Gandalf based on Kalevala's Vainamoinen?

Greetings all Tolkien fans!

I'm writing a research paper for my English class, and chose to research A) the various things Tolkien "borrowed" from sources such as Beowulf, Heimskringla, Edda and Kalevala, and B) especially focus on the similarities between Gandalf and Kalevala's Vainamoinen.

I was sent here by Marileangorifurnimaluim, who suggested I specifically ask help from Mithadan, Gilthalion, The Barrow-Wight, and Rimbaud. Of course, anyone who can help me is welcome to do so.

As this is a research paper, references to primary or secondary sources published in books or journals would be appreciated the most, but I have used some web references as well on topics I haven't been able to reach in hardcopy.

Here's a quick recap on the topics I'm covering:
- Tolkien was an expert on Old English and Beowulf, an enthusiast of north-European myths and sagas in general, and a great fan of Kalevala and the Finnish language
- Names, places and words from Beowulf (Marilea was of great help here)
- The dwarves of The Hobbit got names from the Edda
- Gandalf's name comes from the Heimskringla
- Turin Turambar based on Kalevala's Kullervo
- Quenya inspired by Finnish
- Similarities between Iluvatar and Kalevala's Ilmatar, and Feanor and Kalevala's Ilmarinen
- Gandalf similar to Merlin, but much more similar to Vainamoinen
- First literary mention of wooden staves being magical in Kalevala (?)
- Both wielded a sword (and Glamdring sounds greatly like swords in Beowulf)
- Both immortals, born at creation, power not learned but innate
- Both primarily follow the archetype of "wise old man", but both also break it by being the focus of action
- Both have a supernatural steed
- Both get rescued by a giant eagle, related to a near-death experience

If you have rebuttals or additions, please post here or PM me. Thanks!

[Lalaith]

Welcome Northsaber.
When the wise come online, I'm sure they'll help but in the meantime this thread might be of use to you:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...&threadid=1806

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Welcome to the 'Downs, NorthSaber! Enjoy being dead I'm Finnish so I think I can help you a bit with some of those things you listed.
About Quenya beeing inspired by Finnish: the pronaunciation of words are the same in both languages. Also the way of forming plural sentences is related.

Turin and Kullervo both lost their parents very early. Both of them had a sword or knife that was special to them and both killed themselves. Both of them had lost their sisters and later slept with them.

This is nit-picking but especially if this is a research for school, watch your spelling: it is Väinämöinen, not Vainamoinen (in Finnish there's a major difference in pronaunciation wether there are those two dots or not)

Try the search funktion, it's very handy!
http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...light=kalevala

Thank you both for the links; I did a search with "Vainamoinen" (no umlauts) and didn't find anything, so thanks for helping me out.

PS: I'm Finnish too, but working on a US keyboard... I may put in the a: s and o: s when I'm finishing up the paper, but I'd have to go through the Symbol menu in Word to do that - there's no key combination on they keyboard that allows me to type those letters... =/

(Edit: took a look at both threads, and although they're pretty much right on the subject, there's really nothing I can use: I'm trying to stay fairly focused on the Gandalf=Vainamoinen thing.

PPS: dancing spawn: you wouldn't happen to have a secondary source where the details of Turin/Kullervo are mentioned, would you? I can probably still use them, but I need to cite them properly.

Thanks again!)

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

NorthSaber - Piosenniel has typed up a key to help achieve the letters you need using an English speaking computer.

Click Here

The third post down will explain how to go about it. Good hunting intrepid scholar!

Cool! Thanks!