If you sit in your garden and feel a bit like you’re tucked uncomfortably at the end of the dock in a guest berth, the reason is this: the garden hasn’t yet found a place in your muscle memory. Because it is only at the point when the garden has settled into your muscle memory, into your senses in as many ways as possible, that it will feel like your own. And that, of course, takes working in the garden, not just sitting in it.

So you should know your rose – not just its lovely smell but also the memory that you get from the shovel handle of when you planted it, or even the memory of the prick of its thorn on your finger. You can anchor every little detail in your senses, and it doesn’t even take much imagination. The scent of thyme on your fingertips, the downy fluff of a pasque flower against your palm, the silken glow of a peony opening in the morning sunlight – or the sumptuous mist of the wee hours of a summer morning twining over everything, and the rare experience of wading through it.

Etching a garden into your muscle memory and senses doesn’t happen in a moment, or two moments; it’s a long-term project. If you’ve felt the yard work in your limbs many times, you can take consolation in knowing that without going to that trouble the garden will never be known to you, never be your own. Overdoing it, of course, is another matter. There’s no need to  break you back for the sake of your muscle memory (says the woman who has made that very mistake). We sense things at a different pace than you might think; we need to give our senses time, they need to be awakened. When, at the end of winter, we feel oversensitive to the light, the scents and sounds, it’s because we’re partly frozen. The long period in the sterile indoors has done its work.

A gardener is happiest when she’s worked on a spot for a long time and sees it come to fruition.  A yard can be got ready-made, but a garden is another matter. If you start at the very beginning, every square metre of the plot can be connected to muscle memory. The bite of a shovel here, shifting a stone there, planting, raking, perhaps edging a flower bed. You feel it in your bones, in your core – why not in your muscle memory?

It’s moving to hear how precisely garden people remember their garden tasks. The journey from planting your first apple seedling to the time when the tree produces its first edible apple. Or when, after twenty years, you finally see the candlestick blossoms of a horse chestnut tree, long after giving up hope. Or when a peony grown from seed has enough roots to divide, to grace the ages. I never tire of hearing garden stories.

When I run into an elderly friend, I feel a great gratitude: they’ve passed many a baton to me in one way or another. The world is  a very narrow place when all our doings are with people our own age. We should strive to live in both directions: reaching to what has been as well as ahead, to what will be. When we abandon old people to their own devices, in institutions or in other ways, we abandon our own future selves. With those kind of deeds we make our own future grim –  can we really afford that?A garden often functions as a calendar, a sort of an open, illustrated diary for those who work it. I maintain that for many older people the garden also stimulates the memory. The aesthetic experience that surrounds us in the garden arouses the senses, anchors images in our minds, calms and delights us, enlivens and makes whole again things that we thought we had lost. Memories are carved out of places, people, and things. People want to carry these things with them, as part of their identity. They don’t weigh us down at all, yet there is nothing more weighty. The moment we lose them, we lose ourselves. An inherited garden, passed down in the family, is a rare thing. It may be in the muscle memories of numerous generations, and that is really something. If you have the privilege of taking care of such an inherited garden, it can function for future generations not just as a garden, but also a bit like poems that the gardener has hidden away here and there. Each person will interpret it in their own way, though there are always those for whom such a poem holds no interest. When I see a bulldozer and builder’s booth in a fine, old garden, I’m overcome with an inexpressible sadness, even though there may be a good reason for it – serious matters like real estate sales, new apartments or roads. When an old garden goes, more than one garden is nullified.

A worker at the dump once told me what the saddest sight in the world is: photo albums in the trash. So many homeless memories that no one has time to grieve an individual photograph.

Plants don’t grieve, they generally grow where they are planted, or else they stop growing. They don’t remember us, but we remember them. New life will come to take their place, whether we like it or not.

I’m sitting in the evening on the largest stone in my garden, on Derelict Hill. There are so many mole tunnels that I wouldn’t wonder if the stone disappeared into the earth and took this green-thumb with it. I guess that would stay in my muscle memory, too.

Translated by Lola Rogers

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!

And, as the popular poet, MP, novelist and television celebrity Tommy Tabermann (born 1947) died in June, his collected poems, Runot 1970–2010 became number one of the list.

