Release date is 2025-06-17

Jari Koivisto

"Runokirja : Valikoima tekijän laulurunoudesta" by Eino Leino is a collection of lyric poetry written in the early 20th century. It gathers nationalist hymns, mythic ballads, cityscapes, and intimate love lyrics into a musical, image-rich vision of Finnish identity. Themes range from freedom and civic courage to the seasons, nature, time, and death, often drawing on the Kalevala and folk legend alongside contemporary life. The opening of the collection moves from a springtime cantata that calls Finland to awaken and sow freedom, to a legend of divine favor, and a youthful dream of a just nation; it then sketches portraits (Ibsen, Aleksis Kivi), and vivid Helsinki scenes in fog and in frost. Political poems champion free speech and wrestle with turmoil and hope, while northern pieces evoke Lapland’s brief summer and the blaze of aurora borealis. A series of ballads and mythic retellings—of Marjatta, Ilmarinen, Väinämöinen, Imatra, and sea-beast Iku-Turso—stand beside darker songs of Tuonela, vengeance, and fate. These grand notes are balanced by tender nature and love lyrics, rustic and road-side voices, and meditative pieces, concluding in the excerpt with the forest-maiden Tellervo beckoning the wanderer into the woods. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Helsinki: Otava, 1906