The 1849 final edition of the Kalevala contains 22,795 lines. Known as the New Kalevala, this expanded version was compiled and edited by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish, Karelian, and Ingrian oral poetry.
Lönnrot first published the Old Kalevala in 1835–1836. That earlier version contained 12,078 verses in 32 poems. He continued collecting and reshaping material, then published the much larger 1849 edition with 50 runos, or cantos.
The 1849 text is the standard form read and translated today. Its line count is sometimes confused with the 1862 school abridgment, which retained all 50 poems but reduced the total to 9,732 verses. The earlier 1835 edition is another frequent source of mistaken answers.
The number refers to the original Finnish poetic text. English translations can have different line counts because translators alter wording, meter, line breaks, and sometimes the degree of repetition. Even so, 22,795 is the conventional figure for the 1849 Finnish edition.