Kalevala – set

Description

The world of Kalevala has fascinated me for years, and I can finally illustrate its events with the help of artificial intelligence!

The Kalevala is Finland’s national epic, consisting of poems collected and compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the early 19th century. Kalevala tells stories from old Finnish folklore, where adventures, magic and heroic tales are intertwined. The epic describes, among other things, the adventures of Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen, as well as their fight against natural and evil forces.

The Kalevala has been a huge source of inspiration for Finnish art. Its stories, characters and symbolism have inspired numerous artists such as painters, composers, writers and sculptors. Epic themes, such as nature, fate, love and magic, have been central to Finnish art. Kalevala’s influence extends widely to many different art forms, creating a strong connection between Finnish culture and identity.

This set contains the story of Youkahainen (Joukahainen),  Wainamoinen (Väinämöinen) and Aino. It is part of the Kalevala’s many adventures and its events take place in the first part of the Kalevala in poems 2-5. On the back side of each card are the Kalevala verses related to the picture in Finnish and English. Pictures of the backgrounds can be found in the product gallery.

The story begins when Youkahainen, a young and proud warrior, meets Wainamoinen, and challenges him. Wainamoinen is central to the Kalevala myth and a very powerful, wise old man. Youkahainen would like to duel, but Wainamoinen does not agree to this, so the singing contest begins.

Wainamoinen is superior in chanting spells and gets Youkahainen stuck deep in the swamp with his song. Youkahainen finally has to promise his sister Aino to Wainamoinen, when nothing less is good for him.

Aino’s mother also tries to talk the girl into becoming the old man’s wife, but when Aino meets Wainamoinen in the forest, she rejects his proposal.

Aino drowns herself and turns into Vellamo’s maiden and later into a fish that Wainamoinen catches. When the fish escapes, she says that she is Aino, revealing this to Wainamoinen. Wainamoinen is sad and ashamed. The lesson of the story is that the old may not take a young spouse.

These card images are generated with MidJourney AI tool where an image is produced from the given text. It is a huge step for information technology when a machine can imagine what the text looks like!

The images are surprising; sometimes they are “real” and very close to similar image we have from text – sometimes created image is “wrong”, very odd and full of mistakes. The same text produces a different image every time and new versions can be created from the previous image. Every image has been edited further before printing.

The images in this set use words e.g. old man, young man, sword, swamp, forest, young woman, boat and are made by Minna from Minor Postcards.

These cards are only sold as a set of five.