This chapter is intended to serve as an introduction to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic, and its author-compiler, Elias Lönnrot. Both topics, at least in a cursory manner, are familiar to most who have grown up in Finland; some of the readers of this collection, as well as its contributors, are likely to be deeply familiar with these topics. My purpose here is to address a broader audience: those interested in Finnish Romanticism (or Romanticism in general) but who—unlike every Finn—may not have heard much about Lönnrot and his Kalevala. While introducing the reader to the man and his work, I will also emphasize the significant role that the Kalevala has played, and continues to play, in Finland’s cultural life. Lönnrot’s publication of the Kalevala is arguably the single most tangible catalyst for Finland’s National Romantic movement, a movement that ultimately culminated in Finland’s independence from Russia in 1917. However, the Kalevala’s influence does not continue only in Finland today; this powerful epic has also reached far beyond those remote Karelian villages where Lönnrot collected the stories and poems.