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

It’s coming to an end now, but Helsinki has been experiencing its snowiest winter since the 1970s. Since Christmas the mercury has generally stayed ten to twenty degrees below zero.

People have long been complaining about the black ‘Euro winters’ – the arrival of really mild winter weather as a norm seemed to coincide with Finland’s membership of the European Union in 1995 – but now the boot’s on the other foot.

Speaking of which: young city people have gone on wearing their Converses, partly because they’ve never had to invest in proper winter footwear, partly to be cool. And it certainly has been.

Spring is almost here, but right now the forecast says there’s still time to ski. So, here are some suggestions we found on a maverick site called We Love Helsinki; open to everyone, this communal webzine (in Finnish only) features all sorts of material, from places to people, happenings, photos and observations, including a wryly ironic series on Helsinki’s most romantic places. Here are We Love Helsinki’s top tips for enjoying winter (translation below) in the city for those who haven’t really been through it before; they may also come in useful for any of our dear readers whose home cities are also experiencing unusually cold weather this year:

Snowsnow blahblahblah

The winter’s been going on for too long and it’s been gawped at too much already. If you’ve had enough of the tobogganing slope and complaining about the weather, here are some handy hints that we at We Love Helsinki have put together for enjoying the urban winter.

1. Eat snow. Go on,  e a t  it.
2. Live dangerously and walk close to the walls of houses. Just don’t look up, and don’t take any notice of the protective barriers that have been put in your way.
3. Lick a rotary clothesline. [Or anything else made of metal: it's thrillingly dangerous, as your tongue will stick. Ouch! The Editors]
4. The hours of daylight show an unpleasant tendency to increase towards spring. Minimise the effect by sleeping until six in the evening.
5. Enjoy the outdoors: take the train to work. [The Finnish rail services have been painfully ineffective this winter. The Editors]
6. Or save time and skate to work.
7. Ski. Just ski.
8. See if you can die of irritation by digging the wrong car out of the snow.

Comic books, graphic novels: the popularity of stories in pictures keeps on growing everywhere – and they may or not may be ‘comical’.

In Finland, sarjakuva (lit. serial picture) will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011. The first Finnish picture story, Professori Itikaisen tutkimusretki (‘Professor Itikainen’s expedition’, WSOY), by Ilmari Vainio, was published in 1911.

Ilmari Vainio (1892–1955) was a customs official who later also published two fairy tales and two handbooks for boy scouts. Professor Itikainen is a scientist who sets out on the sea and then finds himself, together with two brave seamen, facing various dangers in Africa, China and on the North Pole. A happy ending ensues in the form of safe arrival back in Helsinki on page 48. More…

A national favourite. Photo: Ville Koistinen

Here at Books from Finland central we’re celebrating, with the one Finnish literary anniversary that involves its own dedicated cake.

The fifth of February marks the birthday of the poet J.L. Runeberg (1804–1877)  – writer, among many other things, of the Finnish national anthem (actually unofficial, as there’s no mention of such a thing in the legislation), which he wrote in Swedish, Vårt land (in Finnish, Maamme). More…

Music from the fells: figures on a Sámi shaman's drum

The Sámi, or Lapp, people invented yoiking (juoiggus; in Finnish, joiku) aeons ago. Today, this monophonic vocal music, or chanting, is still practised by Sámi artists, among them Wimme Saari (born 1959 in Enontekiö, 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, a son of a reindeer herdsman), who’s brought a new dimension to this ancient art form. More…

Järjestelmällistämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän?

This is supposed to be the longest Finnish word. Lola Rogers interprets it as ‘You mean, not even (when it’s done) with their (usual) lack of systematization?’ More…

Helsinki Cathedral. Photo: Hans Põldoja

We’ve passed the solstice, so in principle the days are getting longer; but as we drag ourselves back into the office after the holidays, the mornings and evenings still seem pretty gloomy. We’re not complaining; further north, as the radio weather forecast reminds us daily, it’s even darker. Here, sunrise is after nine and sunset before four; further north, in Utsjoki, right up in the Arctic, it set in late November and won’t rise again until 16 January.

