An essay from Kulttuurin sekakäyttäjät (‘Culture-users’, Teos, 2011)

If a film camera had stood outside my home from the time when it was built, I would rewind the movie it made from the end to the beginning. The story would begin with my children, one autumn morning in 2011, walking backwards home from school. The speed of the rewind would be so fast that they would quickly grow smaller; I, too, would get thinner and start smoking. I would curiously seek out the point where my wife and I are seen together for the last time, stepping out of the front door, back first, and setting out on our own paths, to live our own separate young lives.

At that time my grandmother still lives in the house with her two daughters and their husbands, and lodgers upstairs. The next time I would slow the rewind would be the point where, at the age of 18, finally move out of the house. The freeze-frame reveals a strange figure: almost like me, but not quite. In the face of the lanky youth I seek my own children’s features.

When I let the film continue its backwards story, I seek glimpses of myself as a child. Even though we lived in distant Savo [in eastern Finland], we went to see my grandmother in the city of Tampere relatively often. We called her our Pispala grandmother, although her house was located to the west of the suburb limit, in Hyhky. I follow the arrival of my grown-up cousins, their transformation into children, the juvenation of my grandmother and her daughters, the changing lodgers. At some point the film becomes black-and-white.

My grandfather moves in when my mother is 11. I follow the young family’s life with interest up to the point when the house’s inhabitants move out and demolition begins. There are many people on the job, for the work is done carefully from top to bottom; planks are removed one at a time until all that is left is the house’s skeleton, which is itself soon dismembered into its parts. At the end of the film all that is left is an empty site. There my grandfather walks backwards sketching the external dimensions of his future – or, in this version of the story, his former – house.

When you increase the speed of the movie, you realise that many people go in and out of the house’s doors. It looks as if a revolving door has gone made and is, by turns, sucking people in and chucking them out – them and their belongings. The changing seasons follow their even cycle, leaves changing from browny-red and –yellow to deep green and then pale buds, finally disappearing completely into the wrinkles of the bare branches. The colour of the house brightens and fades, and the birch trees that stand outside it atrophy to saplings that are then dug up and carried away.

I derive particular pleasure from seeing the pastel-coloured two-storey buildings that went up behind the house in the 1980s and 1980s demolished; in their place rise little wooden houses with vegetable gardens. At some point, too, potatoes grow in the garden of my house.

I have been told that gazing backwards is an activity that increases with age. People begin to seek explanations of themselves in the past, their family roots, the places they have visited. Perhaps, in every person’s life, there is a watershed; once one has passed it, one turns one’s gaze back in the direction from which one has come. I myself am still travelling with my gaze fixed firmly forward, but on the level of ideas I understand the wisdom that is hidden in history. It is clear that I would not be as I am if I had not lived the kind of life I have lived, if my parents’ backgrounds and choices had not been those they were. And I would not be myself if I had not lived where I have lived, moved from place to place and finally ended up in the family home, the same house where my grandmother brought up her family and where my parents celebrated their wedding. My family’s path is a circular one, and I have clearly been unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to stray from it.

As well as revealing the ingredients of the individual identity and the youth of the built environment, looking at the past backwards demonstrates the fact that history is constant motion. People travel in groups of different sizes, first in aeroplanes, cars, trains and ocean-going ships, then in horse-drawn waggons and finally walking backwards, toward their place of birth, their starting point, their home. Stopping is always temporary, a break in the torrent of history.

If you continue rewinding far enough, there is no trace of nation-states, civilisations, cities or villages, not stone upon another stone, not even the first sign of them. If the camera had stood in the same place before my home since the ice age, I would be able to follow backwards human life right back to the appearance of the ice masses. Standing on the best crossing-point on the ridge between Lake Pyhäjärvi and Lake Näsijärvi, Hyhky was already an important route for the people of the stone age.

In his essay Die grosse Wanderung (‘The great migration’), the German essayist and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger examines the world from the top of a great pile of books. His pen encompasses both the movement of nations on the surface of the earth and the most secret aims and motives of individuals. Enzensberger writes directly in the tradition of European knowledge and understanding.

At the beginning of his essay, Enzensberger leafs through a world atlas: ‘Clusters of blue and red arrows that thicken into eddies and then disperse in opposite directions.’ The freeze-frame of a page of the atlas toes not, however, reveal turbulence to be the normal state of the climate. The same is true of the population of the globe, Enzensberger comments. The history of the world is the history of great migration.

In his essay on the great migration Enzensberger is attempting – so I believe – a dynamic image of a dynamic phenomenon. One method he uses is some human experiments he presents as a thought experiment: There is a train compartment in which two travellers are sitting. The train stops, and two new travellers attempt to enter the compartment in which the original travellers, irrespective of whether they already know each other, feel their position to be under threat: ‘They appear, in the eyes of the new arrivals, to form a group. The compartment is their territory. Every new traveller is, for them, an intruder.’ The essay’s characters are, of course, theoretical constructions whose intention is to demonstrate social laws.

The essayist knows how to package the phenomena he describes as aphorisms: ‘Group egoism and xenophobia are anthropological constants which existed before reasons for them were expressed. Their global spread speak for the fact that they are older than any known social form.’ In a masterly way, the essayist’s pen shapes a rational explanation of complex historical developments such as the birth of hospitality. Its taboos and rituals were invented, Enzensberger comments, ‘to make it possible for even minimum exchange and communication between different clans, tribes and ethnic groups’. The mechanisms and dynamics of the great migration, with their causes and consequences, are drawn for the reader in broad, convincing strokes.

But where is the essay’s narrator? Although his gaze is unlimited in terms of either time or geography, it does not appear to be located anywhere – unless the European essayistic tradition is considered some kind of point of view.

I test Enzensberger’s writerly location by exchanging my fixed historical camera for a divine perspective. I rise to the height of a satellite and orbit the Earth beneath me in whatever way I wish. Oceans and deserts, forests and cities flash by, blue, yellow, green and black on the surface of the ball as it spins on its axis. If I notice something interesting I zoom in to look at it. As I examine people on the move I narrow my eyes until all I see is motion, currents, streaks of light. Seen from a suitable distance, the Earth’s crust begins to live like the surface of an ant-heap. I am a great and powerful anthropographer; I see the forest but not the trees, the torrent but not the droplets.

