In 1835 the first edition of the Kalevala appeared, compiled and edited by Elias Lönnrot on the basis of the epic folk poems he had collected in Finland and Karelia. These poems, handed down for many generations, had been part of the oral tradition among speakers of Balto-Finnic languages for two thousand years. This truly fantastic story, similar in depth to Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings", but moving even further into the realms of the Otherworld, deals with the birth of the world, Finland and the Finns somewhere back in a mythical iron age. Later it was considered to be the story of how the newly arriving Finns fought back the encumbent Lapps and forced them northward to snowier climes, the characters in the poems taking on real substance as folk heroes. The poems would have been sung, at festivals and fairs, to the accompaniament of the kantele.