Songs of ancient wit and wisdom,
Legends they that once were taken
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From the pastures of the Northland,
From the meads of Kalevala.
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In this poem the beauty and color of Finland’s inland seas and the bleakness of surrounding plains are painted in bold strokes and with loving effusiveness. The Finn finds in its lines a reminder of the scenes among which he has been reared and the link which binds him to his past and to his land. As a mosaic of national life pieced together by patriotism the Kalevala occupies a unique position among literary productions of northern countries. Even a note of Asiatic melancholy pervades its verses as if to recall the share of Asia in the formation of Finnish national life.
The lyrics and songs collected in the Kalevala were brought together in the beginning of the nineteenth century at a critical period of Finnish history when national feeling had sunk to its lowest ebb. Swedes and Russians vied with one another in their efforts to denationalize Finland and bring the peninsula within the sphere of their respective influence. No sooner was the Kalevala published, however, than Finnish nationality asserted itself with renewed vigor. Today after the lapse of almost a century since this revival, Finland’s spirit of national independence is diffused more widely than ever among its people. Such was the influence of a literary echo of their land.
Among the peoples of Turkey, nationality and literature become largely expressions of religious feeling. It could not be otherwise in a country in which creed is the only medium of intellectual progress. The oppressed native found refuge from the tyranny of his Turkish masters in his church. His natural yearning for a higher life found solace only within the sanctuaries of his faith. All the education he received was obtained in schools attached to the churches.
But to unravel the hopeless confusion which, at first glance, seems to permeate human groupings in Turkey is, in the main, a problem of geography. The region consists of a mountainous core and a series of marginal lowlands. Its elevated area is a link in the central belt of mountains which extends uninterruptedly from Asia into Europe. This long chain of uplifts is the original seat of an important race of highlanders collectively known as Homo alpinus.[265] As far as is ascertainable to date, the mountaineers of Turkey have all the anatomical characteristics pertaining to this branch of the human family. Their religion and language may differ but the physical type remains unchanged. Basing themselves on this relation, anthropologists have assumed that Asiatic Turkey is the brood-home of a sub-species of Homo alpinus which is gradually acquiring recognition as a primordial Armenoid element.[266] This type exists in its greatest purity today among the Mohammedan dissenters of the Anatolian table-land as well as among the Druzes and Maronites of Syria.