Author: The Editors
Homeward bound!
29 March 2014 | This 'n' that
Jukka the osprey: sadly, his fate remains unknown. Photo: Hannu Vainiopekka
Snow is now, unusually for so early in the year, long gone from more than half of Finland. Bears are waking up and emerging from their winter lairs: spring is definitely in the air!
So are birds: the latest news from Cameroon is that on 26 March Ilmari caught his last African fishes and started winging his way to southern Finland.
Ilmari is an osprey: you may remember him – we reported his endeavour to cross continents on his way to Africa in 2012, asking you to watch this space. Well, the raptor is still doing fine, and his journey can be followed on the Finnish Museum of Natural History’s Luomus website. More than six thousand kilometres and a month later he will hopefully be spotted fishing on his home lakes in Hattula.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Ilmari. The fates of his compadres Pete, Eikka and Jukka are unfortunate: these great travellers perished on their particularly long and dangerous migration routes. Their stories are reported here.
Fan-male?
29 March 2014 | This 'n' that
It is one of the enduring peculiarities of Finnish culture, along with the national enthusiasms for heavy metal music and the tango, that Tom of Finland, an erotic artist who specialised in stylised pencil images of muscular and well-endowed men wearing tight or little clothing, should be regarded as a national treasure.
Even more startling, according to our friends abroad, is the news that a collection of Tom’s images is to be issued as postage stamps in September this year, when an exhibition opens in the Postal Museum in Tampere. ‘Sealed with a Secret – Correspondence of Tom of Finland’ displays Laaksonen’s correspondence from the early 1940s to 1991.
As the Finnish post office, Itella Posti, remarks in its press release, Tom of Finland, or Touko Laaksonen (1920–1991), is one of the most well-known Finnish artists around the world. The images selected – which include a pair of buttocks with a moustached face peeking out from between the legs and a man in military uniform entwined with a naked one – stick to the tamer side of Tom’s work, but their stereotypical homoeroticism will nevertheless be, let’s say, striking additions to the envelopes on which they appear.
According to Timo Berry, the graphic artist who made the selection, the stamps portray ‘a sensual life force and being proud of oneself. There is never too much of that in this northern country.’
Opinions will differ as to the artistic merits of Tom of Finland’s work, but one thing is certain: it’s decidedly top-shelf material. The Finnish post office website features a discussion of whom one would send which stamps to: you wouldn’t, obviously, send Tom to your maiden aunt in the countryside, but the conversation doesn’t examine the fact that the images will not only be viewed by the addressee. How would you explain the pictures to your small children, for example?
Postage stamps are, traditionally, regarded as an expression of national identity – in that case it’s debatable what these are expressing, as Finland is not conspicuously friendly to the gay community. There is no gay marriage, and you can only legally change your gender after surgical sterilisation.
So why issue Tom of Finland as public art? We’re stumped. (On the other hand, we’re not convinced you need to regard stamps as an expression of national identity at all…)
Answers on a postcard, please. You choose the stamps. (Tom’s stamps are self-adhesive, by the way. You don’t have to, ahem, lick their backsides.)
Potentially translatable
27 March 2014 | In the news
The daily paper Aamulehti, published in Tampere, and the bookshop Tulenkantajat (‘The torch-bearers’), in the same city, founded in 2013 a prize called Tulenkantajat* for a Finnish-language writer whose book, published in the previous year, is estimated to have the ‘best export potential’. The first jury selects four to six candidates, the second chooses the winner. The prize is worth €5,000.
The winner of the 2014 prize was announced on 24 March: it is the graphic novel Vain pahaa unta (‘Just a bad dream’, WSOY) by the father-daughter team Ville Tietäväinen and Aino Tietäväinen; see our feature; we have also reviewed three other finalists on the list of six.
The remaining finalists were the crime novel Niiden kirjojen mukaan teidät on tuomittava (‘You will be judged according to your books’, Atena) by Kai Ekholm, Piippuhylly (‘The pipe shelf’, WSOY), short stories by Katja Kettu, the novel Hotel Sapiens (Teos) by Leena Krohn, the novel Herodes (‘Herod’, WSOY) by Asko Sahlberg and Kirahviäiti ja muita hölmöjä aikuisia (‘The giraffe mummy and other silly adults’, Teos), a picture book for children by Alexandra Salmela and Martina Matlovičová.
