page_title: Eino Friberg
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Eino Friberg / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Gallen-Kallela The defence of the Sampo
context_page_description: Eino Hjalmar Friberg was a Finnish-born, American author, most widely noted for his 1989 translation of the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala.
context_section_description: 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the porch of his house in Westminster, Massachusetts, Friberg had a "mystical encounter," about which Friberg wrote an unpublished manuscript.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. This was the first time The Kalevala had been translated by a native Finnish speaker into English, and was the fourth full translation overall. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 94.
caption: The Kalevala: The Defense of the Sampo by Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
exif: {}