Finnish influences on Tolkien include both theFinnish language, which he especially liked, and theKalevala,Elias Lönnrot's 19th century compilation of Finnish mythology, which Tolkien stated had powerfully affected him. He further stated that his inventedElvish language ofQuenya was influenced by thephonology and structure of Finnish.
Scholars have identified both multiple surface-level parallels between elements and characters in theKalevala andTolkien's legendarium, and deeper resemblances. These began with his unfinished 1914The Story of Kullervo, his adaptation of a section of theKalevala. The story already displays numerous features characteristic of hisMiddle-earth writings. Another work from this period, "The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star", resembles theKalevala's closing scene. Among the specific parallels between theKalevala and Tolkien's writings is a magical object of great power, theSampo, reflected in Tolkien'sSilmarils and theOne Ring, and perhaps also theTwo Trees of Valinor. The central character of theKalevala,Väinämöinen, too, is a wise immortal, like Tolkien'sGandalf.
Deeper matches include the process of compiling and editing: Lönnrot gathered folk stories to create his work, while Tolkien wroteframe stories to give the impression that he was an editor of ancient texts describing themythology of England. Scholars have noted thatChristopher Tolkien's subsequent redaction of his father's legendarium made this fiction into a reality, so that both men could be called England's Lönnrot. Further, Tolkien imitated theKalevala's use of intentionally high-sounding language, stylized poetry, and the magical power of song.
Tolkien took an interest in the Finnish mythology of theKalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled byElias Lönnrot. He then became acquainted with theFinnish language, which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for hisElvish language Quenya.[1] Many years later, he wrote: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."[T 1] and used it to construct Quenya. He began doing this in around 1910 or 1911 while he was at theKing Edward's School, Birmingham.[T 1] Around 1915, he named itQenya, before changing the spelling toQuenya.[T 1]
Tolkien wrote that "my 'own language' [Quenya] – orseries of invented languages – became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure."[T 1] On the inspiration for Quenya, he wrote that:
The ingredients in Quenya are various, but worked out into a self-consistent character not precisely like any language that I know. Finnish, which I came across when I had first begun to construct a 'mythology' was a dominant influence, but that has been much reduced [now in late Quenya]. It survives in some features: such as the absence of any consonant combinations initially, the absence of the voiced stopsb, d, g (except inmb, nd, ng, ld, rd, which are favoured) and the fondness for the ending-inen, -ainen, -oinen, also in some points of grammar, such as the inflexional endings-sse (rest at or in),-nna (movement to, towards), and-llo (movement from); the personal possessives are also expressed by suffixes; there is no gender.[T 2]
TheLutheran priest Petri Tikka analyses the languages in theArda Philology journal, showing that they are genuinely diverse, and arguing that the "Finnicization" of Quenya did not decline during its development through Tolkien's lifetime. He notes that Tolkien rarely borrowed words directly from Finnish, but absorbed linguistic patterns and used them to create a language that has "an atmosphere of both uniqueness and depth".[2] Among the direct resemblances,adjectives in both Finnish and early Qenya agree grammatically with thenouns that they qualify incase and in number.[2] In terms ofphonology, Tikka notes that Quenya does not share the distinctivefront vowelsä,ö, andy of Finnish, so it does not seem obviously Finnish to native speakers. He comments that this illustrates Tolkien's desire to make his languages both original and deeply-rooted in reality.[2]
| Feature | Finnish | Quenya |
|---|---|---|
| Front vowels | ä, ö, y | (missing) |
| Words can begin withconsonant groups | no | no |
| Voiced stopsb, d, g missing except inmb, nd, ng, ld, rd | yes | yes |
| Favoured endings-inen, -ainen, -oinen | yes | yes |
| Inflectional endings-sse, -nne, -llo | yes | yes |
| Possessive affixes | yes | yes |
| Use of gender | no | no |
The fantasy author Anne C. Petty likens the beauty of Tolkien'sTengwar calligraphy to the effect of "printed Finnish with its limited number of consonants and doubled,umlauted vowels".[3] She gives as an example some intentionally untranslated lines from theKalevala, including "Polvin maasta ponnistihe, / käsivarsin käännältihe..."[3]
Tolkien was "greatly affected",[T 3] indeed "fascinated by",[3] theKalevala, especially the tale ofKullervo, and used aspects of it in his Middle-earth writings. He credited Kullervo's story for getting him started onhis legendarium: "the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala".[T 4] He stated in another letter that he was "immensely attracted by something in the air of the Kalevala, even in [the entomologist and folklorist]Kirby's poor translation."[T 1] He started reworking the story of Kullervo into a story of his own in 1914, but never finished it.[T 5] However, similarities to the story can still be seen in the tale ofTúrin Turambar. Each is a tragic hero who accidentally commits incest with his sister, who, upon finding out, kills herself by leaping into water. Each hero later kills himself after asking his sword if it will slay him, which it confirms.[5] As late as 1964, Tolkien was still strongly attracted by theKalevala, namingThe Children of Húrin as a product of that interest.[3]