Who can say whether the books on this shortlist will be ‘exported’, i.e. translated prolifically? Time will tell.
*) The mid 1920s saw the foundation of a group of writers called the Torch-Bearers; it first published intensely personal nature poetry but later began to import European influences into Finnish literature. The Torch-Bearers aimed for the experience of citizenship of the world as unity between people without denying one’s own fatherland or nationality. (See Vesa Mauriala’s article here.)
What’s translated?
14 March 2014 | This 'n' that
The database Finnish Literature in Translation, which details more than 7,500 works, with references to information on Finnish, Swedish and Sámi fiction and non-fiction translation, has been redesigned. Different search types are applicable, and the search results can be downloaded in Excel form.
Maintained and updated by FILI, the database offers information on book-length works as well as translation anthologies. Currently the oldest translation is from 1839. The database is trilingual: Finnish, Swedish, English.
So – if you’d like to know whether Tove Jansson’s Moomin books are available in your mother tongue, just look it up! (Tove can currently be read in 44 languages, from Albanian to Welsh.)
Funny stuff: best-selling books in February
13 March 2014 | In the news
The list of best-selling books – compiled by the Finnish Booksellers’ Association – shows that in February comedy was popular among readers. Number one on the Finnish fiction list was Fingerpori 7 (‘Fingerborg 7’, Arktinen Banaani), the latest comics book by Pertti Jarla, featuring silly stuff taking place in the city of Fingerpori.
Riikka Pulkkinen’s new novel, a romantic comedy entitled Iiris Lempivaaran levoton ja painava sydän (‘Iiris Lempivaara’s restless and heavy heart’, Otava) which was originally published in a weekly women’s magazine, was number four. A satirical television series featuring two silly women devoted to dating and clubbing has also resulted in a book written by the two actresses, Heli Sutela and Minna Koskela: Anne ja Ellu lomamatkalla (‘Anne and Ellu on holiday’, published by Annen ja Ellun tuotanto) made its way to the seventh place. Number eight was Pertti Jarla’s Fingerborg 4!
However, number two was a first novel about problems arising in a religious family, Taivaslaulu (‘Heaven song’, Gummerus), by Pauliina Rauhala. Number three was a first novel by an immigrant Somali woman, Nura Farah: Aavikon tyttäret (‘Daughters of the desert’, Otava) tells the story of women in Somalia in the second half of the 20th century.
On the non-fiction list, among cookbooks and diet guides, books on how to maintain a hormonal balance or how to wield a kettlebell sold well. A new biography, Tove Jansson (Tammi), telling the life story of the Moomin genius (1914–2001), the artist, painter, author and cartoonist, was number seven; the author is Tuula Karjalainen. (The book will be published in several countries this year, a World English edition in December.)
At the top of the best-selling children’s books list is a book entitled Muumit ja tekemisen taika – ‘The Moomins and the magic of doing’ (Tammi). This ‘Moomin’ book is written by Clive Alan: we know absolutely nothing about him (he is absent from his publisher’s list of authors!) – except that the name is a pseudonym.
Well, as before, it is our opinion that all the Moomin books really worth reading were created by Tove Jansson herself.
Helsinki hundred
6 March 2014 | This 'n' that
Into the city: Vilhonkatu Street, leading to the National Theatre and the Railway Station. Photo: Signe Brander, 1907. Helsinki City Museum / Finna
Photographer Signe Brander (1869–1942) was hired by the Helsinki City Council’s Board of Antiquities to record the fast-growing city for almost seven years between 1907 and 1913.
Signe was not keen on working indoors, so she must have been pleased to be able to get out into the streets. She chose to capture lively views of the town with people – passers-by, animals, children, flaneurs, people on errands (even though portraits were not her cup of tea either), in all seasons.
Brander’s thoroughly professional work can now be downloaded on the Internet: all of her 906 photos of Helsinki and its citizens a hundred years ago are available from Finna.