As a celestial statistician I am able to see at one glance that 214 million people live permanently outside their native lands. I am able to abstract the movements of groups of human beings into arrows pointing from south to north, east to west. The stream is, however, the strongest in the southern hemisphere. The demographic calculations I make confirm my visual observations: among the lands people are leaving Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are the top three, while the best results for receptor countries are Pakistan, Syria and Iran.

As an all-knowing narrator, I have the ability to move in time. I set the clock of history so that I am able to follow the complex movement of peoples across the Earth. Migrations that have lasted centuries take place before my eyes in a few minutes. I watch as people spread throughout the world, encounter one another, settle down and then continue on their travels, endlessly. I focus on situations in which two peoples approach each other from opposite directions. I see mergings into one, trade, exchange of ideas and goods, but also battles and wars, genocides and conquests. The movements of peoples on the atlas of history, however, do not move me a great deal, for what, seen close up, forces one to ponder the senselessness of human activity is, from the cosmological perspective, a meaningless glimpse in the rushing stream of time.

Enzensberger, too, emphasises the importance of scale: ‘It is difficult to imagine big numbers.’ Charities offering help in catastrophes, too, focus on ‘just one small child with its big, inconsolable eyes’. Nevertheless, Enzensberger does not ponder the role of science, and the tradition of thought that he represents does not question the position of the narrator. The fact that the essayist examines the world from the outside is such a well-worn device that it is no longer considered a device. We are unable to wonder at the omnipotence, the impartiality, of the writer who comments on the world as God.

For this reason the essayist must write himself into the story, must step into and inhabit the world he wishes to describe and understand.

The return to the surface of the ant-heap is not easy, for the powers of vision of the almighty have intoxicated me. Whereas, just a moment ago, I was examining human life at the scale of the universe and understood the insignificance of the individual in the torrent of history, now I stand, toes numb, in the autumnal garden of my home, the burden of meanings on my shoulders. I gaze around me, but in every direction my gaze founders on trees, hedges and houses squatting in their gardens. I can no longer see farther than my everyday life. There is no sign of the historical movie camera, there is only this moment, which itself dissolves second by second beyond reach.

Absentmindedly, I move the children’s bikes strewn around the garden to lean against the walls of the house, out of the way of cars. Just a moment ago I unscrewed the auxiliary wheels and pushed both children, turn by turn, along the nearby park road, until, after many falls and tears, they learned to ride without support. Fortunately I still have time before the revolving door of history chucks them out of our home.

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Vakauden kaipuu. Kylmän sodan loppu ja Suomi

From Finland’s perspective, the termination of the Cold War era encompassed three significant processes: the Soviet Union’s policy of perestroika, or reform, and the disintegration of its empire; the end of the international arms race and the rise of joint security as a policy aim of the superpowers; and increasing European integration. This book devotes individual chapters to two phases of Finnish foreign policy – interpretation of the Paris Peace Treaty and Finland’s withdrawal from the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, which it had signed with the Soviet Union in 1948. The second part of the book focuses on the years 1992–94, when Finland applied to become a member of the European Union and forged relations with the new Russia. Finland’s position in those years was defined by Mauno Koivisto, a cautious president, whose memoirs have served as a key source of material for Blomberg. The negotiations surrounding the region of Karelia, which was ceded to the Soviet Union after the war, are illuminated further here. As a Finnish ambassador, Blomberg served in key roles within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs from the late 1980s to the early 21st century.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Cornflower and ear of oats: one of the several Fabergé gemstone ornaments now owned by Queen Elizabeth of England (gold, rock crystal, diamonds, enamel, ca 18 cm)

Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm
Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit
[Fabergé’s Finnish masters]
Design: Jukka Aalto/Armadillo Graphics
Helsinki: Tammi, 2011. 271 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-31-5878-1
€57, hardback

In its online shop, the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg sells a copy of a most delicate, enchanting little nephrite-and-opal lily of the valley that perfectly imitates nature, sitting in a vase made of rock crystal that looks like a glass of water.

These small flowers made of gold and gemstones were manufactured by the jeweller Fabergé a hundred years ago. The lily of the valley was the most frequently used floral motif in the Fabergé workshops ­–  it was the favourite flower of Empress Alexandra (1872–1918), and the imperial family was the the foremost client of the world’s foremost jeweller.

The replica (13.5 centimetres high) is available at the Hermitage as a ‘luxury gift’ for the price of mere  $3,300. (N.B. Since we published this review, the ‘luxury gift’ items seem to have disappeared from the Hermitage online shop selection, so we have removed the link. Several Fabergé egg replicas are available though, ranging in price from $200 upwards – link below.)

For those who feel the price is excessive, there is  also a rather modestly-priced little bay tree (original: gold, Siberian nephrite, diamonds, amethysts, pearls, citrines, agates and rubies as well as natural feathers, about 30 centimetres tall, featuring a little bird that emerges flapping its wings and singing when a small key is turned) at just $ 219,95. Despite its form, it is classified as one of the famous imperial Easter eggs. (However, as I write, this item is unfortunately sold out…)

In the world of the unfathomably rich, in this instance the imperial family and their circle, it was not just the obvious items  – jewellery and ornaments such as the famous Easter eggs, gifts of the family members to each other – that were made of the most precious materials. Naturally also the handles of parasols had to be loaded with diamonds, golden cigarette cases studded with rubies, thermometers made of coloured gold and jewels.

Siberian aquamarine: Albert Holmström's design of 1909. The pendant could also be used as a brooch

The last imperial family of Russia in 1914: from left, Grand Duchesses Olga and Maria, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Anastasia, Prince Alexey and Grand Duchess Tatyana. The elder daughters wear necklaces designed by the Finnish designer Alma Pihl

So, St Petersburg of the late 19th and early 20th century offered plenty of work for goldsmiths, clocksmiths, gem-cutters and jewellers. The most famous of them, Karl Fabergé (1847–1920), was a son of the French goldsmith Gustave Favry (Fabergé after he established a business in St Petersburg in the 1840s). Karl was well-trained and well-travelled; as the century changed, he had become the purveyor of fine jewels not only to the Tsar but also to the rulers of Sweden and Norway. He employed more than 500 people.

