Editing Kalevala (section)

===Lönnrot's contribution to the ''Kalevala''===
Very little is actually known about Elias Lönnrot's personal contributions to the ''Kalevala''. Scholars to this day still argue about how much of the ''Kalevala'' is genuine folk poetry and how much is Lönnrot's own work – and the degree to which the text is 'authentic' to the oral tradition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pertti |first1=Anttonen |editor1-last=Bak |editor1-first=János M. |editor2-last=Geary |editor2-first=Patrick J. |editor3-last=Klaniczay |editor3-first=Gábor |title=Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe |date=2014 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-27680-2 |pages=56–80 |url=https://brill.com/view/title/20073 |chapter=The Kalevala and the Authenticity Debate |access-date=23 May 2019 |archive-date=11 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181111011601/https://brill.com/view/title/20073 |url-status=live }}</ref> During the compilation process it is known that he merged poem variants and characters together, left out verses that did not fit and composed lines of his own to connect certain passages into a logical plot. Similarly, as was normal in the preliterate conventions of [[oral poetry]]&mdash;according to the testimony of Arhippa Perttunen&mdash;traditional bards in his father's days would always vary the language of songs from performance to performance when reciting from their repertoire.<ref name="New Kalevala"/><ref name="Honko1990"/><ref>John Miles Foley, ''A companion to ancient epic'', 2005, p.207.</ref><ref name="Thomas DuBois">Thomas DuBois. "From Maria to Marjatta: The Transformation of an Oral Poem in Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala" ''Oral Tradition, 8/2 (1993) pp.247–288''</ref>

The Finnish historian Väinö Kaukonen suggests that 3% of the {{lang|fi|Kalevala}}{{`s}} lines are Lönnrot's own composition, 14% are Lönnrot compositions from variants, 50% are verses which Lönnrot kept mostly unchanged except for some minor alterations, and 33% are original unedited oral poetry.<ref name="Väinö Kaukonen">Väinö Kaukonen. "Lönnrot ja Kalevala" ''Finnish Literature Society, (1979)''.</ref>