala synonymous with the present Finland , Pohjola with the present Lapland, Karjala with the present Karjala (Anglice, Karelia ) in South-Eastern Finland, etc. But even if this were not so, yet the advantage of such localisation in a book for children is of itself obvious.
If this little volume may in any degree awake some interest in the Finnish people its author will be amply satisfied, and its end will have been attained.
R. EIVIND.
April 1893.
FAR up in the ice-bound north, where the sun is almost invisible in winter, and where the summer nights are bright as day, there lies a land which we call Finland; but the people who live there call it Suomenmaa now, and long, long ago they used to call it Kalevala (which means the land of heroes ). And north of Finland lies Lapland, which the Finns now call Lappi , but in the olden days they called it Pohjola (that is, Northland ). There the night lasts for whole weeks and months about Christmas, and in the summer again they have no night at all for many weeks. For more than half the year their country is wrapped in snow and frost, and yet they are both of them a kind-hearted people, and among the most honest and truthful in the world.