Fabergé’s first and closest business partner was a Finn: Hiskias Pöntinen (1823–1881, later Pendin) was originally a poor lad from the small town of Mikkeli in eastern Finland, who had come to St Petersburg to look for work. He eventually became a skilful jeweller, and it was he who taught Karl the basics of his trade.

Bolshaya Morskaya 24, 1903: Master August Hollming is in the centre of the photograph

Karl Fabergé worked with 24 goldsmiths, all of whom led their own workshops, and 14 of them were Finnish: he regarded Finns particularly skilled craftsmen as well as honest and reliable employees. The workshops were fully employed by Fabergé, and their production was sold to him exclusively.

Clock with a cockerel: Mme Beatrice Ephrussi, a heiress of the Rothschild family, gave this clock topped with a cockerel (by Mikhail Perkhin of Fabergé) to her brother as an engagement present in 1902

After the outbreak of the Revolution in late 1917 and the murder of the imperial family the following year, Fabergé’s trade was finished, and he left the country. As most of the Finnish craftsmen had no more work either, many of them  returned to their now independent homeland.

Among them was jewellery designer Alma Pihl (1888–1976). Alma’s father was the Finnish goldsmith Knut Oskar Pihl, and she was born in Moscow. She began to work in her uncle Albert Holmström’s workshop in St Petersburg and without any formal training became a skilful and remarkable Fabergé designer: a very rare career for a woman.

Alma designed many pieces of jewellery for Emanuel Nobel, the head of the Nobel oil industries, who ordered dozens of brooches, necklaces, bracelets and pendants, all decorated with Alma’s inventive ice-crystal and snowflake designs. Nobel donated them to his business associates and guests all over Europe.

The greatest achievement of her career, however, is the Winter Egg of 1913, a gift from the Tsar to his mother, the dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna: a staggering 1308 diamonds are set on the eggshell, and a further 1378 in the basket of tiny white anemones inside the egg, made of white quartz. The egg stands on a pedestal of Siberian mountain crystal. Alma’s design was excecuted by her uncle, and it was the most expensive of the 50 imperial Easter eggs made by Fabergé.

The  Revolution dispersed them all – the people, the eggs, the jewellery, the clocks and the parasols. The pictures of these priceless luxuries inevitably bring to mind the masses of people in vast old Russia: those who lived in serfdom and exploitation and whose slavery had provided the ruling class with the means to live the lives they chose.

After the Revolution, Alma and her husband had to return to Finland to find work. From 1927 until her retirement in 1951 she held a post as an arts teacher at a secondary school. She never spoke of her flourishing career as a jewellery designer in imperial St Petersburg.

A rare gem: Alma Pihl (1888–1976), Finnish self-made woman whose career at Fabergè was brilliant but short

Alma Pihl’s designs were fresh and new, inspired by Art Nouveau and modernism. It is a pity her career was cut short, writes Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm, an art historian who is herself a Finnish goldsmith of the fourth generation. Her book, which is an edited version of an earlier work – Fabergé, a limited edition published in 2008. Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit concentrates on the craftspeople who designed and manufactured the objects which were realised with the buyers’ unlimited financial resources – an Easter egg might require the work of one man for a whole year.

3,046 diamonds: the Winter Egg (platinum, gold, rock crystal, moonstone, white quartz, nephrite, demantoid granates, ca 14 cm, 1913) was an Easter present from the Tsar to his mother

Tillander-Godenhielm points out that Finnish goldsmithing benefited greatly from the skill and experience of the tradespeople who moved to Finland after the Revolution. The art of jewellery that flourished in St Petersburg and was passed on by apprenticeship became practiced in Finland, too.

Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit is a thoroughly well-researched, handsomely illustrated, beautifully printed work. (An English-language version would probably find an interested  readership.) It turns the spotlight on to the numerous anonymous hands that made so many precious objects for emperors and lesser princes – and not just Finnish hands; the book offers a wealth of information about the turbulent years of the late 19th and early 20th century when money was no obstacle, and when the lack of it set the world on fire.

Most of Fabergé’s artefacts disappeared from Russia. Some of the now incredibly expensive and coveted collectors’ items have also now returned to Russia – after the years of Revolution and the Soviet Union. Alma Pihl’s magnificent Winter Egg is now owned by a private collector in Qatar.

Kapiot, kartanot, rykmentit. Erään aatelissuvun elämäntapa 1700-luvun Ruotsissa

This book deals with the lifestyles, finances and consumption habits of the high nobility of Sweden in the 18th century (which included Finland at that time). The central figure is Count Axel von Fersen (1719–1794), a very influential statesman and soldier, and his German-Baltic lineage. This portrait broadens into a lifestyle study, providing extensive information on the customs and the world of the nobility of that era, such as the institution of marriage, child-rearing, mistresses, clothing and interior decor – as indicators of one’s social status – artistic activities, games and gastronomy. The topic of consumption is linked to social, cultural, ideological and legal perspectives. In the lives of the high nobility, money – or lack thereof – was not a defining feature; rather, choices were governed by ideals, values and obligations such as honour, reputation, faith and origin. Johanna Ilmakunnas is a historical researcher and editor. This book is based on her award-winning doctoral thesis (2009).
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Paholaisen biografia. Pahan olemus, historia ja tulevaisuus

This book is a chronological study of the Devil, seen through the history of ideas and cultural history. As the Devil is mainly a concept in Christian theology, the most profound studies of his essence have been carried out by experts of this field. The book also studies the Devil’s ‘disciples’, demons, and beliefs related to them. The main theme of the work consists of the history of diabology and demonology, from the Old Testament to contemporary theology. Another central theme is the theological dilemma of why God allows evil and suffering. In the cultural history section the author concentrates on the practical implications of belief in the Devil in different ages as well as parallel phenomena such as possession and belief in witchcraft. Folk tales about the Devil and descriptions of his putative looks as well as some classic works of fiction featuring the Devil are discussed. Kari Kuula is doctor of theology and priest who has published several non-fiction books on the Bible and Christianity.

