Kalevala, translating the second poem to English

Some remarks for the reader:   Do not take these as social information but instead as a lesson, as a view of how to accomplish great deeds and learn the skills for things of worth in the world.


In translating this short piece, my attention was in having a view that could maybe fit all climates and tell how to look at the nature and compare it to thoughts, so that the thoughts could have the kind of wisdom as in the first poem's translation. This is at the same time a way to ponder about life and one's picture of the world.

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Second Poem

From there rose Väinämöinen
on his two feet to even forest ground
on an island of the lake'svast space
on a continent without trees.

Stayed there many years
always lived forward
in a wordless island
that was a treeless continent.

Ponders, thinks deeply,
wonders in his head:
who would be suited to plough the land,
to saw the seeds to the ground?

Pellervoinen, son of the farming lands,
Sampsa small boy,
would be eager to saw the lands,
to do the spring time farming work!

Saw lands tentatively,
saw lands, saw swamps,
saw vegetation covered meadows,
put even stony grounds to farming use.

Rocky hills saw to be pine forests,
round hills to thick needle tree forests,
even forest grounds to wooden undergrowth with tiny flowers,
small valleys to young leaf tree forests.

To wet lands saw white trunked leaf trees with black fractures,
...