Sofi Oksanen’s highly popular novel Puhdistus (Purge) has kept itself on the list for a long time, was now at number three. Tuomas Kyrö’s humorous novel about a man in his 80s, Mielensäpahoittaja (‘Taking offense’) was at number seven, Pertti Jarla’s Fingerpori 3 at number eight and Leena Lander’s new novel Liekin lapset (‘Children of the flames’) at number ten.

The top ten list of translated fiction included works by Jo Nesbø, Charlaine Harris, John Irving, Donna Leon and Dagsson Hugleikur.

During the summer there’s clearly enough time for nature observations: The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a work presenting  birds’ sounds and a book on bugs and creepy crawlies were among the ten best-selling non-fiction books.

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.

The highest marks went to education. Finland’s school system has gained praise in recent years; in the OECD’s 2006 exams in science and reading, known as PISA tests, Finnish pupils scored the highest average results in the developed world, and they also came second in maths (beaten only by teenagers in South Korea). The story made  BBC News Headlines last spring.

Newsweek went on (August 16) by asking ‘Why cold, dark, small and depressive nations top the rankings’: the writer of this article, Andrei Codrescu, took up a few of the old clichés looking at what these cold, dark, small nations eat, assuming that ‘the smorgasbord itself must be an attempt to offset tedium, angst and monochromatism’.

Also, according to this article, quality of life ‘improves immensely when one must get as close to one’s beloved as possible to fend off the chill’, and the political environment is better as nobody wants to fight in the streets because it’s too cold – and, the writer continues, too bad the United States has written ‘the pursuit of happiness’ into its founding document, ‘thus guaranteeing that we’ll never be satisfied’.

Fortunately there are also other means to fight monochromatism in Finland than just the enjoyment of the smorgasbord (a Swedish word and concept…). And while we’re on the subject of Finnish food, the Financial Times (August 16) informed the world about the eating habits of the Moomins in an article entitled ‘Moomin marvellous’, as The Moomins Cookbook: An Introduction to Finnish Cuisine, with illustrations by the creator of the Moomins, Tove Jansson, was published in England. The Financial Times also offers three recipes from the Moomins’ cookbook for the reader to try out.

In a survey, entitled ‘No man is an Island’, conducted by the University of Cambridge in 2007, it turned out the happiest people in Europe were the Danes, and next came the Finns – people in the sunny southern countries of Italy, Portugal and Greece got the least joy out of life. The survey revealed that people in countries where they enjoy time with friends and family and have trust in government and national institutions were more likely to be happy than those who just happen to live in a sunny climate.

We (too) wonder whether it is possible to define accurately an ideal formula for well-being. But indeed, no man is an island, for as the 17th-century poet John Donne put it; ‘every man is a piece of the Continent’. Finns commented on the Newsweek results by confirming that they agree on the positive impact of things like reliable governmental and national institutions, a safe living environment, welfare state structures such as school systems and health services – and at the same time many expressed their serious concern as regards the vulnerability of these same structures (such as education and health services) in the future, as the ideology of the short-term market economy now tends to penetrate and affect society here, too.

Better slightly depressive in the dark than unhappy in the sunshine?

Rami Saari. Photo: Charlotta Boucht

This year the Finnish Government Prize for Translation of Finnish Literature – worth € 10,000 – was awarded to the poet, translator, linguist and literary critic Rami Saari who translates into Hebrew.

Saari (born 1963) has studied and taught Hebrew, Semitic languages and Finno-Ugric Language Studies at universities in Helsinki, Budapest and Jerusalem. He has been the editor of the Israeli section of the international poetry website poetryinternational.org since 2002 and has edited a book series for Ha-kibbutz hameuchad which publishes predominantly Nordic and Baltic literature.

Saari, who has also published seven collections of his own poetry, now lives in Athens. He has also translated Albanian, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, Hungarian and Estonian fiction.

Among the Finnish writers Saari has translated are Daniel Katz, Eeva Kilpi, Eino Leino, Veijo Meri, Timo K. Mukka, Sofi Oksanen, Arto Paasilinna, Raija Siekkinen, Eeva Tikka, Sirkka Turkka and Mika Waltari.