Dagbok förd under min resa i Centralasien och Kina 1906–07–08, Vol 1–3

Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867–1951), a Finnish officer in the Imperial Russian Army, later Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Army and President of Finland, undertook a military reconnaissance mission, posing as an academic researcher, to Central Asia and China in 1906–1908. His journey on horseback across Asia to Peking also generated a wealth of ethnographic material: field notes, photographs and artefacts. In his travel diaries, Mannerheim describes the landscapes as well as his diverse encounters with the inhabitants of the areas he travelled through. During his visit to a Tibetan monastery, Mannerheim was pelted with stones by pilgrims. He gave the Dalai Lama an automatic pistol as a gift. These journals are now being published in full for the first time in their original language, Swedish, including Mannerheim’s own notes concerning his military mission. The photographs, some of which have never been published before, show that Mannerheim was a skilled photographer. Harry Halén, an expert in Central Asian languages and cultures, has contributed an extensive preface and copious notes.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

‘Why do some people choose to expend what is often a great deal of effort hammering images in the bedrock itself, while others conjure up, in the blink of an eye, brilliantly radiant pictures on a rock-face that was empty yesterday but is now peopled by mythological animals, spirits and shamans?

‘I think about this often – I who love painting but who still chose a career that involves me sitting and hammering away, day in and day out, like a true rock-carver,’ writes author and ethnologist Ulla-Lena Lundberg in her new book on the art of the primeval man

When the children of Israel went into Babylonian captivity, hanging up their harps on the willow-trees and weeping as they remembered Zion, my sister and I were already sitting by the rivers of Babylon. We knew how they felt. Our father was dead and we had been sent away from our home. We sat there clinging to each other, or rather I was the one clinging to Gunilla, and she had to try to rouse herself and find something for us to do, to give us something else to think about.

‘Come and look!’ she would say.  And I would go and look, because I wanted so much to be distracted, to be a bit happier. When my father died I had only just begun to talk. His death put a stop to that, and we had to start from the beginning again. Gunilla taught me what everything in the world was called, and when I got a bit older she knew the answers to all my whys and hows. Everything I knew I had learned from Gunilla. She had arrived in the world fully-formed, whereas I was a wet, shapeless lump that needed serious work if it was ever to amount to anything. My sister loyally shouldered that responsibility.

Long afterwards, when she was already seriously ill, she read Martin Andersen Nexø’s memoirs. She related how he had been forced to drag his little sister around with him throughout his childhood. Tears came to my eyes.

‘And that’s just what you had to do too!’ I said.

She looked at me kindly.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That was different.’

‘Different how?’

‘Because you were the one who was my sister,’ she said.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it, because there may well be some compensation to be had from someone who believes in you unquestioningly and who agrees to everything you suggest. Everything Gunilla liked I liked too. It was fortunate for me that she was an intellectual, deeply interested in nature and culture. Thanks to her, I didn’t have to make any time-consuming detours before working out where my own inclinations lay.

We shared each other’s experiences, and, because there were two of us, we were a bit braver, a bit more adventurous, than if we had each been alone. As a child I was always scared: without Gunilla I would hardly have dared move. But together we ventured out into the world, me slightly behind her, but still able to see what was going on. It was a good position in which to grow up and muster courage. And I learned an incredible amount; thanks to Gunilla, I had a two-year head-start in many different areas.

The great advantage when I started school was that it meant Gunilla could borrow twice as many books. I was too shy and timid to pick out a single book for myself from the school library, but Gunilla borrowed books for both of us, taking half of them out on my card. Then we would walk home with the books in our school-bags, scarcely able to contain ourselves until we could start reading. Our cheeks glowing, we would lie on the floor, each of us reading a book, and then, when we had finished, we would swap with each other.

During the summer we would go on geographic expeditions in the rowing boat, and learn to identify birds and plants. It was quite natural that archaeology – what we called ‘in the olden days’ – became one of our great interests. We spent our earliest years on the site of the medieval Franciscan monastery on the island of Kökar. Not far from there is the recently excavated Bronze-Age dwelling of Otterböte. In Granboda, where our grandfather lived, Iron-Age burial sites exist alongside the current settlement. Our mother grew up on the heavy clay soil of Gammelgård in Esbo, on what had been the seabed during the Stone Age. Someone once dropped a stone axe in the sea, and it turned up in the middle of one of our fields.

All the while that you take an interest in various things, learning and talking, thinking and fantasising about them, you calm down and start to imagine what your future life might be like. As adults we lived in different places, but stayed best friends and were in very regular contact. Gunilla became a librarian and, after her years in Africa, married and settled in England, a country we had got to know from Enid Blyton as a magical place riddled with secret passageways and full of tinned food. In reality it consists of layer upon layer of archaeology and history, wherever you look. Every one of my visits to Gunilla involved prehistoric sites, an abiding shared interest.

For my part, I wrote and read and travelled and imagined that my life would always be like that. You go through life as best you can, first on healthy legs, then suddenly one day with a limp in your left leg and a terrible back. Sitting down is difficult, lying down is difficult: from experience I know that the princess in the fairy-tale with the pea in her bed suffered from a slipped disc. Long journeys and ambitious clambering were no longer feasible. It was time for comfortable and well-organised archaeological trips in Europe, and I spent the following years working my way through the great Ice-Age caves in the South of Europe armed with a stick and a supporting corset, with Gunilla at my side.

