ABSTRACT
Aesthetic communication crystallizes human relations at a given moment in a manner which both reflects the ambient society and proposes alternatives to it. Nineteenth-century Finnish folk poetry became the focus of an aesthetic conflict which arose from the fact that two very different communities claimed the same artistic product. The academic discovery of Finnish folk poetry, on the other hand, rising from obscurity with early studies in the eighteenth century and reaching a pinnacle in Lonnrot’s epic Kalevala, became a vehicle for cultural and eventually political self-assertion among nineteenth-century Finnish elite. The cultural milieu which helped preserve communal epic singing also encouraged the maintenance of other customs as well, including ancient healing, wedding, and funeral rituals. Incantations were performed in the treatment of acute or long-term ailments and in the course of daily activities (e.g., herding, building a fire, traveling).
