Each country attached to its dignity should have epos of its own. Epos includes history, literature, heroic ancestors, and traditions – in a word, everything that leaves a mark in history. India has Mahabharata and Ramayana, Kyrgyzstan – Manas, Germans can boast of the Song of Nibelungs, while France is proud of the Song of Roland. Finally, we come to the best known epos – Kalevala.
Three years later than Pushkin,
outstanding Lonnrot was born.
Sitting on the skirts of the forest,
He would note down what people were singing.
The author of these lines Sergey Pogorely was wrong. Lonnrot did not sit on the skirts of the forest, but traveled along Karelia and Lapland looking for rune singers and recording thousand-year-old myths. Kalevala is the youngest European epos as to time of recording, as well as the most archaic and noncombatant one. Those who have brains do not need force – Finns refute Russian proverb. It is true not only for their epos.
