Karelian Kantele Tradition

About Karelian kantele players, their music and instruments in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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The Polymorphic Kantele

About kantele replicas, string materials and tuning.

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Presentations

How to change and clean the strings, early education, videos etc.

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News & the blog

A Kalevala symbolist kantele and artwork from the 1940s by a young man on return from war

February 27, 2025

Blog

Professor Stig Nyström (1924–2018, Helsinki) was not only a doctor of medicine but also a visual artist. A very special kantele (SM883), a Kalevala symbolist artwork made by him was donated to the Sibelius Museum in 1993. The kantele was completed immediately after the Continuation War in 1944–1945, when Nyström was 20 years old. During […]

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Who was E. Lekve?

February 17, 2025

Blog

Who was E. Lekve, whose name is engraved on the bottom of the carefully crafted kantele SM496 in the Sibelius Museum? The kantele was donated to the Sibelius Museum in 1974. The instrument had belonged to the donor’s mother’s father, stationmaster Mauno Paatero (1866-1908), who had bought the kantele from its maker, E. Lekve, at […]

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