> The Kalevala is full of excellent heroquests. Ilmarinen's
> heroic deeds to win the daughter of Pohjola for example.
> There is even a failed quest, when Lemminkäinen sets out
> to kill Hiisi's moose, but dies trying (but is resurrected
> by his mother who retrieves the pieces of his body from
> the river that separates the land of the dead from the
> land of the living).
The creation of Kalevala is a heroquest in its own right. I've viewed Harmast's assembly of various Heortling tribal myths and stories into a unified Lightbringers Quest as being very similar to Lonnrot's transformation of hundreds of Finnish folk poems into a grand unified epic poem.
Jeff
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