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Last Saturday, I had the great pleasure of being one of 16 storytellers from the Seattle Storytellers Guild who performed the epic Finnish myth, the Kalevala, at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard. What a fun and amazing experience!

The whole Kalevala took six hours to tell, with two intermissions. Listeners — including myself — truly entered a magical world — one of wonder, humor, adventure, and human foibles — presented against a backdrop of times past or perhaps never were. I personally felt something wake up: my human nature that knows and expects to have an immersive storytelling experience that resounds with layers of myth. For an afternoon the Finnish mythic roots became my own — or perhaps stirred recognition of a similar fabric in my own ancestral and soul psyche. I loved the sense of “passing the story” — one teller to the next — with each teller bring their own “color” and sensibilities to the tale, while also tending the weave of the whole.

One of the tellers, Jill Johnson, well captures the scope and spirit of the event. Read her blog post, An Epic Revisited.

Tellers from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California, all came together to perform this wondrous event. The show is over, but I believe it will air on the radio. I’ll let you know details about that airing when I get them! Also, consider joining the Seattle Storytellers Guild next year, when our 2018 epic storytelling features tales from The Thousand and One Nights!