Evidently the condition of submission to which Finnish women were reduced by custom was something much less merciful than has ever been known in Eastern countries.

Only a very generous nature could bear such discipline; and we have many glimpses in the poem of charming natures of this kind.
You have seen that merely as a collection of wonderful stories the Kalevala is of extraordinary interest, that it is also of interest as describing the social ethics of a little known people--finally that it is of interest, of very remarkable interest, merely as natural poetry--poetry treating of wild nature, especially rivers and forests and mountains, of the life of the fisher and hunter and wood-cutter.

Indeed, so far as this kind of poetry is concerned, the "Kalevala" stands alone among the older productions of European poetry.

You do not find this love of nature in Scandinavian poetry, nor in Anglo-Saxon poetry, nor in old German poetry, much less in the earlier form of French, Italian, or Spanish poetry.

The old Northern poetry comes nearest to it; for in Anglo-Saxon composition we can find at least wonderful descriptions of the sea, of stones, of the hard life of sailors.