The National Digital Library – and its public interface Finna – project aims to ensure that electronic materials of Finnish culture and science are managed with a high standard, are easily accessed and securely preserved well into the future.
Unfortunately Signe Brander was not able to rest peacefully on her laurels. As her eyesight and health deteriorated, she was hospitalised in 1941. Then the war broke out, and when the patients were transferred to a mental hospital outside Helsinki, more than a hundred of them tragically died of hunger in 1942, Brander among them.
In memoriam Mirkka Rekola 1931–2014
20 February 2014 | Authors, In the news
Mirkka Rekola. Photo: Elina Laukkarinen/WSOY
The poet and author Mirkka Rekola died on 5 February at the age of 82. From 1954 onwards she has written aphorisms, essays and 18 collections of poetry. Rekola was awarded many literary prizes, among them the Eino Leino prize (1979), the Finland prize (Suomi-palkinto, 1995) and the Dancing Bear poetry prize (1997). Her intellectual, linguistically brilliant poetry was not easy to translate – however, translations have appeared in Swedish, German, French, Hungarian, English and Macedonian.
The poet and translator Herbert Lomas wrote in his introduction to Rekola’s collection Valekuun reitti (‘The path of a false moon’) in 2004: ‘Mirkka Rekola was a minimalist before minimalism was invented.’ Her poems are, he said, ‘moments of crossing an edge towards an intenser awareness of the universe’s continuum, requiring us to wake up from sleep, as we do at times of heightened consciousness and love.’
At first light I put my hand
in the hollow of a white willow –
once someone's cigarette box
had been left there –
now a bird flew out
going seaward.
Touch of a wingquill on the back of my hand.
It flew higher.
In the evening
I felt its touch on my shoulder blade.
From Valekuun reitti, translated by Herbert Lomas
Happy birthday to us!
13 February 2014 | Letter from the Editors
Picture: Wikipedia
It’s been five years since Books from Finland went online, and we’re celebrating with a little bit of good news.
In the past year, the number of visits to the Books from Finland website has grown by 11 per cent. The number of US and UK readers grew by 29 per cent, while the number of readers in Germany – stimulated perhaps by the publicity Finnish literature is attracting as a result of its Guest Country status at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair – increased by an astonishing 59 per cent.
We’re chuffed, to put it mildly – and very thankful to you, dear readers, old and new. More…
Coffee with a twist
13 February 2014 | This 'n' that
The Italian food illustrator and artist Gianluca Biscalchin combines authors and coffees in this picture: an amusing quiz for any friend of literature. (We think Beckett is particularly incisive.)
One could try out the same method adapted to Finnish authors; it first comes to mind that there are names that would work the same way as Hemingway here. Pentti Saarikoski, the hard-drinking literary enfant terrible of the 1960s and 1970s (1937–1983), for example.
The comic writer Arto Paasilinna (born 1942; very popular in translation in Italy, by the way), surely, would have a pair of hare’s ears sticking out of his cup (his most-translated novel is Jäniksen vuosi, The year of the hare – L’anno della lepre).
The prolific lyric modernist, playwright and author Paavo Haavikko (1931–2008), would have a leafy tree in his cup, as one of his best collections of poetry is entitled Puut, kaikki heidän vihreytensä (‘The trees, all their green’).
And of course: out of Tove Jansson’s cup a moomintroll or a hemulen would peep out!
Puupää comics prizes 2014
13 February 2014 | In the news
Picture: Terhi Ekebom
The Finnish Comics Society was founded in 1971 and has since 1972 it annually awarded the Puupäähattu prize to an established Finnish comics artist. The prize is not money but a honorary hat – named after a classic Finnish cartoon character, Pekka Puupää (‘Pete Blockhead’), by Ola Fogelberg and later his daughter Toto. The Puupää comic books were published between 1925 and 1975, and some of the stories were made into films.
The 2014 Puupää prize was awarded to illustrator and comics artist Terhi Ekebom (born 1971). Ekbom began work as a comics artist in the early 1990s. Using diverse techniques, she often depicts feelings and states of minds. Her work has been shown at the Angoulême comics festival and has been published in English, French, Swedish and Czech.
