Doesburg, Charlotte; (2022) The Adaptation of the Kalevala and Folk Poetry in Finnish Metal Music. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London.

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on the adaptation of the Kalevala (1849) – Finland’s national epic –, and other Finnish folk poetry in metal music lyrics from Finland. After the data collection of the lyrics, I proposed a taxonomy based on the types of reworkings found. This taxonomy exists of four categories: transposition, commentary, analogous transformation, and stylistic imitation. The taxonomy represents lyrics from allusions to the folk poetry through e.g., a place name, through to familiar stories retold in a different time or lyrics that are written in the traditional Kalevala-metre. From the taxonomy I chose eight lyrics to interpret with a method I propose based on other relevant methods, such as ethnopoetics, stylistics, and thematics. This proposed method is exceptionally suitable as it allows for comparison between different texts to take the social, cultural, and historic context of the texts into account, and analyses lyrics for themes and on a stylistic level. The lyrics’ analysis showed that the lyrics make different connections to the Kalevala but also to other sources important for Finnishness, such as classic novels or historic events. After the lyrics analysis, I conducted interviews with (most of) the lyricists. These interviews were aimed at better understanding the legitimations for reworking Finnish folk poetry, their views of Finnish national identity and the place of their lyrics within that identity. From the interviews, I established four markers of Finnish national identity: art, history, nature, language. During the final step of my research, I contextualised the findings of my thesis so far and it became clear that the four markers of Finnishness were apparent across the different lyrics analysed. My main research findings were that artists often have detailed knowledge of the epic and that the lyrics are embedded within Finnish national identity through the myriad connections made with the Kalevala, other folk poetry, works of art important for Finnishness and their referrals to the four markers identified during the interviews.

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