The Tolkien scholarVerlyn Flieger, publishing Tolkien's unfinished short story,The Story of Kullervo and the two drafts of his essay "On the Kalevala", writes that they demonstrate "just how powerful" an effect the Finnish work had "on his imagination and his legendarium."[6] The short story, surviving in a single 1914 draft and note pages, and probably never revisited, was based on runes 31–36 of theKalevala. Flieger ascribes Tolkien's 1944 comment that "Finnish ... was the original germ of the Silmarillion"[T 6] to this story.[6] She notes the Tolkien linguistCarl F. Hostetter's observation that some names in the story "echo or prefigure" his first versions of Qenya. Thus the god-namesIlu andIlukko resemble theIlúvatar ofThe Silmarillion; the placenameTelea (forKarelia) "evokes theTeleri"; andManalome (sky, heaven) "recall[s] Qenya Mana/Manwë, chief of the Valar".[6]
Petty and Tolkien's biographerJohn Garth have noted the similarity of Tolkien's 1914 poem "The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star", in which the far-travelled mariner finally sails from the earth's surface into the sky, to theKalevala's closing scene, where the work's central character,Väinämöinen, "In his vessel made of copper, / Sailed away to loftier regions, / To the land beneath the heavens." Garth calls the resemblance "especially pertinent" since Tolkien wrote the poem while "immersed" in theKalevala and was in the process of writing hisStory of Kullervo.[7] In Garth's opinion, Tolkien was "attracted by the knotty confusions and illogical omissions in theKalevala", as "he wanted to fix the discontinuities and fill in the gaps. The urge is entirely characteristic of Tolkien."[7] Among the changes that Tolkien made from Kirby's version to his own short story are "more cogent motivations", "flourishes of vivid detail", removal of "sing-song repetitions"; reorganisation; reduction of the cast of characters; and toning down of the "wilder hyperbole".[7] Garth adds thatThe Story of Kullervo is where some "characteristically Tolkienian features" make their debut: it isheroic "with famous and superhuman deeds", but "also sub-heroic, involving a clumsy and sometimes stupid protagonist."[7] Further, it makes use of "supernatural folklore elements" including "prophecy, aninherited weapon, a magical gift (three hairs—a triadic grouping repeated byGaladriel), and even trees as shepherds (portending theEnts)".[7]
LikeThe Lord of the Rings, theKalevala centres around a magical item of great power, theSampo, which bestows great fortune on its owner, but whose exact nature is never made clear;[8] it has been considered aWorld pillar (Axis mundi) among other possibilities.[9] Scholars includingRandel Helms have suggested that the Sampo contributed to Tolkien's magical forged jewels, theSilmarils that form a central element of his legendarium.[10] Jonathan Himes has suggested further that Tolkien found the Sampo complex, and chose to split the Sampo's parts into desirable objects. The pillar, in his view, became theTwo Trees of Valinor with theirtree of life aspect, illuminating the world, while its decorated lid became the brilliant Silmarils, embodying all that was left of the light of the Two Trees, thus tying the symbols together.[11]
Like theOne Ring, the magical token at the centre ofThe Lord of the Rings, the Sampo is fought over by forces of good and evil, and is ultimately lost to the world when it is destroyed towards the end of the story. Väinämöinen and the powerful wizardGandalf share their immortal origins and wise nature; and both works end with the character's departure on a ship to lands beyond the mortal world.[12][13] Other critics have identified similarities between Väinämöinen and the spirit of the countryside,Tom Bombadil, both of whom wield their power through song.[4]
The scholar of literature Matthew R. Bardowell argues inJournal of the Fantastic in the Arts that while there are multiple surface-level matches between elements and characters in Tolkien's legendarium and theKalevala, these are not sufficient to explain Tolkien's evident enthusiasm for the work, nor to accommodate his claim inOn Fairy-Stories that the process ofmythopoiesis is far more organic. Tolkien is quoted as saying inHumphrey Carpenter's biography that a story "grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap".[14][15] Bardowell suggests that Tolkien was indeed affected in depth by theKalevala, and that its influence, rather than being seen in surface features, is woven right into the fabric of his legendarium.[15]
Petty likens the way that the Middle-earth expert and editorChristopher Tolkien redacted his father's legendarium to Lönnrot's editing of Finland's mythology, thus helping to make the work a genuine "mythology for England". She comments that J. R. R. Tolkien hadmade use of frame stories in which a "scholar-scribe" had mediated the supposedly ancient narratives and other records, so Christopher's intervention, "life imitating art", made the legendarium more like the Kalevala, with both father and son fulfilling parts of Lönnrot's role.[3] In addition, she comments that Tolkien imitated theKalevala's "epic register" of high language.[3] Tolkien was influenced, too, Petty writes, by many features of theKalevala:[3]
| Kalevala feature | Legendarium |
|---|---|
| Cosmological runes | Ainulindalë |
| Doomed lovers | Beren and Lúthien,Túrin and Finduilas |
| Fate of world in magical object | Silmarils, theOne Ring |
| Groups of episodic stories | Quenta Silmarillion |
| Archetypal characters | Gandalf as wiseshaman;Morgoth as God of theunderworld |
| Stylized poetry | "repetition, redundancy, epithets, the power of three" |
| Own native language | Quenya in its changing forms |
| Magical power of song | e.g.Yavanna singsTwo Trees of Valinor into being;Lúthien conquersAngband |
| Landscape with islands, inland waterways | Middle-earth,Númenor |
