Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Kullervo the (anti)hero by Gene Kurkijärvi

Kullervo, Kalervo’s son
     snatched up the sharp sword
looks at it, turns it over
     asks it, questions it;
he asked his sword what it liked:
     did it have a mind
     to eat guilty flesh
to drink blood that was to blame?

That is the question. ‘To be, or not to be….’ Kullervo, in the Kalevala epic, chooses not to be. (Extract from Keith Bosley’s translation, Oxford University Press,1989.)

The epic, based on folk poetry but compiled by the scholar and writer Elias Lönnrot in 1830 and 1849, is set in a mythical past. It has inspired innumerable artists: writers (J.R.R. Tolkien was a fan), composers (most importantly for the Finns, Jean Sibelius), dramatists, painters and filmmakers.

The inspiration goes on; progressive rock and folk musicians, for instance, have long been using themes, stories and characters from this epic (now readable, in parts at least, in more than 50 languages).

The latest interpretation of the story of Kullervo takes the form of a graphic novel by Gene Kurkijärvi. It is a surrealist cyberpunk nightmare tinged with pitch-black comedy. It works! A classic tragedy, Kullervo now functions in a grim urban world where the heroes and villains are androids and weirdoes. Join the ride!

In the fields of education, health, quality of life, economic dynamism and political environment, the best country in the world is… Finland.

According to the American Newsweek magazine (August 15), Finland is now the best place to live – if you appreciate the factors of life mentioned above. On the list of a hundred  countries, Switzerland and Sweden were numbers two and three. More…

Stumbled upon: readers find Tommi Musturi's comic strip (June 10–June 18)

When Books from Finland was a printed journal, it was relatively easy to define its readership – now it is different: we are a part of the internet’s ecosystem, its surging and multifarious mass of knowledge.

Those who visit our pages may have the most diverse motives for wanting to read our articles – and they may travel surprising itineraries before arriving on Books from Finland’s pages, as we found out recently: StumbleUpon is still a fairly little-known service in Finland. Thus it took a while before we realised why so many of the comments about our piece on Tommi Musturi’s wordless comic strip, on colour and friendship, began with the words ‘I stumbled upon’… More…

A tower with a view: Olavinlinna (St Olaf's castle). Photo: Lola Rogers

Translator Lola Rogers (of, for example, Sofi Oksanen’s best-selling novel Purge), from Seattle, spent a few weeks in Finland, and went on a cruise on Lake Saimaa.

Olavinlinna (St Olaf’s castle), and the opera, in the city of Savonlinna, was one of her stops; take a look at her blog – you’ll perhaps recognise the the inventive 16th-century wall privies on the towers we wrote about a while ago. There are quite a few photos from Helsinki, too – from this hot, hot (too hot?) summer.

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No traveller can avoid toilets, as the internet service about.com (run by the company that owns the New York Times) points out on its Scandinavia travel website.

Thus, it may be reassuring to know that ‘the days of outhouses are numbered’, and in Finland there are no squat toilets, according to the experiences of the editor, Terri Mapes. (The concept of ‘Finlandic restrooms’, however, is a new one to us — as is, for that matter, the adjective ‘Finlandic’.)

However, under the title ‘Bad Things About Toilets in Finland’ you’ll be informed about the possibility of outhouses without running water, should you choose the option of wandering into the wildernesses. And as toilets at airports or train stations may occasionally smell bad, it is advisable to use the bathroom at your hotel, unless your needs are urgent of course. More…

C’est moi. Tribute. Eliza. Muse. Monica. Very Privé, Super Private.

These are names of shoes that women buy in luxury shops on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Six inches or more of heels that cost anything between 500 and 5,000 dollars, make walking torture; but pain is tolerated, as along with the shoes a woman acquires a deeply satisfying feeling of being envied, beautiful and sexy (her toe cleavage has to be clearly visible).

Mirja Tervo (born 1971) is an ethnologist who spent a year and a half selling luxury shoes in Manhattan. Among her fellow sales personnel were a medical doctor, a musician, an actor and a retired baseball pro.

The shoe salon paid no salary, just commission of ten per cent, and the required minimum sale per week was 3,500 dollars. If a sales person failed to sell merchandise worth this sum, he or she was given a loan of 300 dollars, payable immediately when the results improved, and they quickly had to. More…

Ismo Kajander: Miss France, 1998

‘Paris traverse la pensée comme une encyclopédie de la vie, où l’on découvre des passages, des cours intérieures, des ruelles et des autoroutes, toujours plus surprenants. La ville ne se vide ni n’abandonne jamais, n’accorde ni ne refuse.’

‘Paris permeates your mind like an encyclopaedia of life in which you will incessantly discover astonishing new passages, courtyards, alleys and avenues. It will never either run empty or surrender, it won’t admit or refuse.’

L’air de Paris / Pariisin tuoksu (‘Air of Paris’, Musta Taide, 2009) is an elegant little book that features artwork by Ismo Kajander and texts by Anna Kortelainen relating to the mother city of all artists. More…

Helvi Juvonen (1950s). Photo: WSOY

‘…A strange tapir / (the bi-coloured one) / a wondrous tapir (the many-toed one) / circles the tree, goes round and about, / a small word hangs from the tip of his snout….’

Helvi Juvonen (1919–1959) wrote nature-inspired poetry; she was a fan of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson, whose work she also translated. Her short adult life, in the drab Helsinki of the post-war years, was burdened by poverty and illness, and yet she wished to ‘toast the richness of our lives’.

The literary scholar Emily Jeremiah has translated a handful of Juvonen’s poems and takes a look at her work in this, the 15th part of a series devoted to classic Finnish authors (also available in our archive are essays about Kirsi Kunnas, Oscar Parland and Sirkka Turkka).

Jolly good! Young women celebrating the First of May in Helsinki in 1912. Photo: Ivan Timiryasev

How was city life for the single woman a hundred years ago in Helsinki?

She could ride a bike, for example, provided it was equipped with an ‘alarm system’ and the speed was not high. Socially she could have fun as long as she obeyed the rules. No admittance to restaurants without male company, for example.

Some young women in those days had to make a living by teaching or by working in an office – before they got married, of course.

A new exhibition (25 March–29 August) at Helsinki’s Ateneum art museum, entitled Kaupungin naiset (‘Women of the city’), focuses on the cultural life of young women in Helsinki in the 1910s through the eyes of the writer and critic L. Onerva (aka Hilja Onerva Lehtinen, 1882–1972). More…