Northern pastoral

In order to maintain my literary pretensions, I resolved a couple of years ago to read the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, cobbled together in the early 19th century (I think) by a fellow named Lonnrot (sp?).  At the time, the only translation I could handily find that was affordable was  a contemporary one, written in contemporary English.  I had seen excerpts online from a late 19th century translation by one John Martin Crawford that I liked a lot better,  but at the time there were no affordable editions of that one available, at least that I could find. 

Well, I read the first 70-100 pages and then let the project lapse.  But these days I'm reading the stream of mysteries coming out of Scandanavia and Iceland and I can't seem to get enough of them.  And even though I didn't like the translation of the Kalevala that I had much, the evocations of nature from what I have read there often haunt my consciousness in the morning, especially if the weather is cool or rainy. 

A friend of mine sent me a review by Christopher Hitchens of Stieg Larsson's trilogy.  Hitchens remarks in passing that he has heard of bookstores that now devote whole sections to Scandanavian mysteries.  I wish there was a book store in Austin that had one. 

Northrup Frye asserts somewhere that the Western is a fictional analog to the poetic genre known as "pastoral."  I can see that.  I am led to wonder also if part of the appeal of the Scandanavian mysteries is the quiet but constant presence of the northern landscape in the background.  The winters, I imagine, make it hard to ignore. 

In any case, I have found a cheap edition of John Martin Crawford's translation of the Kalevala.  Maybe now I can finish it and really impress people at parties. 

R.

P.S. The Kalevala was an inspiration for Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha," according to people who know this sort of thing.
 
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