Doing sensible things gives you time to get well again, and over time I was almost back to normal. We could revert to making our own expeditions, and were hopeful that this would continue for a good while yet. But towards the end of 2002 Gunilla was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, a name which describes exactly what the disease involves. In a very short time she was badly disabled, and Nigel Kelly, her husband, and I started to organise wheelchair trips. Two months before she died we travelled to Brittany, for a successful exploration of the great mystery left by the region’s prehistoric inhabitants in the form of processional roads and barrows. We managed to get all the way out to the island of Gavrinis and inside the magnificent passage grave with its richly ornamented stonework, not only a grave but a centre of the universe.

There we stood on the edge, unafraid. She was having trouble talking by this time, I was the one calling ‘Come and look!’, just as she had taught me to look at the world around me when we were young. In Gavrinis we had reached a conclusion – complicated, unintelligible. No answer, but a vast space for insight and farewells.

Gavrinis

Do you think the grave is too deep?

Passage grave: the entrance of the cairn on Gavrinis Island, Brittany. Photo: Wikipedia

From now on I will be evaluating archaeological sites according to the wheelchair principle. If I can manage to push a wheelchair then the site is okay. If not, then it’s useless.

Carnac is okay. We’ve reached April 2005, and Gunilla is confined to a wheelchair. And I, who so want to give her the wings of the morning, walk behind and push, or hold her under the arms for the short stretches that she can walk. It is what it is, in other words, a thoroughly successful trip, and the one which turned out to be her last….

We reach Roscoff, then there is a car trip down through Brittany, an astonishingly wild and beautiful landscape with mountains, vast areas of heathland, the smell of herbs, and, in the south-east, Carnac, the central point of an extensive and spatially arranged sacred landscape which has no equivalent in modern architecture. We stay at a B&B just outside the town, owned by a true Breton, where we have a whole little floor to ourselves and are served magnificent breakfasts. We’ve never stayed anywhere as nice as this on our travels, and the three of us often forget how ill Gunilla is: we’re on one of our usual archaeological trips, making the most of everything we see….

We manage to see a deeply satisfying number of ancient monuments in Carnac, both the big, official ones that indicate the presence of a central authority out of all proportion to the relatively modest population of farmers and fishermen who lived in the area, and quite a number of almost private burial mounds, some small stone circles and some standing stones that seem to have had a more local function. The whole chronology of Carnac is anchored in the Stone Age: no metal tools were used here. Even so, immense stone projects were undertaken, projects that few people would have seen completed in their lifetime. Here long-term planning was combined with the short perspective of individual lives. How did this society really fit together? Who had the necessary oversight, the authority for this sort of all-encompassing central planning, stretching over several generations? How could the immense outlay of labour be justified among people who were relatively short-lived? Something drove them to it. Religious devotion? Slave drivers? Priests, seers and oracles who were convinced it was necessary to ensure the continuation of our wretched existence on earth?

I admit that I find it easier to understand cave art and art on rock-faces and under overhangs than the predominantly abstract art associated with vast stone projects like grave chambers and processional roads. Maybe the explanation is simply that I am happy to imagine myself painting, and even carving, but I could never break my back on these insane stone-shifting projects.

I was hoping that Gavrinis might supply some answers. It is a huge passage grave, on an island outside Larmor-Baden, where an entire landscape has been constructed around the meticulously carved stone walls of the burial chamber. During the Neolithic Age the sea-level was a good deal lower than today, which meant that Gavrinis was part of the mainland and thus connected to the many stone monuments and barrows of Locmariaquer, across the Auray River.

It is by no means certain that we are even going to get there, and we nervously check the weather and timetables. A small pleasure boat takes visitors to the island, and if they say there’s no space for a wheelchair then we’re finished. We didn’t check beforehand, so that they couldn’t say no in advance. But everything goes well on the quayside. The wheelchair folds flat and Gunilla is light as a feather. It’s nice being out at sea, and we get the chance to see the Er Lannic stone circle, half visible above the water, a good illustration of how much higher the sea-level is today. It acts as a reminder of the fact that many less spectacular ancient sites, like the foundations of huts and other secular constructions, have been lost to the sea.

In those days Gavrinis was perched even higher than it is today, but pushing the wheelchair up the gravel track is still tough. But then we are there, confronted with a multi-layered mystery. It has been dated to approximately 3500 BCE, slightly older than Newgrange and Knowth [County Meath, Ireland], but it had an even shorter life than Newgrange: after just five hundred years, around 3000 BCE, the entrance was blocked off. The corridor was filled with stones, a wooden construction in front of the entrance was burned down, and the whole façade was covered with rocks, soil and sand. After that the site was abandoned, another sign that is simply isn’t possible to talk about a single culture, or even any continuity in the way religion was practiced, during the 3000 years or so that the area functioned as a sacred landscape.

Gavrinis stones: replica of a part of the passage, Bougon Museum. Photo: Athinaios@en.wikipedia

In later times grave-robbers broke into the burial chamber from outside. It was empty when restoration work began in 1979. Compared with the vast size of the mound, 50 metres in diameter and seven metres high, the chamber itself is tiny, just 4 x 4 metres, while the corridor leading to it is 17 metres long. If it was a burial chamber, was it reserved for a single ruling family and then sealed when the family’s time was over? We have no idea; but we stand and blink like moles at the ornamentation which stands out, neatly carved and confident, on the large stone-blocks that form the walls of the corridor and its only slightly wider culmination, the chamber itself. The blocks are stone, but look like clay: tight circles stand out, as though they were made by a finger running round and round through considerably softer material.

They look almost like massively enlarged fingerprints, but naturally have another function. Among all these roundels and half-roundels there are also bordering areas of ornamentation and other types of decoration: elegantly plaited bands, snakelike zigzag patterns, and very delicately carved narrow, pointed stone axes. And yes, up on the ceiling, on the underside of the massive block of stone that covers the whole chamber, the oxen with great horns taken from one of the megaliths in Locmariaquer. And, tucked in among the larger blocks forming the walls, a smaller stone with a carving of an axe with a handle which probably also comes from one of the stones there.

The concentration of all these carvings, largely non-figurative or stylised, makes an overwhelming impression, as if all the artistic skill of Carnac were concentrated here, below ground. It looks incredibly organised and calculated – yet at the same time there are small incongruous elements that suggest haste and even sloppiness.

