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Between covers
31 December 1990 | Archives online, Children's books, Fiction
Extracts from Lastenkirja (‘Children’s book’, WSOY, 1990, illustrated by the Estonian animator and graphic artist Priit Pärn)
CHILDREN’S BOOK IS BORN
Children are wafting around the world: they come spilling out of the chimneys and clattering out of the pipes. They worm around cramped places in the nether regions, rise up through stiff roots into the treetops and muss up the clouds. Children just happen anywhere and bring the Adults along with them. More…
A walk on the West Side
16 March 2015 | Fiction, Prose
Hannu Väisänen. Photo: Jouni Harala
Just because you’re a Finnish author, you don’t have to write about Finland – do you?
Here’s a deliciously closely observed short story set in New York: Hannu Väisänen’s Eli Zebbahin voikeksit (‘Eli Zebbah’s shortbread biscuits’) from his new collection, Piisamiturkki (‘The musquash coat’, Otava, 2015).
Best known as a painter, Väisänen (born 1951) has also won large readerships and critical recognition for his series of autobiographical novels Vanikan palat (‘The pieces of crispbread’, 2004, Toiset kengät (‘The other shoes’, 2007, winner of that year’s Finlandia Prize) and Kuperat ja koverat (‘Convex and concave’, 2010). Here he launches into pure fiction with a tale that wouldn’t be out of place in Italo Calvino’s 1973 classic The Castle of Crossed Destinies…
Eli Zebbah’s shortbread biscuits
Eli Zebbah’s small but well-stocked grocery store is located on Amsterdam Avenue in New York, between two enormous florist’s shops. The shop is only a block and a half from the apartment that I had rented for the summer to write there.
The store is literally the breadth of its front door and it is not particularly easy to make out between the two-storey flower stands. The shop space is narrow but long, or maybe I should say deep. It recalls a tunnel or gullet whose walls are lined from floor to ceiling. In addition, hanging from the ceiling using a system of winches, is everything that hasn’t yet found a space on the shelves. In the shop movement is equally possible in a vertical and a horizontal direction. Rails run along both walls, two of them in fact, carrying ladders attached with rings up which the shop assistant scurries with astonishing agility, up and down. Before I have time to mention which particular kind of pasta I wanted, he climbs up, stuffs three packets in to his apron pocket, presents me with them and asks: ‘Will you take the eight-minute or the ten-minute penne?’ I never hear the brusque ‘we’re out of them’ response I’m used to at home. If I’m feeling nostalgic for home food, for example Balkan sausage, it is found for me, always of course under a couple of boxes. You can challenge the shop assistant with something you think is impossible, but I have never heard of anyone being successful. If I don’t fancy Ukrainian pickled cucumbers, I’m bound to find the Belorussian ones I prefer. More…
Des res
Extracts from the novel Juoksuhaudantie (‘The Trench Road’, WSOY, 2002)
Matti Virtanen
I belonged to that small group of men who were the first in this country to dedicate themselves to the home front and to women’s emancipation. I feel I can say this without boasting and without causing any bickering between the sexes.
A home veteran looks after all the housework and understands women. Throughout our marriage I have done everything that our fathers did not. I did the laundry, cooked the food, cleaned the flat, I gave her time to herself and protected the family from society. For hours on end I listened to her work problems, her emotional ups and downs and her hopes for more varied displays of affection. I implemented comprehensive strategies to free her from the cooker. I was always ready with provisions when she got home exhausted after a day at work. More…
The son of the chimera
30 September 1999 | Fiction, Prose
A short story from Pereat mundus. Romaani, eräänlainen (‘Pereat mundus. A novel, sort of’, WSOY, 1998)
I was born, but not because anyone wanted it to happen. No one even knew it was possible, for my mother was a human being, my father a chimera. He was one of the first multi-species hybrids.
