Күллерво: Финн жырларының трагедиялық кейіпкері

Character in Finnish mythology

Kullervo is an ill fated character in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Growing up in the aftermath of the massacre of his entire tribe, he comes to realise that the same people who had brought him up, the tribe of Untamo, were also the ones who had slain his family. As a child, he is sold into slavery and mocked and tormented further. When he finally runs away from his masters, he discovers surviving members of his family, only to lose them again. He seduces a girl who turns out to be his own sister, having thought his sister dead. When she finds out it was her own brother who seduced her, she commits suicide. Kullervo becomes mad with rage, returns to Untamo and his tribe, destroys them using his magical powers, and commits suicide. At the end of the poem the old sage Väinämöinen warns all parents against treating their children too harshly.

The story of Kullervo is laid out in runes (chapters) 31 through 36 of the Kalevala.

Untamo is jealous of his brother Kalervo, and the strife between the brothers is fed by numerous petty disputes. Eventually Untamo's resentment turns into open warfare, and he kills all of Kalervo's tribe save for one pregnant girl called Untamala, whom Untamo enslaves as his maid. Shortly afterwards, Untamala gives birth to a baby boy she names Kullervo. When Kullervo is three months old, he can be heard vowing revenge and destruction upon Untamo's tribe. Untamo attempts to kill Kullervo three times (by drowning, fire, and hanging). Each time, the infant Kullervo is saved by his latent magical powers. Untamo allows the child to grow up, then tries three times to find employment for him as a servant in his household, but all three attempts fail as Kullervo's wanton and wild nature makes him unfit for any domestic task. In the end, Untamo decides to rid himself of the problem by selling Kullervo to Ilmarinen as a slave.

The boy is raised in isolation because of his status as a slave, his fierce temper, and because people fear his growing magical skills. The only memento that the boy retains from his previous life in a loving family is an old knife that had been passed along to him as an infant. Pohjan Neito/Tytär (Maiden/Daughter of the North), wife of Ilmarinen, enjoys tormenting the slave boy, now a youth, and sends Kullervo out to herd her cows with a loaf of bread with stones baked into it. This chapter includes a lengthy magical poem invoking various deities to grant their protection over the herd and to keep the owners prosperous.

Kullervo is an eponymous 1860 play by Aleksis Kivi. Kullervo is the subject of a 1988 opera by Aulis Sallinen. The Hilliard Ensemble commissioned an English language setting of Kullervo's story, Kullervo's Message, from Veljo Tormis. In June 2023, the video game Warframe released a new playable character named for and inspired by Kullervo. The 1938 play Suomi by Elizabeth Goudge (1900 1984), in her Three Plays: Suomi; The Brontës of Haworth; Fanny Burney (Gerald Duckworth, 1939), includes a Kullervo like character in her modern story of Finland's struggle for independence from Tsarist Russia. The mother in the story is called "Suomi", a nickname based on the Finnish word for "Finland". Her two sons are Olof and Kryosti. Olof (a Lemminkäinen figure) is killed by Russians. Kryosti (as a Kullervo figure) is exiled to Siberia. When he returns, eighteen years later, during the Russian Revolution, he kills Olof's son, Sigurd, and then, in a fit of remorse, Kryosti commits suicide. Following the incest motif of the story of Kullervo, Sigurd and Anna are the twin children of Olof. Ignorant of the fact that they are brother and sister, they marry. But Anna dies in childbirth, and Sigurd is murdered by Kryosti, because of his insane jealousy of his own brother, Olof.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote an interpretation of the Kullervo cycle in 1914; the piece was finally published in its unfinished form as The Story of Kullervo in Tolkien Studies in 2010, as edited by Verlyn Flieger. It was re published in book form in 2015 by HarperCollins. It was his first attempt at writing an epic narrative but was never completed.