Abstract
The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, has been an important source of inspiration for Finnish artists since the end of the 19th and the early 20th century, when probably the most well-known adaptations of the epic were created. The article aims to identify whether the Kalevala has remained inspirational up to the present day, and what kind of adaptation strategies are used by contemporary adaptors of the epic.
The most significant Finnish literary adaptations written in the past 25 years are introduced to illustrate the influence of the epic on the modern Finnish literature: a children's book The Canine Kalevala by Mauri Kunnas; a novel Sankarit (Heroes) by Johanna Sinisalo; two comic adaptations of Kullervo's tale created by Gene Kurkijärvi and Marko Raassina. These four texts are analysed using Linda Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation as a theoretical background.
The article proves that the contemporary authors of the Kalevala adaptations incline to a wide range of strategies with actualization, recontextualization, selection and simplification being the most important of them.