How else do we explain why five of the wall-stones in the corridor are undecorated, and why a couple of them aren’t completely covered in engravings? Some of the stones were carved on site, others made elsewhere and brought here already decorated. Not to mention the fact that they made use of the megaliths at Locmariaquer to get hold of the massive roof stone with its engraved image. The opening to the passage faces southeast, but not so that the sun ever reaches the passage or the chamber; maybe this was never the intention, and Newgrange is the exception, but it could also be a mistake.

Like fingerprints: a decorated slab within the passage. Photo: Athinaios@en.wikipedia

Somehow you get a sense of terrible haste, as if the foreman was running late and was trying desperately to get everything finished so as not to come to a premature end himself. Ancient sites usually make a tranquil impression, but at Gavrinis it is as if one is witnessing the arrival of haste into the world. The more you hurry, the more things go wrong, and the more time you need to put it right. In the end the foreman stands there breathing shallowly at the entrance, telling the torch-bearers not to light up certain places during the inauguration.

And after those hints of crisis, the calmness of the art itself shines through. These stones have stood facing one another for five thousand years, in deep darkness, absorbed in their twisting lines and skeins, and now they emerge into the light, as vivid as skin, as fresh as if the hand that carved and engraved them had brushed the dust off them and given them a satisfied pat only a short while ago.

Life is short, art long – it gets no clearer than that. But that is no reason for us to be disheartened, because the hand behind the art is our own. Gunilla and I stand in Gavrinis happy and triumphant. ‘We made it!’ we say. It’s hard work getting out again, and the wheelchair leaves deep tracks on the damp ground on the way down to the boat. There are several passengers in it, one going farther than the rest of us. From a distance it isn’t possible to see either my happiness at having had her in my life, or my sorrow that I can’t pull her back from her approaching death. It is things like this that art deals with, and it is in this arena that we leave our mark.

Translated by Neil Smith

More on Gavrinis at  http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/arcnat/megalithes/en/index_en.html

Ulla-Lena Lundberg

‘Knowledge enhances feeling’ is a motto that runs through the whole of Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s oeuvre – both her novels and her travel-writing, covering Åland, Siberia and Africa.

In her trilogy of maritime novels (Leo, Stora världen [‘The wide world’], Allt man kan önska sig [‘All you could wish for’], 1989–1995) she used the form of a family chronicle to depict the development of sea-faring on Åland over the course of a century or so. She gathered her material with historical and anthropological methodology and love of detail. The result was entirely a work of quality fiction, from the consciously old-fashioned rural realism of the first volume to the contradictory postmodern multiplicity of voices in the last – all of it in harmony with the times being depicted.

When Lundberg (born 1947) takes us underground or up onto cliff-faces in her new documentary book, Jägarens leende. Resor i hällkonstens rymd (‘Smile of the hunter. Travels in the space of rock art’), in order to consider cave- and rock-paintings in various parts of the world, she also reveals a little of the background to this attitude towards life that takes such delight in acquiring knowledge – an attitude that is familiar from many of the protagonists of her novels.

Jägarens leende is both an introduction to the subject by an extremely knowledgeable amateur and a loving memoir in honour of the author’s travelling companion in the world of this art, her sister Gunilla Lundberg–Kelly (1945–2005).

The book opens with a captivating portrait of two small girls, the victims of a family catastrophe. The younger one is a feeble, speechless little creature  while the older one is determined to survive. ‘Come and look!’ is the big sister’s command to the feeble younger one, and eventually this would become a sort of leitmotif in the latter’s authorship.

In Siberien. Ett självporträtt med vingar (‘Siberia. A self-portrait with wings’) Lundberg successfully managed to tell a story of infatuation, using the richness of expression, the exaltation and reproduction rituals found in the world of birds as her main motifs. Jägarens leende depicts the story of two sisters through their shared journeys together: the reader follows the two women on numerous interesting trips, practically able to hear those eager voices, ‘Come and look!’

Gunilla Lundberg-Kelly was afflicted with a muscular sickness that proved fatal, and their last journeys were made to places accessible by wheelchair. Between her brief depictions of the beginning and end of her sister’s life, Ulla-Lena Lundberg opens up an engaging world of ancient artistry, magic, social communication – in Zimbabwe, Altamira, Bohuslän, Valcamonica…

We also learn a lot about the questions that occupy researchers into rock art, both professionals and laymen. On the disputed issue of whether or not the animal motifs of rock art – the eland antelope in Africa, the elk and bear in the north, mammoths in Ice-Age southern France – express a form of hunting magic or shamanism, Lundberg adopts a neutral position. Does one necessarily preclude the other? Art always has many meanings. Aesthetics and magic can be united in the same artistically inscribed line. Myths have a realistic dimension, realism a mythical one. Human beings are ‘communicative and secretive, never easy to pin down’. When you read Lundberg’s description of reindeer herding in Alta, you realise how multi-layered the narrative is, both documentary and imaginary.

And in spite of the long distance of time, and everything we can never know about the origins of the images, it is still possible to imagine a common denominator – the need to record your experience somehow – between the person who long ago made the painting or carving, and someone wanting to translate their sensory experiences into words.

One of Lundberg’s main concerns throughout her entire writing career has been to get us to see the differences and similarities between us, her readers, and the distant times and places she brings to life in her texts.

As so often in her writing, Lundberg also shows how the objective exterior and the subjective experience, with all its clutter of experiences, disappointments and needs, are always blurring into each other. Whose feelings, for instance, is she conveying to the reader when confronted with a few slapdash lines painted at the far end of a claustrophobic tunnel in Santian? ‘Never have I seen a painting that so strongly expresses loneliness and desperation…. I hope they express some sort of meaning. But to me they mean the end of the road,’ she writes.

And the clumsily depicted elk in Astuvansalmi, on a rock in Lake Saimaa, eastern Finland, speaks to her directly, through her engagement with it back through the centuries – the elk’s torso is decorated by a mark that represents the beast’s heart: ‘I am moved when I see it, perhaps because I myself have had to learn not to wear my heart on my sleeve.’