Still, even here, any glimmer of light is welcome. All over the city, at this time of year, SADS cafes spring up, with high-intensity light sources to combat seasonal affective disorder or, as we call it in the vernacular, the winter blues. The effect, especially after a couple of hours spent in an editorial board meeting, can be electrifying. More…

Diem Hy and her trademark curls

When you step outside your office, what do you see? Not the streets and buildings, although photographing them could be an interesting project too, especially when you live and work in a city as self-consciously monumental as Helsinki. No; we’re talking about the shifting landscape of people and their clothes, as documented in the primarily photographic website Hel Looks.

A ‘hobby project’ by Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen, Hel Looks documents fashion in the streets and clubs of Helsinki. It’s self-consciously a fashion project – in addition to documenting Finnish looks, Jokinen and Karjalainen want to ‘encourage people to dress and create their own styles… to promote emerging Finnish designers… because we like fashion, clothing, young people and photography.’

For us, though, the stories the pictures tell are more fascinating. Each entry shows one or two people. usually photographed in the street, accompanied by a brief quote from the subject. Some simply roll-call the designers they’re wearing, which may be interesting for the fashion pack but not so interesting for the rest of us. But others offer self-analyses that could, at the very least, furnish the beginnings of a short story. Diem Hy, 17, for example, is shown  in jeans and a second-hand leather jacket: ‘My hair is my trade mark. I’m not sure if I could live without my curls’; Simo, 18, likes ‘all clothes that date from before 1992’, Buster, 18, dresses in his grandfather’s clothes and likes to think ‘that I can dress old-fashioned but keep my mind fresh.’ Tiia, 22, simply ‘likes the colour blue’ (and indeed is dressed in nothing else). The range of selves, and self-presentations, is endless. Any authors in search of a character can simply apply here.

Father Christmas / Santa Claus by Mauri Kunnas

What to give the man who has everything? In prizewinning children’s author and illustrator Mauri Kunnas’s Twelve Gifts for Santa, Zac, one of Father Christmas’s little helpers, decides to give him twelve good deeds. Doing so is not as easy as it looks, however, and you can follow the twists and turns of the story on the Kidzone Finland advent calendar from Tuesday, 1 December, with one window opening each day until Christmas Eve.

Mauri Kunnas (born 1950) published the first of his popular picture books for children in 1980; entitled Koiramäen talossa (‘Doghill Farm’), it describes – with the accuracy of a treatise on folklore studies – life in a country farmhouse at the end of the 19th century. His hilarious canine characters, in more than forty books, have now found readers in almost thirty languages. More…

Tove Jansson (c. 1950)

If Tove Jansson’s Moomin books are, as we certainly believe here at Books from Finland, strangely little known in the wider world, the same is even truer of her books for adults.

Incredibly, the Moomins celebrate their 65th birthday in 2010, and have been translated into 40 languages. Jansson (1914–2001) wrote her last Moomin book – there are nine altogether – in 1970. Over the last thirty years of her life, she also wrote a total of 11 volumes – novels and short stories – for grown-ups. (Books from Finland published stories from many of them as they appeared. They will become available again as our digitisation project gets underway; meanwhile, here’s a story from Dockskåpet [‘The doll's house’, 1978].)

Back out there in the wider world, the tiny, Hampstead-based press Sort Of Books has since 2001 been introducing Jansson’s lesser-known works to British readers. Latest to appear is her bleakly unsettling novel The True Deceiver (Den ärliga bedragaren, 1982), the story of a strange young woman, Katri, who breaks into an elderly artist’s house and attempts to befriend her, for reasons of her own. More…

Hello Tatu – or is it Patu?: heroes from the popular children's books by Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen meet a fan. – Photo: Suomen Messut

A thousand people more than last year – a record total of 76,800 – attended the Helsinki Book Fair in late October. This year the event was particularly popular with families with children.

More than half of the visitors said they were interested primarily in writer guests, of whom the most popular were, not surprisingly, crime writers, among them Karin Slaughter from the US and Jens Lapidus from Sweden.

Two other fairs, entitled the Wine, Food and the Good Living and the Helsinki Music Fair, were held at the same time at the Helsinki Fairs Centre.

The theme country in 2010 – when the Book Fair celebrates its tenth anniversary – will be France.