The Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland

1889. The first English translation of Kalevala was published by John Martin Crawford in New York and it stimulated great interest among specialists in the religions of primitive peoples. This collection of 50 cantos was compiled from oral poetry, which for the most part had been recorded among the unlettered folk in the backwoods districts of northeastern Finland and those parts of the Russian Province of Archangel where Karelian (a language closely related to Finnish) was spoken. It has since become known to the world as the Finnish national epic.