Written in the 19th century, the Kalevala is held as the epic of the Finnish people. Its content was based in the traditional epic songs collected by Elias Lönnrot during eleven field trips through Finland and Karelia. The goal of the present paper is to present the historical background which gave birth to such a work, knowingly, the Romantism-influenced desire to build a Finnish common identity and to symbolically emancipate the country from foreign rulers. We are also going bring into light the processes of collection, textualization and edition took by Lönnrot during the creation of the Kalevala, as well as the models he had in mind while doing so. Finally, we are going to present a possible categorization of this material in regards to gender, also revealing some of its contents which are connected to mythological themes from the vernacular tradition.
A KALEVALA FINLANDESA: CONTEXTO HISTÓRICO, SEU PROCESSO DE COLETA E ESCRITA, QUESTÕES DE GÊNERO E POSSÍVEIS MOTIVOS MITOLÓGICOS
