Kalevipoeg as a Core Text: the Island Maiden’s Thread
Kalevipoeg as a Core Text: the Island Maiden’s Thread

Summary/Abstract: The Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg (Kalev’s Son, 1861) was at the latter end of Enlightenment and Romanticism. The epic is a sociocultural monument of the late 19th century Estonian National Awakening – the principal idea developed in the epic is that of a nation and the fight for its freedom. Following the European epic tradition, Kalevipoeg is firmly centred on the story (myth) of a national hero. The genius of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), the author of Kalevipoeg, expresses itself in its ability to combine into an enduring whole the millennium-long tradition of the Estonian folk song, the Finno-Ugric folklore older still, and ancient literature, departing, at that, from the contemporary literary trends of his time. He combined the few legends about Kalevipoeg1 found in the Estonian folklore with international literary subjects and arch-texts giving them a poetic form revealing also his personal tremors, passions and anguish.

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