The Finnic Tetrameter – A Creolization of Poetic Form?

Abstract

This article presents a new theory on the origins of the common Finnic tetrameter as a poetic form (also called the Kalevala-meter, regilaul meter, etc.). It argues that this verse form emerged as a creolization of the North Germanic alliterative verse form during a period of intensive language contacts, and that the Finnic ethnopoetic ecology made it isosyllabic. Previous theories have focused on the trochaic, tetrametric structure and viewed other features of poetic form as secondary or incidental. This is the first theory to offer a metrically driven explanation for the distinctive features of the poetic form: the systematic placement of lexically stressed short syllables in metrically unstressed positions and systematic yet unmetricalized use of verse-internal alliteration. The emergence of the poetic form may be viewed simply in terms of hybridization, but its formation as a central mode for epic and ritual poetry demands consideration of social factors. Creolization is considered a social process of hybridization at the level of sign systems that is characterized by a salient asymmetrical relation of power, authority or other value in the cultural sign systems being reconfigured from the perspective of the society or groups involved. An argument is presented that North Germanic contacts also produced systematic verse-internal alliteration in Finnic languages. Discussion then turns to the distinction between the origin and spread of the poetic form. The poetic form's uniformity across Finnic language areas in spite of its 'foreign' metrical features along with the range of genres with which it was used are considered indicators of the poetic form's spread with language, forming an argument that the tetrameter emerged within an environment that also produced Late Proto-Finnic, and then spread with Late Proto-Finnic language and culture through areas where other Finnic language forms were spoken. This paper introduces a new theory concerning the history of the common Finnic tetrameter (Kalevala-meter, regilaul meter). Unlike earlier discussions of the meter, my aim is to offer a metrically-driven account of the most

Metric Variation in the Finnic Runosong Tradition: A Rough Computational Analysis of the Multilingual Corpus

“…This was in the first millennium BCE, a period when according to contemporary archaeogenetic research, the Finno-Ugric genomic component arrived in the area around the Baltic Sea (Saag et al 2019). 2 The poetic system of this tradition is thought to have developed from (1) earlier poetic forms; 3 ; (2) changes in the prosodic structure of the language; and/or (3) contact between different cultures in this era when Proto-Finnic had not yet divided into many separate languages (Frog 2019;Korhonen 1994;Sarv 2019).…”

“…Other scholars have made similar assumptions about the general period of runosong's genesis based on different information; see, for example,Leino (1986, p. 140),Rüütel (1998) andFrog (2019).3 Speculation about the common Uralic or Finno-Ugric poetic and metric forms that might have preceded runosong falls outside the scope of this paper. For more information on this topic, however, see, for example,Korhonen (1994),Helimski (1998) andFrog (2019).4 Elias Lönnrot had also used Karelian runosong when composing his epic, Kalevala.…”

Discursive Registers in Finno-Karelian Communicative Incantations

“…Kalevala-metric poetry is a name for trochaic tetrameter, which was commonly used by the Finns, Karelians, Ingrians, Estonians, Votes and Ingrian-Finns as linguistically related ethnic groups (see Kuusi et al 1977, 34-37) for various genres, both ritual and profane (Tarkka 2013, 53;. Although the name anachronistically derives from the name of the Finnish national epic Kalevala (1835, extended edition in 1849; see Lönnrot 1999 and, the oral-poetic system itself likely developed around 200-550 A.D. (Frog 2019; for discussion of the term Kalevala-meter, see Kallio 2011, 391;. In Viena Karelia (also called White Sea Karelia or Archangelsk Karelia), from which the material for this study originates, the poetic form was actively used until the early 20 th century, when it broke down in the wake of modernization (Tarkka 2013, 60).…”