An early draft of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Story of Kullervo” begins this way: “In the days . . . when magic was yet new.” In doing so, Tolkien cast a spell — his first, you might say — to conjure a writing career of storytelling set in another age, in another land, which would become Middle-earth.
Tolkien based “The Story of Kullervo” on six chapters, or “runos,” from “The Kalevala,” an epic poem compiled from Finnish oral folklore. Drafted sometime from
The plot concerns “hapless Kullervo,” as Tolkien called him, an orphaned boy with superhero-like powers. As an infant, he “kicked with his strength his linden cradle to splinters.” But past and future are filled with treachery. Kullervo’s uncle, Untamo, kills Kullervo’s father, kidnaps his mother, and separates the kid from his twin sister. The uncle then tries to murder his nephew three times. A magical dog named Musti comes to his rescue. The dog also speaks: “to Kullervo he gave three hairs from his coat, and said, ‘Kullervo Kalervanpoika, if you are ever in danger from Untamo take one of these and cry, ‘Musti O! Musti may thy magic aid me now’, then wilt thou find a marvellous aid in thy distress.’ ” When poor Kullervo escapes death, Untamo sells him into slavery.
Thus begins this fable-like adventure of blood lust, incest, and suicide — probably Tolkien’s most grim and adult tale ever. There’s even a mild sex scene: at one point, an older Kullervo and a maiden “abode together in the wild till . . . the morning, the damsel resting in his arms.” Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures never described their bedroom antics.
The tale itself fills only 35 pages of this slim volume. The remaining pages consist of the author’s early drafts and notes, two versions of a lecture on “The Kalevala,” and reproductions of pages from the original manuscripts. Noted Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, who also throws into the pot helpful contextualizing remarks and her essay “Tolkien, ‘Kalevala,’ and ‘The Story of Kullervo,’ ’’ edits the whole affair. I sensed that the publisher had to look hard to find enough meat to fill a book worthy of its $25 price.
This is not the first time a gem from the vast archival mines of Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts has been chipped off and sold in the marketplace. His “Beowulf” translation, “The Fall of Arthur,” “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún,” and “The Children of Húrin” have all been posthumously published in recent years. Like many of those works, “The Story of Kullervo” was left, frustratingly, half completed. “Its unfinished state is,” Flieger complains, “sadly typical of much of Tolkien’s work.”
Nevertheless, what we do have of “Kullervo” is instructive. The fragmentary mish-mash “prefigures the narrative styles of Tolkien’s future corpus,” Flieger notes. We see his trademark mixing of archaically pitched fiction and verse, tragedy and myth. We see him sowing the seeds of themes and motifs — the fatherless child (Kullervo); the mysterious helper (the dog, or later, a “Blue-robed Lady of the Forest”); the treasured object (a magic blade); as well as the quest/journey across land — he’d later explore in more mature works like “The Silmarillion,” “The Hobbit,” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
If you compare the original “Kalevala,” in verse, to this rediscovered tale, it’s clear “The Story of Kullervo” seems more a retelling than an original story, and is more of interest to scholars and super fans, not everyday readers. Still, even this draft shows how Finnish mythology and folk tales were instrumental to how Tolkien created his own legendarium. In a letter from 1964, Tolkien writes that “Kullervo” was “the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own.” We’re glad that kernel eventually blossomed all across Middle-earth.
THE STORY OF KULLERVO
By J.R.R. Tolkien
Edited by Verlyn Flieger
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 168 pp., $25
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.” Contact him at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com or Twitter @ethanfreak.