Rami Saari received his award in Helsinki on 25 August from the minister of culture and sports, Stefan Wallin. The prize has been awarded by the Ministry of Education and Culture since 1975 on the basis of a recommendation from FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange.

Helsinki people on the big wheel: Linnanmäki amusement park, 1968

Photographs and excerpts from Helsinki 1968 by Claire Aho and Kjell Westö (text in Finnish, Swedish and English; WSOY, 2010)

A year that rocked the world: 1968. The Vietnam War, the Chinese cultural revolution, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, hunger in Biafra. Helsinki that year: a quiet little city, in a quiet little country. But Finland’s baby-boomers, born after the war, were now coming of age, resulting in the beginnings of a change of generation in politics; and the students of Helsinki University  joined the global student unrest of this ‘crazy year’. Photographer Claire Aho takes a series of photographs of her home town, participating in an exhibition in Kiel, Germany. Forty-two years later her photos are published in Helsinki 1968, together with reflections by Kjell Westö, whose novels are deeply rooted in his native city. Here are words and images of Helsinki that mirror the past – and the present

Both the city and its people carry their past with them, find it hard to let go, and don’t really want to. Many of us are reluctant to embrace the new. Hence there is often something ambivalent, something enigmatic in the frozen moment of the photograph….

Winter footprints: a snowy street

Is it just nostalgia when I wonder if, in spite of the fact that many of the ideas current back then eventually led to drug addiction, terrorism and  totalitarian thinking, that era was not the last chance for us Westerners to do something about our own lack of restraint, to change our lifestyle altogether  in a saner, more sustainable direction?

And isn’t it awfully pessimistic to think like this? The moral imperative for a change of this kind is even greater today: we simply have to achieve it, otherwise our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have no future.

A clergyman is interviewed in a weekly magazine in 1968. The theme is lack of values and enduring morality, everything that was once solid and reliable  now seems to be melting into thin air. ‘The modern city dweller’s biggest problem is loneliness’, the clergyman says.

Fresh fish, good coffee? Business in the city

Forty-two years later, when for decades we have asked for everything and also expected to get it – more, more often, and better – over half of Finnish households experience loneliness, and it is even more prevalent today.

In a moving interview published in a weekly magazine in 1968, some men and women wonder, after being struck by misfortune: ‘Did we expect too much from life?’ As if Finland’s sorely-tried people still couldn’t believe that the emerging prosperity was real.

In the pram: on the way to the future

In Claire Aho’s photographs, the scarred memories of the old and the hunger for life of the young are both clearly visible. Now the old people in the photographs are gone, those who were young are growing old, and the toddlers of that year have turned forty.

The earth will soon have seven billion people, whereas in 1968 it only contained three and a half billion.

And Helsinki? Do we still live in a remote part of the world and the present age? Or has the distance disappeared?

Most of the distance has gone. Internationalisation began at a slow pace in the mid-1980s, but has since accelerated. In 1989 the Finnish Post Office employed people from twenty different countries. Today the company’s successor, Itella, employs twenty times as many foreign migrants, and they hail from 71 different countries.

The times may not always be what we perceive them to be, but one thing is certain: they change.

A spring weekend: Eteläsatama harbour, central Helsinki

Linnoista lähiöihin. Rakennetut kulttuuriympäristöt Suomessa

The 2009 inventory of the Finnish National Board of Antiquities includes about 1,300 nationally important built cultural environments, about a tenth of which are represented in this volume. The book introduces the reader to churches, mansions and military barracks, as well as to idyllic countryside and areas formed by industrial agglomerations. Reflected in the inventory is the diversity of the built landscape: the timber prefab districts and concrete housing estates, the reindeer fences of Lapland and the lighthouses of the archipelagos. On display are architectural masterpieces as well as everyday environments: hospitals, schools and prisons. Rural depopulation and urban sameness have changed the landscape in recent decades, but the book shows that much of value still remains. The book contains a list of all the inventory items, also available on the Board’s website (in Finnish and Swedish).

