Musicology Annotation << Back Karelian Runes as a Phenomenon of Ancient Tradition Music Kosyreva Svetlana The article is devoted to a unique phenomenon of the traditional culture of the North-West of Russia – Karelian runes. Their uniqueness is considered in a historical and cultural context. Scientists attribute the formation of the runic meter to the 1st millennium AD, and Karelian runes are generally referred to as poetry of the runic meter. This meter (known as the "Kalevala metric", "Kalevala verse") is close to the tetrameter trochee, unrhymed with a certain specifi city – the presence of alliteration and syntactic parallelism in the verses. Many of the archaic genres of the Karelians were performed to a runic chant and formed the basis of the poetic poem “Kalevala”, the material for which was collected and creatively reworked by the Finnish scholar Elias Lönnrot. The tradition of rune singing was widespread among all ethno-local groups of the Karelians: White Sea (northern), Olonetsky (southern), Priladozhsky. This article, which represents the fi rst part of our research, presents a historiography that reveals the features of the study of the epic heritage of the Karelians by domestic and foreign researchers. Attention is paid to the problems of studying the musical and folklore specifi cs of the runic tradition. Issues related to the terminology of "runes" and the genre attribution of runes are considered. The main method of performing runes, described by H.G. Portan back in the 18th century and made available thanks to the translation of the fi rst part of Elsa Enyaarvi-Haavio's monograph by the Karelian folklorist M.V. Kundozerova, is presented. Keywords: Karelian runes, Karelian musical folklore, rune singing tradition, genre, epic songs, runic chant, musical Finno-Ugric studies. DOI: 10.25791/musicology.8.2025.1444 Pp. 03-14.