A special title, sarjakuvaneuvos or ‘comics councillor’, was also awarded to two people; the comic artist Harri ‘Wallu’ Vaalio, and to the director of FILI, Iris Schwank who, as part of the Finnish Cultural Spring project held in France in 2008, commissioned a Finnish comics exhibition which attracted widespread attention. In her role at FILI Schwanck has been an energetic promoter of international visibility for Finnish comics.
3 x Runeberg: poet, cake & prize
5 February 2014 | This 'n' that
J.L. Runeberg. Painting by Albert Edelfelt, 1893. WIkipedia
Today, the fifth of February, marks the birthday of the poet J.L. Runeberg (1804–1877), writer, among other things, of the words of Finnish national anthem.
Runeberg’s birthday is celebrated among the literary community by the award of the Runeberg Prize for fiction; the winner is announced in Runeberg’s house, in the town of Borgå/Porvoo.
Runeberg’s favourite. Photo: Ville Koistinen
Mrs Runeberg, a mother of seven and also a writer, is said to have baked ‘Runeberg’s cakes’ for her husband, and these cakes are still sold on 5 February. Read more – and even find a recipe for them – by clicking our story Let us eat cake!
The Runeberg Prize 2014, worth €10,000, went to Hannu Raittila and his novel Terminaali (‘Terminal’, Siltala).
Hannu Raittila. Photo: Laura Malmivaara
According to the members of the prize jury – the literary scholar Rita Paqvalen, the author Sari Peltoniemi and the critic and writer Merja Leppälahti – they were unanimous in their decision; however, the winner of the 2013 Finlandia Prize for Fiction, Jokapäiväinen elämämme (‘Our everyday lives’) by Riikka Pelo, was also seriously considered.
Read more about the 2014 Runeberg shortlist In the news.
How much did Finland read?
30 January 2014 | In the news
The book year 2013 showed an overall decrease – again: now for the fifth time – in book sales: 2.3 per cent less than in 2012. Fiction for adults and children as well as non-fiction sold 3–5 per cent less, whereas textbooks sold 4 per cent more, as did paperbacks, 2 per cent. The results were published by the Finnish Book Publishers’ Association on 28 January.
The overall best-seller on the Finnish fiction list in 2013 was Me, Keisarinna (‘We, tsarina’, Otava), a novel about Catherine the Great by Laila Hirvisaari. Hirvisaari is a queen of editions with her historical novels mainly focusing on women’s lives and Karelia: her 40 novels have sold four million copies.
However, her latest book sold less well than usual, with 62,800 copies. This was much less than the two best-selling novels of 2012: both the Finlandia Prize winner, Is, Jää (‘Ice’) by Ulla-Lena Lundberg, and the latest book by Sofi Oksanen, Kun kyyhkyset katosivat (‘When the doves disappeared’), sold more than 100,000 copies.
The winner of the 2013 Finlandia Prize for Fiction, Riikka Pelo’s Jokapäiväinen elämämme (‘Our everyday life’, Teos) sold 45,300 copies and was at fourth place on the list. Pauliina Rauhala’s first novel, Taivaslaulu (‘Heaven song’, Gummerus), about the problems of a young couple within a religious revivalist movement that bans family planning was, slightly surprisingly, number nine with almost 30,000 copies.
The best-selling translated fiction list was – not surprisingly – dominated by crime literature: number one was Dan Brown’s Inferno, with 60,400 copies.
Number one on the non-fiction list was, also not surprisingly, Guinness World Records with 35,700 copies. Next came a biography of Nokia man Jorma Ollila. The winner of the Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction, Murtuneet mielet (‘Broken minds’, WSOY), sold 22,600 copies and was number seven on the list.
Eight books by the illustrator and comics writer Mauri Kunnas featured on the list of best-selling books for children and young people, with 105,000 copies sold. At 19th place was an Angry Birds book by Rovio Enterntainment. The winner of the Finlandia Junior Prize, Poika joka menetti muistinsa (‘The boy who lost his memory’, Otava), was at fifth place.
Kunnas was also number one on the Finnish comic books list – with his version of a 1960s rock band suspiciously reminiscent of the Rolling Stones – which added 12,400 copies to the figure of 105,000.