Only one picture of my father survives. It is not a photograph, but a water-colour, painted by my mother. My father is sitting in an armchair, book in hand, one cloven hoof placed delicately on top of the other. According to my mother, he liked to leaf through illustrated books, although he never learned to read. He is wearing an elegant, muted blue suit jacket, but no trousers at all. Thick grey fur covers his strong legs, right down to his hoofs. Small horns curve gracefully over his convex forehead. Striking in his face are his round, yellow eyes, his extraordinarily wide mouth, his tiny chin and his surprisingly large but flat nose. More…
Encounters with a language
12 December 2014 | Articles, Non-fiction
Mistranslation: illustration by Sminthopsis84/Wikimedia
Mother tongue: not Finnish. How do people become interested enough in the Finnish language in order to become translators? In the olden days some might have been greatly inspired by the music Sibelius (as were the eminent British translators of Finnish, David Barrett or Herbert Lomas, for example, back in the 1950s and 1960s). We asked contemporary translators to reminisce on how they in turn have become infatuated enough with Finnish to start studying and translating this small, somewhat eccentric northern language. Three translators into English, one into French, German and Latvian tell us why
In other words
21 June 2012 | This 'n' that
Wordworkers meet: the translators' congress in Helsinki, 11–14 June. Photo: Hannele Jyrkkä
From Finnish or Swedish into 32 languages: in mid June FILI (the Finnish Literature Exchange) held the biggest international meeting of translators of Finnish literature of all time.
The congress, entitled Kääntäjän sana/Översättarens ord (Translator’s word) was planned with one eye on the Finnish theme of the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair.
The former Lisa Hagman School, now the House of Learning, offered the premises for workshops and lectures for 120 professional translators and almost 70 scholars of language and literature.
Participants translating from both Finnish and Finland-Swedish were offered opportunities to meet writers, listen to lectures from experts in language and literature and gain feedback from other active professional readers. More…
The Canada goose
31 December 2008 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Tapaus Sidoroff (‘The Sidoroff case’, WSOY, 2008). Introduction by Kristina Carlson
It was no use even trying the old cart track branching from the main road. I turned off the engine and glanced into the back seat. My aunt lifted the brim of her hat, her bright eyes peering at me questioningly.
‘We can’t get any farther by car. The road’s nothing but rough brush. What do you think, Aunt Alli, can you walk the rest of the way?’
My aunt shook her head and didn’t even bother to answer. She opened the car door and clambered out. A swarm of black flies wafted into the air from the brush at the bottom of the ditch.
‘For heaven’s sakes, there’s sure enough of these flies.’
She fanned at the air with her hat, straightened the hem of her dress and trudged across the ditch, without looking back, through the thicket of willows. In spite of her hip trouble, the old woman made her way in such a hurry that I had my work cut out keeping up with her. More…
Losing it
31 March 2002 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
An extract from the novel Jalat edellä (‘Feet first’, Otava 2001). Introduction by Kanerva Eskola
Once he had sat in the car for a while Risto could feel his thoughts slowly becoming clearer. Tero had been killed by a lorry. He couldn’t think particularly actively about it but perhaps he could have said it out loud. After all, people often say all kinds of things that they don’t think. Maybe even too often, he wondered and decided to have a go.
‘Tero is dead,’ he said and the words tasted of preserved cherries.
In the changing room at the swimming pool Risto noticed that his swimming trunks and towel were mouldy. He had forgotten to hang them up to dry after the last time he went swimming. That was a thousand years ago and now a bluish grey fur was growing on them. He examined the bitter smelling mould on his trunks; the fur was beautiful, smooth and silky like a rabbit’s coat. He gently stroked his trunks. I can use these for ice swimming, he decided, and began to chuckle quietly to himself.
Death of a poet
31 December 1989 | Archives online, Articles
Over the last two decades, contemporary Finnish opera has not only become popular at home but has emerged as a significant force on the international music scene. Aulis Sallinen’s The Horseman, The Red Line and The King Goes Forth to France, and Joonas Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations all had their premieres in the 1970s and 1980s and have already earned respected places in the repertory of the Finnish National Opera and the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where performances are sold out months in advance.
The visit by the National Opera to New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1983 attracted widespread attention from press and public alike, and its productions of The Red Line and The Last Temptations were for the most part enthusiastically received. Finnish opera earned further international prestige from the joint commissioning of Sallinen’s The King by the Royal Covent Garden Theatre in London and the Savonlinna Festival, and from later performances by companies in Germany and the United States. More…
Green thoughts
Extracts from the novel Kuperat ja koverat (‘Convex and concave’, Otava, 2010)
Hannu Väisänen: ‘Green and yellow in March’ (work in progress, oil on canvas, 130x193cm, 2010)
I decided to go to the Museum of Fine Arts.
