| Summary: | The Romantic period was characterized, to great extent, by the efforts to associate language and literature to the ideals of people and nation. Such notion, initially based on the theories of the German movement Sturm und Drang, particularly those of Herder, originated a quest for oral poems and songs which represented popular cultures and, consequently, which legitimated the efforts of national formation. In such context we propose an analysis of the Finnish epic Kalevala. Published initially in 1839 as a result of journeys to the farthest regions of Finland, where the Finnish language was still spoken, the poem was organized based on popular poems and songs by the physician and grammarian Elias Lönnrot. He proposed to organize the songs in chronologic order, that is, based on the reoccurrence of characters and events in the collected songs he would reconstitute the original narrative from which they all had derived. The impact of the publication was immense: the Finnish language began to be taught at school, the poem inspired the greatest Finnish works of art of the XIX century in painting, sculpture and music and inaugurated the Finnish literature. Nowadays the poem is still celebrated in the only Finnish national holiday and is the theme of rock and pop music recordings, and also of films, plays and fine arts works. As such, the Finnish Kalevala exemplifies not only the nationalistic purposes of the Romantic movement, but also the utopian search of the original narrative in a phenomenon that has been recreated until nowadays.
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