Aino Verse — The Aino cycle of the Finnish national | ainoverse.com
Kalevala metre is trochaic tetrameter — 8 syllables, stress on 1, 3, 5 and 7, no end rhyme — and the epic's key dates run from 1802 to 1892.
The metre is a fixed grid. Every line has 8 syllables, and the main stress falls on syllables 1, 3, 5 and 7 — the trochaic tetrameter that carries both editions of the epic.
There is no end rhyme. The sound of the verse is carried by alliteration and assonance instead, repeated consonants and echoing vowels working inside the line.
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The dates anchor the text. Elias Lönnrot was born on 9 October 1802 and collected run songs on field trips between 1828 and 1844; the Old Kalevala followed in 1835 with 32 runes, the New Kalevala in 1849 with 50 runes and roughly 12,000 lines.
Finland keeps Kalevala Day on 28 February, the date of the national celebration of the epic.
For English readers the key year is 1888, when J. M. Crawford's translation — the first widely used English Kalevala — was published. Four years later, in 1892, Jean Sibelius's Kullervo Symphony, built on another Kalevala hero, was first performed. When you quote, name your translation and its year: 1888 English is not the 1835 Finnish.
Further reading