Complain
As a real object, the kantele is a common cultural element of the Baltic Finns and Baltic peoples, as well as the Russians of the Novgorod and Pskov regions, who are descended from Finnish-born Tsudus. Latvian kuokle and Lithuanian Kañklės show that the kantele is inherited from the same native Finno-Baltic ancient stratum as, for example, the word virsi and kalevalamitta. Russian archaeologists have excavated 12th-century Finnish-style kanteles from the Novgorod beach mud.
In folk poems, the refrain of the kantele is e.g. playing, joy, five-stringed. The birth of the dirge is one of the oldest cultural myths in Kaleva poetry; its basic motifs are found uniformly from southern Estonia to the borders of Lapland. The description of Väinämöinen's playing and the enchantment of creation are the great hallmarks of the ancient maid's genius.
Lönnrot raised Väinämöinen's kantele as the central symbol of the epic. In the 40th poem, he placed the preparation of a pike-bone kantele and in the 44th poem a birch kantele, and in the 50th poem he composed an emphatic final stanza in connection with Väinämöinen's departure: he left the kantele behind...
As an emblem of the artistic will to create and spiritual culture, the kantele has the same central position in Finland as the sword, hoe, sickle and hammer, money, bird, ship, witch drum, etc. in the heraldry of other nations. Erkki Ala-Könni, Martti Pokela, Hannu Syrjälahti and others have brought the intimate string instrument of savupirtti to modern Finnish schools and cavalcades. As a connecting link with native Finnish poets, Elias Lönnrot and thousands of homes in the 1980s, the kantele is a living symbol, a statement from Kaleva, part of our most traditional world view.