Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the ideologically charged loop between the written word and orality by analyzing the creation and reception of Karelian oral poems that were excluded from the category of authentic folklore because of their alleged influences from literature, particularly the epic Kalevala.

Paper long abstract:

The creation and reception of literary works based on oral poetry by writers such as Elias Lönnrot is a well researched topic, but the aftermath of the Kalevala in the very communities that produced its sources is understudied. When folklore colletors returned the epic text to its source of origin by acquainting the runosingers with a copy of the printed epic or by reading aloud Lönnrot’s text, a complex process of adaptation started. Influences from the Kalevala changed the local oral poetics and practices of runosinging and introduced novel narratives and plots. Folklore collectors judged the singers who adapted these influences inauthentic.

The interplay between oral and literate cultures is firmly linked to the ideological grounds of the uses and evaluations of oral literatures and folk cultures. The paper 1) takes a grass roots look at the birth and reception of literature-influenced, hybrid oral poems in the runosinging communities, and, 2) assesses the explicit and implicit arguments that led to the stigmatization of an innovative form of oral poetry in the sphere of the elite and the exclusion of a notable corpus of Kalevala-meter poetry from the canonized category of cultural heritage. In the local culture, literacy and a creative strategy of literary production were valued as a powerful cultural resource and a meaningful medium of exchange with the elite, but the elite discourses on authenticity dismissed all expressions of cultural hybridity.