Lapin sydän. Etelän vieraat pohjoisen sielua etsimässä

Lapland and its myths have always inspired artists and tourists. In this book two  Lapland enthusiasts ponder the things that make Finns from the south return to the north over and over again. Former publisher Hannu Tarmio lost his heart to Lapland 60 years ago; Lasse Rantanen is a graphic designer who is building his own cabin in Savukoski, eastern Lapland. The book is illustrated with his ink-and-abrasive drawings. Tarmio discusses Sámi identity, the history of  log floating and gold panning, river pearl mussel fishing, alcohol use, mythology, and tourism and its impact on the environment. The book contains excerpts from literature on Lapland and portraits of its authors (including Yrjö Kokko, Timo Mukka and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää) and presents indigenous Lapps – one of them was Aleksi Hihnavaara, nicknamed Mosku, a legendary but controversial reindeer herder and hunter who fought the Russian Skolt reindeer poachers.

… The old people’s home is the strange hand of God with which he strokes
his thinning hair,
a sudden shower of cackling in the dry linen closet, slightly
sad and lonely
God looks out, stirring his cup of tea as if it were on fire.
If Jesus had lived to grow old and gone into an old people’s home,
he would have been like these.

Timo Harju was awarded the 2009 Kritiikin kannukset prize (‘the spurs of criticism’, 2009) of the Finnish Critics' Association, SARV. Photo: Pia Pettersson

This spring a young Finnish female nurse was sentenced to life imprisonment for using insulin to murder a 79-year-old mentally retarded patient. Not long after, sentence was passed on another nurse – this time a meek and submissive-looking middle-aged woman who had murdered a whole series of elderly patients with overdoses of medication.

These are the terms – those of ordinary crime journalism –  in which our recent public discussion of long-stay care of the elderly here in Finland was conducted. The discussion was followed by the usual misery of cuts, unchanged diapers, dehydration, over-medication, poor wages for hard work… No wonder that the concept of  ‘healthcare wills’ and ‘living wills’, in which people are supposed to say how they want to be cared for in the last stage of their lives – is acquiring a disturbing undertone of ‘better jump before you’re pushed.’

This is dangerous. Horror and social pornography are becoming the dominant genre of reporting on the care of the elderly. The horror is a part of the truth, but in the absence of  any counter-balancing narrative – the stories of good care, compassion, humour, grief, the preservation of individuality all the way to the moment of death – it simply leads to impoverishment of the imagination, and paralysis.

For this reason Timo Harju’s first collection Kastelimme heitä runsaasti kahvilla (‘We watered them abundantly with coffee’, Ntamo, 2009) is important and ground-breaking in not only a literary sense but also an ethical one.

The poems are based on his experience of working as a community service helper at a Finnish nursing home – a working environment filled with dentures, non-spill coffee mugs, diapers, dementia.

And don’t get the wrong idea – this is real poetry. The work involves communicating with people whose words and syntax are wasting away, or for whom the most basic routines of dressing, eating and taking care of personal hygiene are bizarre adventures.

It is work that not only requires physical strength and unshockability but also considerable linguistic prowess.

Harju (born 1980) has confronted the task with emotional openness and intellectual curiosity, describing it in different ways that range from things like

Hilma is a lozenge box full of talk, rattling and rustling to herself at the table.
One morning I went into her room: LOZENGE STORM

to

A dark toilet. Dingy clotheshangers. A dingy woollen blanket. At least five water mugs in different parts of the room. A dent. A wisp of hair. A wind. A white, flameless candle. The door a wobbly milk tooth. A crackling, a corridor. Blind stairs. Let loose.

There is something deeply ideological about Harju’s poetic project, his attempt to portray care work from a point of view other than that of social pornography. Devoid of all cutesiness or embellishment, he writes in an astute and nuanced way about the terrible, moving, sad but nonetheless valuable aspects of being old and needy. And I think that one of his aims is to  make us  understand something of vital importance about ourselves and our own destinies.

Each morning the nurses pull on rubber boots and leave
for the dark dark, for a dark swamp, in the dark swamp
when the gnarled pines howl, only a pack of diapers for a lamp.
Cotton-grass on granddad’s head, violence and homesickness they leave
for the dark swamp, with all their sighs and strained nerves
along hands elbows into the bogholes. They bake cakes
and open the oven door into the night, to make it cheerful with the smell.
A prize would be nice, but the nurses aren’t on the winning side.

The same thing is true of poets – they are also very seldom on the winning side. But luckily they go on writing all the same.

Translated by David McDuff