After paying for my entrance ticket, I climbed the wide staircase to the first floor. There all I saw were dull paintings, the same heroic seed-sowers and floor-sanders as everywhere else. Why were so many art museums nothing more than collections of frames? Always national heroes making their horses dance, mud-coloured grumblers and overblown historical scenes. There was not a single museum in which a grandfather would not be sitting on a wobbly stool peering over his broken spectacles, interrogating a young man about to set off on his travels, cheeks burning with enthusiasm, behind them the entire village, complete with ear trumpets and balls of wool. The painting’s eternal title would be ‘Interrogation’ and it would be covered with shiny varnish, so that in the end all you would be able to see would be your own face.
I climbed up to the next floor. All I really felt was a pressing need to run away. No Flemish conversation piece acquired in the Habsburg era was able to erase a growing anxiety related to love. More…
Egg in a Cage?
17 August 2012 | This 'n' that
Noises off: the Chapel of Silence. Photo: Mika Huisman/Decopic
A windowless wooden construction with a timber interior sits on a busy route between the bus and railway stations in the middle of Helsinki. The egg-shaped Chapel of Silence contains simple wooden benches, offering a moment of peace and quiet for anyone passing by.
Almost 12 metres high, 270 square metres in overall footprint, it is a sacral space, with a small cross and an altar at the back, but it is not intended for liturgical purposes – however, social services are available for private conversation during opening hours.
Helsinki is this year’s World Design Capital – together with the neighbouring cities of Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen, and Lahti, a hundred kilometres to the north. Every second year the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design recognises one global city `for its accomplishments in utilizing design as a tool to improve social, cultural, and economic life’. More…
Tutti frutti
20 November 2009 | In the news
The chair of the jury for the Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction 2009, Professor Pekka Puska, compared choosing a winner to the dilemma of choosing between oranges and bananas. The jury found that among the entries were at least 20 or 30 books that could have gone on the final shortlist of six titles. More…
Anu-Hanna Anttila & al.: Kuriton kansa [Unruly nation]
13 August 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Anu-Hanna Anttila & Ralf Kauranen & Olli Löytty & Pollari Mikko Rantanen Pekka & Petri Ruuska
Kuriton kansa. Poliittinen mielikuvitus vuoden 1905 suurlakon ajan Suomessa
[Unruly nation. The political imagination of the 1905 general strike in Finland]
Tampere: Vastapaino, 2009. 317 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-768-246-6
€ 33, paperback
In the beginning of the 20th century the Grand Duchy of Finland, a part of the Russian Empire, entered a period of crisis and began to turn into a nation with its own institutions. Universal and equal suffrage increased tenfold the number of those eligible to vote. A move to the granting of political rights was demanded during the 1905 general strike, which was both an internal political power struggle and a demonstration by Finns against the Russification measures being imposed by their rulers. The book examines the ideological currents of the strike period and investigates their definitions of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’, with reference to literary research, historical sociology, cultural studies and women’s studies, making extensive use of contemporary documents. The book’s essays portray the spectrum of ideas, reflected in groups like the theosophists, Tolstoyans and anarchists.
Slowly does it
5 November 2009 | Reviews
Straight from the oven: cabbage rolls. – Photo: Sami Repo
Mummola
[Grandma’s house]
(food: Hans Välimäki, photographs: Sami Repo, text: Mikko Takala, graphic design: Timo Numminen)
Helsinki: Otava, 2009. 224 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-1-23930-7
€ 40
How paradoxical: in the past couple of decades, numerous internationally famous gourmet restaurants have sprung up in Finland, and at the same time it’s harder than ever to find ordinary, well-prepared ingredients for cooking at home.
It’s hard to get used to the fact that foods like beef and lamb kidneys, sweetbread, and cheaper cuts for use in stews and soups have made way for cheap Brazilian steaks on special offer, even at the largest stores’ meat counters. There’s no point in looking for whole chickens (and certainly not organic poultry), let alone whole, locally caught fish. The last time I asked at the fish counter of my local market if they might have any salmon heads and bones for chowder, the seller looked for a moment like she might summon security. The consumer wasn’t consulted when ‘taste’ and ‘variety’ were replaced by ‘ease’ and ‘speed’. More…