Poetry collecting in Uhtua

Sjögren

The first collector to come to Uhtua, and to Viena, was A.J. Sjögren. In summer of 1825, he recorded four poems sung by "a man from Uhtua" and one by "a boy from Uhtua." Later, A.A. Borenius, who also succeeded in identifying many of the anonymous bards who had sung for the previous generation of collectors, determined that the boy who had sung for Sjögren was Jouko Huotarinen, who was born in Uhtua in 1805.

Fellman

Fellman came to Uhtua in 1829, before Lönnrot, but no records survive of any poems that he might have recorded there.

Lönnrot

Lönnrot visited Uhtua on three occasions, his fifth (21-23 April 1834), sixth (26-28 April 1835) and seventh field trips (3-25 November 1836). He was accompanied on the last by Cajan.

The poems which Lönnrot collected on his first visit were thus available to him when he was working on the first edition of the Kalevala. Lönnrot mentions only one bard by name from the field trip: " A widow by the name of Matro struck me as more accomplished than the rest. When she had sung for half a day, with her knitting in her hand, others began singing in her stead; some of their songs were variants of what she had sung; others were new."

The most important bard Lönnrot met on his second field trip was Varahvontta Jamanen, of whom he tells the following:

In Uhtua I met a man named Jamala, whom I had not heard of previously. He first promised to sing from morning till evening for 5 rubles, but when he saw how fast I could write, he struck a different bargain. Namely, he agreed to sing 20 long poems for the sum and whatever else he could remember in addition to that. So I spent the entire day recording what he sang. A little boy sat next to me and cut a notch in a tree for every poem sung. When it got dark, the agreed number had been reached, and the following day I recorded the shorter poems he had promised until well into the evening until dinner time.

On his third visit to Uhtua, Lönnrot, accompanied by his friend Cajan, spent three weeks with the Jamanen family. In his own words, every day he had "girls, women, men and boys" singing poems for him.

Castrén

Castrén collected mainly incantations while in Uhtua, but he did record some wedding songs as well. In fact, these were the only lyric poetry he recorded on his 1839 visit

Europaeus

Europaeus came to Uhtua in February 1846. He spent only one day there and stated laconically: " After collecting material from the bards who have not yet sung for collectors, I travelled on to the village of Röhöjärvi."

Berner, Genetz, Borenius

Berner, Genetz and Borenius explored the Uhtua district thoroughly in the 1870s and had many bards sing for them.

Ervasti ja Basilier

Among the other collectors who visited Uhtua in the 1870s were Ervasti and Basilier. In the following decade (1886) Juvelius and Varonen also visited the region.

Uhtua
Poetry collecting in Uhtua
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