The Adaptability of Myth in Old Norse and Finnish Poetry

Thus the youth of Finland, writers who care more about the products of their fatherland (for in this respect little may be expected of their elders), should try to cherish and nurture the literature of their homeland — in whatever field of work should help in their endeavour! They would encounter passages such as they would search for in vain in foreign literature — indeed, the reviewer will go so far in his claim, that if it should be desired to gather the ancient folk-poems and to form from them an orderly whole, be it an epic, a drama, or whatever, it would be possible for a new Homer, an Ossian, or a Nibelungenlied to arise; and a Finnish nationhood would awake, famed for the lustre and glory of its own particularity, conscious of itself, the admiration of contemporaries and aftercomers, made fair by its own aura. The reviewer asserts that in his view he has never used his time better than in sacrificing it to the gathering of the incomparable remains of the songs and poems of our forefathers, poems which contain so much philosophy and beauty.