Encouraged by her big sister’s smart attempts at distraction, the little sister put her bleeding heart in her pocket, wiped her nose on her sleeve and set out to take a look and be enchanted. She became one of Finland-Swedish literature’s most important reminders of the fact that the world is interesting, multifaceted, and worth writing about.

And you can write about the heart, our loving, bleeding hearts, in so many different ways.

Translated by Neil Smith

Skrifter. Band 1: Studieåren och resan till Alexandria

This is the first volume of a planned six-volume critical edition of the writings of Finnish Arabic scholar Georg August Wallin (1811–1852). The main material for the first volume consists of full text of Wallin’s travel diaries and letters from the years 1831–1843. The Arabic texts are accompanied by parallel Swedish translations. The preface contains an overview of the phases of Wallin’s life and the schools of Orientalism and Rousseau which influenced his work. Wallin’s seven-year research journey to the Middle East, and particularly his crossing of the northern Arabian peninsula as the first Western researcher to do so, brought Wallin great international acclaim. Wallin was the first researcher to record the poetry and study the dialects of the desert Bedouin. He is particularly well known for his visits to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, forbidden to non-Muslims, and to the women’s quarters in their harems.

Clarinettist who travelled: Bernhard Crusell

Bernhard Crusell: Keski-Euroopan matkapäiväkirjat 1803–1822
[Bernhard Crusell: Travel Diaries from Central Europe, 1803–1822]
Suom. ja toim. [Translated into Finnish and edited by] Janne Koskinen
Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura [Finnish Literature Society], 271 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-222-090-5
€28, hardback

Born the son of a poor bookbinder on the west coast of Finland, Bernhard Crusell (1775–1838) had talents as a clarinettist and composer that brought him considerable fame, both in his native country and further afield. Hannu Marttila reads the diaries he wrote on his travels in Europe, where his meetings with the great and the good chart the emergence of the new Romantic sensibility

‘Felix is a most beautiful child, and he is also said to be very unassuming. In his compositions one immediately recognises the signs of genius and good training. He continues to study under Zelter, and, thanks to an anticipated large inheritance, he, too, may become an independent composer. People here think he may even become another Mozart.’

On the morning of 30 June 1822 Bernhard Crusell was invited to a home concert at the house of banker Abraham Mendelssohn. That summer the Berlin music scene offered its best; performing at the concert were the banker’s 13-year-old son Felix and his older sister Fanny.

Born with a silver spoon: Felix Mendelssohn

In his travel diary Crusell, a Finnish-born clarinet virtuoso and composer, relates that Felix had already composed operas, more than 60 fugues, seven symphonies – the newest, a symphony in D minor currently under rehearsal – as well as piano pieces.

Two days earlier Crusell had heard the new opera hit, Der Freischütz (‘The freeshooter’), in the new Schauspielhaus. ‘Carl Maria von Weber’s music, an awful work, especially the second act in which the music is original but somehow rhapsodic – the second act is dreadful, shouting in place of music.’ The heat and the nerve-wracking music stole sleep from Crusell, who was fighting sickness at the time. But when the two composers met alone together in Dresden in early July, their respect was mutual, and their discussion of stage music was valuable to Crusell, who was planning his own opera, The Little Slave Girl.

The travel diaries of Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838), Finland’s first composer of international renown, have only now appeared in Finnish. The Finnish translation is based on the Swedish-language diaries edited by Fabian Dahlström in 1977. These were published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, to which Crusell was awarded membership when he was only 26 years old. He does belong incontrovertibly to both Finnish and Swedish music history and its living tradition. Crusell’s three clarinet concertos and three clarinet quartets belong to the core clarinet repertoire today, just as they did during the composer’s lifetime.

Travel writing:: the beginning of Crusell's 1822 diary.

Particularly during his two trips to Germany, in 1811 and 1822, Crusell formed relationships with important publishers and future performers of his works. His observations of Prussia in 1811, subjugated as it was by Napoleon, were sad: the country was impoverished and humbled, and Crusell’s old clarinettist friend, to whom he had entrusted money to order a new instrument, had needed to use the money to survive.

Eleven years later, however, the culture, towns and countryside flourished anew, and the literary-minded Crusell describes them in the Romantic spirit. But now his own health is faltering, and instead of hearing about the wonders of the spa towns, we read more and more about episodes of ill health which the mineral waters appear only to aggravate.

Space for music in Berlin: the Konzerthaus (built 1818–1821) and the two churches of the Gendarmenmarkt, Französischer Dom and Deutscher Dom (Meyers Konversations-Lexikon 5, 1893–1901).

Although Crusell does not generally mention his own success in his diaries, the names of his travel companions and those he visited nevertheless make clear what sort of reputation he enjoyed as composer and virtuoso of his instrument.

Crusell’s beginnings did not portend high society circles or royal patronage. His father was a bookbinder of meagre means in Uusikaupunki (Nystad) on the west coast of Finland, who later moved to Nurmijärvi, near Helsinki: there Bernhard learned to play the clarinet from a neighbour who was a regimental musician. At the age of 12 Crusell was sent to the Sveaborg military band. Sveaborg [Suomenlinna], an island fortress off the Helsinki coast, was a true cultural centre, and there the unschooled country boy received a good general education from soirees, concerts and conversations. Bernhard taught himself French and, a few years later in Stockholm, German and Italian. His travel diaries bear witness to his ease and expressiveness in French and German. Crusell later translated opera librettos from Italian.

In the eighteenth century it began to be easier for musicians and artists to surmount class barriers than for other people. There were of course those who, like the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, kicked their Mozart out of the servants’ door when crossed, but there were also those who presaged the coming Romantic period, nobles who respected musicians as friends. Only rarely does Crusell remark after some visit that the mood was ‘icy’. The reader is left to wonder whether the reason for the chill was class pride.

Some aspects of hierarchy did remain: when the court musician Crusell, on his Paris trip in 1803, wished to stay there for another year, Sweden’s King Gustav IV ordered him to return, cloaking the command in respectful phrasing: ‘It is important to get you home to Stockholm for the winter.’

