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Knapp, Robbin D. 2008. "Finnish English: K". In Robb: Finnish English. Jun. 17, 2008.

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kantele n.

from kantele: a traditional Finnish zither or harp originally with five to 15 strings but now with as many as 39, also called a kannel. This entry suggested by Heikki Petaisto.

• "Bring the instrument to me and carry the kantele to two upright kneecaps, to the tips of ten fingernails!" Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala, 1999, p. 535.
• "Epic songs indicate the importance of the kantele in the ancient tietäjä's art and Siikala suggests that the kantele may thus represent a musical descendant of an earlier Balto-Finnish tradition." Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age, 1999, p. 131.
• "Certain instruments were considered appropriate for women, however, particularly the kantele (the Finnish national instrument, a type of zither) and mandolin." Helmi Järviluoma, in Music and Gender, edited by Pirkko Moisala & Beverley Diamond, 2000, p. 56.
• "... housewives get out family recipes from the old country; musicians dust off their kanteles (Finnish stringed instruments similar to dulcimers)." Ruth Kirk & Carmela Alexander, Exploring Washington's Past: A Road Guide to History, 1995, p. 423.
• "Skapti had the kantele out and had tuned it carefully, adjusting the harpstrings and checking the birchwood frame for damage." Catherine Fisher, Snow-walker, 2004, p. 419.
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Kalevala, Kalevala n.

from Kalevala: in Finnish legend, the home or land of the folk hero Kaleva, whose exploits are recorded in Finnish folk tales, therefore another name for Finland; italicized, the national epic of Finland (1835, enlarged 1849), compiled and arranged by Elias Lönnrot from popular tales of the Middle Ages [< Finnish Kalevala "the land of Kaleva"].

• "Through an examination of parallel passages from the Kalevala and The Lord of the Rings, Gay shows how Tolkien made use of his source to create two of the more enigmatic, yet popular, characters of The Lord of the Rings." Jane Chance, Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, 2004, p. 14.
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