KARELIA

Karelia is located in the Northwest Russia. It has a long border with Finland on the west, the White Sea, Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions on the east and south, Leningrad region on the south and Murmansk region on the north. A glaciated plateau, Karelia is covered by over 60,000 lakes and by coniferous forests; fishing and lumbering are major industries. The republic is crossed by the Murmansk RR and by the Baltic–White Sea Canal, which is both commercially and strategically important. Russians and Ukrainians constitute a majority of the population, the rest of which consists mainly of Karelians, Finns, and Lapps, who are very closely related and have an identical written language. The Karelians, a major division of the Finns, were first mentioned in the 9th century.

Two of the largest lakes in Europe, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, are found in Karelia as well as some additional 61,000 smaller lakes in total accounting for about 20% of the territory.
The northern part of the area, with harsh winters and few people, belong to the Arctic and drains into the White Sea. The southern half of the area drains into the Baltic Sea through the water system of Lake Onega, the river Svir, Lake Ladoga and river Neva, which connects Onega and Ladoga with the Gulf of Finland.

- Kizhi - a historic, cultural and natural complex - is a unique historic area having no equal in the European North of Russia reflecting the concentration of the monuments of our heritage. Both the monuments originally built on the site and those brought here from other parts of the Republic make up the museum collection and represent the main aspects of the traditional culture of the ingenious peoples of Karelia (Karelians, Russians, Vepsians). Monuments and museum collections consist of: 70 monuments of traditional folk architecture including the ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost. Archaeological monuments, historic settlements within the Kizhi Community. More than 30,000 artefacts in the main museum collections.

- Valaam - the largest and finest island of the lake Ladoga. In the 10-th century the first monks - Sergiy and German came to Valaam “from the orient lands”. Their works and prayers initiated the name of Transfiguration of Christ, one of the most principal cloisters of today’s Russia. The treasured relics of these saints are in a large beautiful reliquary in the main cathedral of the monastery today. Valaam has long been a place of enormous spiritual significance and influence. For many centuries it was a spiritual center of northern Russian Orthodoxy, in much the same way as Mt. Athos has been a spiritual center for Mediterranean Orthodoxy. For this reason, Valaam has been known as the "Northern Athos." Valaam has contributed to the spiritual formation of numerous Russian saints, who spent some formative years at Valaam and then later became founders of major monasteries all over Russia.

They were used by early man to record events, visions and story telling. They were produced using crude tools such as sticks, rocks or bone.

- Monastery on Solovetskiy Island in the White Sea. The Monastery was founded in the 15th century, it was both a major religious and cultural centre and a place of political exile. It served as a camp for political prisoners after the 1917 revolution. Converted into a museum in 1967, it was returned to the Church in 1991.

Lönnrot was a physician by profession but his passion for the traditional oral stories of his native Finland led him to travel extensively to acquire new material. He collected most of the poems from the region of Karelia. He believed that the small poems he collected were fragments of a once-continuous epic. He published the first - the "old" Kalevala, in two volumes in 1835-1836 and it consisted of thirty-two poems, which Lönnrot edited and expanded with connecting material to make a continuous story. Lönnrot continued to collect new material, which he integrated into the Kalevala in a second edition. This "new" Kalevala contained fifty poems. This is the standard text of the Kalevala read today.

The main character of the Kalevala is Väinämöinen, a hero with the magical power of songs. He is born of the primal Maiden of the Air and contributes to the creation of the world. He plays kantele, a Finnish string instrument that is played like a zither. He never finds a wife and steals Sampo, a magical mill, from the people of the north.