The composer's instrument: Crusell gave this clarinet, by Heinrich Grenser, to Lieutenant von Heland in the 1820s. It now is in the Music Museum of Stockholm.

And while Crusell’s noble travel companions continued their visits, expeditions and purchases, their musician friend withdrew to his quarters and turned to his role of craftsman: ‘afternoon practices’, ‘preparing reed mouthpieces’. Perhaps it was on just such an afternoon that ‘an invitation to Madame Récamier’s arrived, but I declined’. Juliette Récamier’s salon was at that time the most important in Parisian cultural circles. Several days later Mme Récamier came to hear Crusell play Mozart’s trio, ‘which went poorly due to the violist’s non-stop blunders’.

During Napoleon’s time as First Consul in Paris, Crusell visited the sights in this world city and made short, often pithy notes in two notebooks – occasionally even in Finnish, when it was a question of confidential conversations about a potential post or staying in Paris. He attended a court session and saw the guillotine, Bonaparte drilling his troops, as well as an elephant – ‘the most astonishing of all the animals’. He hears unusual music on the Champs Elysées: ‘a Negro is blowing into a galoubet while beating a drum’.

In Paris Crusell reinforces his composition studies. He finds the new music instruction both significant and interesting: the Paris Conservatory and its annual student competitions.

Perhaps most surprising in Crusell’s travel diaries is his fascination with two Paris educational institutions, the schools for the blind and the deaf, and their revolutionary teaching methods: the blind ‘see’ to read, and the deaf communicate among themselves by signing.

The results would surely have amazed anyone, yet one cannot but wonder whether Crusell’s genuine excitement resulted in part from his own journey from a poor country boy to a self-educated celebrity and man of the world for whom ‘enlightenment’ was not an empty term.

Translated by Jill G. Timbers

Crusell’s native town Uusikaupunki organises an annual music festival dedicated to woodwind instruments. Here, more information on the composer.

Kauha ja kynä. Keittokirjojen kulttuurihistoriaa

This book by ethnologist Maarit Knuuttila describes the history of European cookbooks, recipes and cooking. Knuuttila familiarises the reader with the earliest documents relating to the preparation of food, which were written by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but of which only a few have been preserved. Instead of haute cuisine the book concentrates on the authors and users of basic Finnish cookery books, and examines how those books reflect the times in which they were written, as well as their significance for women. While the literary high culture of gastronomy has been produced mainly by men, the everyday dishes represented in the basic cookbooks are the work of women. The author discusses the changes in perceptions of the ideal home and health, as well as the ways in which Finnish cookery, housekeeping and food culture have altered during the past hundred years.

Kuoleman listat. Suomalaisten salainen apu Chilen vainotuille

The 1973 Chilean coup that ousted President Salvador Allende, and the subsequent persecution of dissidents, forced Allende’s supporters to seek asylum in foreign embassies. A number of refugees climbed over the wall of the Santiago home of Finland’s chargé d’affaires, Tapani Brotherus. As the Finnish official line of neutrality was to avoid interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, Brotherus was taking a great personal risk, by allowing this, and keeping it secret from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With the help of the embassy’s undersecretary and the East German diplomat Arnold Voigt, he and his wife succeeded in helping some 2, 200 people to leave Chile. Brotherus also helped 182 political refugees to obtain asylum in Finland. Heikki Hiilamo, who is now Research Professor at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, describes the background of the Chilean dictatorship and the development of the broad-based solidarity movement, which has been characterised as one of the central formative experiences of the generation that grew up in 1970s Finland. The movement’s activists included future Finnish presidents Mauno Koivisto and Tarja Halonen, as well as the future Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila.

The authors have been involved in the Academy of Finland’s ‘Power and society in Finland’ research programme, which supports the multidisciplinary study of the historical impact that changes in Finnish society have on its power structures and on those who exert power in Finland. Among the changes are Finland’s accession to the European Union and the internationalisation of corporate and business life. Major power management and policy decisions have often been made without extensive public debate. The articles include studies of the historical changes in economic history and women’s status; other subjects include the conflicts between the forestry industry and nature conservationists; energy policy and the relatively low level of opposition to nuclear power among Finns, labour relations and the opportunities that citizens have to influence media content.

Pohjolan prinsessat. Viikinkineidoista renessanssiruhtinattariin

This book, a side project to Anu Lahtinen’s doctoral dissertation, tells of the women of the Nordic royal families from the 7th to the 17th centuries. The term ‘princesses’ is used here to refer to female members of ruling families who did not hold positions of power themselves. With its brief biographies of people who have long remained hidden in the historical shadow of great men, this book sheds light on a little-researched subject. Many princesses of the medieval Swedish, Danish and Norwegian realms grew up into significant political figures; they needed cunning, a good command of languages and even fighting skills in order to survive the tumults of that age. The rollicking parties and romantic escapades of Cecilia, one of the five daughters of King Gustav Vasa of Sweden, are reminiscent of the ‘party princesses’ of our own time. A Viking-era princess, Alfhild, became a pirate captain; according to medieval tales, she disguised herself as a man and managed to lead a crew of female pirates in a number of raids along the shores of the Baltic.

Keskiajan julmuus

Darkness, cruelty, violence and ignorance are characteristics commonly associated with the medieval era. This book aims to show that this type of thinking contains a number of myths and misconceptions that have arisen in both scholarly and popular culture. She investigates how cruelty arose in medieval culture and society and how it was understood, as well as its antitheses: sympathy, fraternity and mercy. The focus of this study is from the 13th century to the first half of the 16th century. The author has relied on writings, art, folk tales and documentary sources from theoreticians, chroniclers and poets in her study. Particular attention is paid to those groups who represented the ‘non-human’ in medieval thinking, such as women and children, the infirm, common people and animals. This book also outlines a broader chronological perspective in its subject matter and addresses the issue of when the medieval era was labelled as being cruel and why that label has stuck. Hannele Klemettilä, a post-doctoral researcher at the Finnish Academy, is a cultural historian.