Paper short abstract:

The talk discusses Kristjan Jaak Peterson's (1801-1821) reorganised translation of Kristfrid Ganander's encyclopedia Mythologia Fennica (1789) into German under the title Finnische Mythologie (1821), observing the changes and additions made to the original material and the reasons for making these.

Paper long abstract:

KristjanJaakPeterson (1801-1822) was one of the first poets writing in Estonian. Yet his most important work to appear in his lifetime was a translation of the Swedish pastor Kristfrid Ganander's encyclopaedia "Mythologia Fennica" (1789) into German under the title "Finnische Mythologie" (1821) that was significantly rearranged in comparison with the original. Both works have played an important role as predecessors of the Finnish and Estonian national epics, respectively.

The presentation observes the choices made by Peterson in reorganising "Mythologia Fennica" into a work of translation. Peterson restructured Ganander's encyclopaedic material into a systematic survey, making a hierachical selection of the material and bringing together similar keywords. An additional value is given to the survey by parallel comparisons with Estonian folklore material gathered from the literature available at the time.

By transposing the local reports from Finland into a more general context of the treatise, Peterson diminished their localisation. In constructing an overarching survey, Peterson to a degree attempted to eliminate the contradictions between the popular versions appearing in the texts presented by Ganander, and to create a unified system. He attempted to locate a part of the mundane mythological material on a "higher levelˮ (e.g., he translated 'a maiden' as 'a nymf', 'a spook' as 'a god', etc.)

In rearranging the material, one of Peterson's aim was a consistent comparison with classical antiquity and the idea that the religious world of smaller peoples such as Estonians and Finns was as developed and complicated as that of the antiquity.