Kanteletar

About

The Kanteletar (1840) is Lönnrot's companion anthology of Finnish lyric folk poetry — songs of love, grief, and nature that were not epic enough for the Kalevala but are in many ways more beautiful: intimate, melancholic, and deeply personal in a way the heroic poems are not. The women's songs in particular — laments, wedding songs, songs of exile and longing — are among the most affecting pieces in the Finnish tradition. The Kanteletar is less well known internationally than the Kalevala but equally important.