The best-selling e-book turned was a Fingerpori series comic book by Pertti Jarla: 13,700 copies. The sales of e-books are still very modest in Finland, despite the fact that the number of ten best-selling e-books, 87,000, grew from 2012 by 35,000 copies.
The cold fact is that Finns are buying fewer printed books. What can be done? Writing and publishing better and/or more interesting books and selling them more efficiently? Or is this just something we will have to accept in an era when books will have less and less significance in our lives?
Smarty pants?
9 January 2014 | This 'n' that
Culottes: 18th-century smartwear. Picture from ‘L’art du tailleur’ by Diderot & d’Alembert. Wikipedia
Eat your heart out, Angry Birds? Ever since the global success story of the Nokia phone company, Finns have been trying to rule the world with global electronic products. Among the latest achievements are analytical undies. The Finnish company Myontec has invented underwear embedded with electromyographic sensors, which measure the workings of your muscles and send the data to a computer.
Last year The New York Times gave the pants third place on their list of ‘32 Innovations that Will Change Your Tomorrow’.
What, you’re not athletic? You might stir from your sedentary slumber if your pants let you know how pathetically little you work out for your own good.
In late January Myontec’s smartshorts won the Sport & Fitness category at the Wearable Technology Innovations World Cup 2013/2014 in Munich. Who knows how far, globally, this will go? Smartpants, smartphones: perhaps your knickers will start talking one day – thus combining the advantages of two electronic appliances in which the Finns have expertise.
The books that sold in December
9 January 2014 | In the news
It seems that the Finlandia Prize does, as intended, have a strong influence in book sales. In December, a novel about the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva by Riikka Pelo, Jokapäiväinen elämämme (’Our everyday life’), which won the fiction prize in December, reached number one on the list of best-selling Finnish fiction.
The next four books on the list – compiled by the Finnish Booksellers’ Association – were the latest thriller by Ilkka Remes, Omertan liitto (‘The Omerta union’), a novel Me, keisarinna (‘We, the tsarina’), about the Russian empress Catherine the Great by Laila Hirvisaari, a novel, Hägring 38 (‘Mirage 38’), by Kjell Westö, and a novel, Kunkku (‘The king’), by Tuomas Kyrö.
The winner of the Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction, Murtuneet mielet (‘Broken minds’), about the mentally crippled Finnish soldiers in the Second World War, also did well: it was number two on the non-fiction list. (Number one was a book about a Finnish actor and television presenter, Ville Haapasalo, who trained at the theatre academy in St Petersburg and became a film star in Russia.)
The ten best-selling books for children and young people were all Finnish (and written in Finnish): it seems that this time the buyers of Christmas presents favoured books written by Finnish authors.
November favourites: what Finland read
19 December 2013 | In the news
Best-selling: ‘Singing songbook’, edited by Soili Perkiö
The November list of best-selling fiction and non-fiction, compiled by the Finnish Booksellers’ Association (lists in Finnish only) features thrillers, new Finnish fiction and biographies.
Number one of the Finnish fiction list was the latest thriller by Ilkka Remes, Omertan liitto (‘The Omerta union’, WSOY). It was followed by the latest novels by Tuomas Kyrö, Kunkku (‘The king’, Siltala), and Kari Hotakainen, Luonnon laki (‘The law of nature’).
The translated fiction list consisted of best-selling crime writers: Dan Brown, Liza Marklund, Jo Nesbø. The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro was number seven – and one of her books was at the top of the paperback fiction list.
Singing has inspired book-buyers so much that Soiva laulukirja (‘Singing songbook’, Tammi), edited by Soili Perkiö, was number one on the list of the books for children and young people: the push of a button delivers piano accompaniment to any of 50 Finnish songs – a clever idea. Perhaps it is popular with parents as entertainment for their kids on long car journeys?
The non-fiction list featured biographies of Jorma Ollila of Nokia fame, the banking tycoon Björn Wahlroos, Lauri Törni aka Larry Thorn who fought in three armies – those of Finland, Nazi Germany, and the US (he died in Vietnam in 1965) – an ice-hockey boss, Juhani Tamminen, and the sprinter Usain Bolt.