Name Eino Friberg Role Author | Died 1995 | |
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Books The Kalevala: Graphic Novel Education Harvard University, Boston University | ||
Eino Hjalmar Friberg (10 May 1901, in Merikarvia, Grand Duchy of Finland – 27 May 1995, in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a Finnish-born, American author, most widely noted for his 1989 translation of the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala.
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Early life
Eino Hjalmar Friberg was born in Merikarvia, Finland in 1901 and moved to the United States when he was still a child, in 1906. At the age of seven he was involved in an accident in which his eyes were damaged, which led to his eventual blindness at the age of 10. He attended the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts and then attended Boston University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts. He enrolled in a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Harvard University, but never completed his thesis. He eventually received a Master of Arts in philosophy from Harvard in the mid-1970s, after passing a French language examination.
Career
In addition to his literary work, Friberg had an enormously varied career. He attended the Swedenborgian School of Theology and was ordained as a minister in the Swedenborgian, Congregational and Unitarian Churches, serving as a minister in Congregational and Unitarian churches in New England. In 1949, on the porch of his house in Westminster, Massachusetts, Friberg had a "mystical encounter," about which Friberg wrote an unpublished manuscript. Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr commented on the manuscript that "I know of no record of spiritual pilgrimage more authentic."
At the age of 75, he began to translate into the English Language, the Finnish national epic The Kalevala, working from a Braille copy of The Kalevala. This was the first time The Kalevala had been translated by a native Finnish speaker into English, and was the fourth full translation overall.
Awards
Personal life
During World War II, Friberg worked in a tool and die plant in Worcester, Massachusetts and became a labor organizer for the United Steelworkers of America. Friberg was married three times and had two daughters. He also published a book of poetry, Sparks, in 1926.