What is Kalevala?
"The Kalevala (IPA: [ˈkɑleʋɑlɑ]) is a 19th-century compilation of epic poetry, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling a story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the mythical wealth-making machine Sampo."
The Godess Ilmatar, by Wilhelm Ekman
And what exactly is this site about?
This site began as an experiment to see if I could host the domain through github pages, which is a neat little skill by itself; secondly, it was a place to practice some web development skills. Thirdly, it is a blog, a digital garden, a personal site, whatever you want to call it, a place to dump some of my random thoughts (somewhat polished and filtered, but still mostly raw.) In fact, as my interest in web development and software development tapered down through the first half of 2026, this site got a little bit neglected.
But now in August 2026 it's getting revived and the first major change I'm doing is that it is gettting some measure of interactivity, like a real blog, you might say: now you can find comment boxes under all blog posts where you can tell me how much my writing has changed your life! And also a little bit of SEO because, well, I guess it would be nice to reach a few more people after all. Of course, that means the site is no longer hosted through GitHub.
Lastly, this site is a direct descendant of another one I maintained for a while at Neocities.org, so if you really want to dig deep into some older stuff I've written you are welcome to browse there too. I especially recommend the About page to learn a bit about my design phillosophy and interests. The same ideas still apply.
Other ways you can interact with me:
- Send an email to ese_grobet@disroot.org.
- Add the RSS feed
to your favorite reader. - If you have site of any sort —especially of the small/indie/personal/old web persuasion—, put a link to mine, let me know, and I'll do the same.