Finland: folk poetry and fiction

If you struggled to shake off sleep this morning after the BST thieves stole our Sunday lie-ins, spare a thought for our friends in Finland. Starting on the 7th June, the Finns will have constant daylight for one month. That means 29 sun-drenched days from the seaport of Helsinki to the remote wilderness of Kaldoaivi. And today, I’m also shining my spotlight their way.

With all that daylight even the slowest reader could devour The Kalevala – Finland’s epic national poem – which was assembled from ancient oral folklore and mythology by Elias Lönnrot, and first published in 1835. The 22,795 verses run to several hundred pages but stick with it as it provides unique and rewarding insights into Finnish identity.

Contemporary Scandinavian writers are all the rage at the moment but a quick flick through the country’s literary archives reveals a rich back catalogue of fabulous fables too (recently explored on BBC Radio4’s What the Scandinavians Know about Children’s Literature).  Remember the mythical world of the moomins? Tove Jansson, creator of those cuddly children’s characters, also wrote many short stories for adults. Try The Summer Book for starters, described on the Guardian’s World Literature Tour as a ‘sauna for the soul’. While you’re there, it’s worth exploring this treasure trove of recommendations on everything from novels and plays to anthologies and untranslated Finnish works.

Strictly speaking, New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani has no place in this blog because the author isn’t Finnish. However, there is something irresistible about this novel. Reviewed by Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian book blog, it tells the story of Sampo Karjalainen, who washes up in Trieste during the second world war with no memory of who he is, or where he came from. Lezard recalls the shamanistic pastor who befriends Karjalainen and tries to explain what his first name means:

“Sampo is a sacred word for the Finns; the whole of the Kalevala revolves around it. No one can say exactly what it was, no one has seen it, because it has been destroyed. It might have been the pillar which held up the earth, and whose collapse for ever cut us off from the place we came from.”

Finally, for something fresh and new, grab Riikka Pulkkinen’s True. Hot off the press this week, the novel explores the disappearing memories of a dying woman as she recalls her childhood for daughter and granddaughter. Featured in the London Review of Books, the family saga was shortlisted for the Finlandia Fiction Prize 2010. Translator Lola M. Rogers features the book on her blog, along with some other solstice snippets like this poem by Eeva Liisa Manner:

When At Last the Tired West

When at last the tired west
reddens, darkens, and is laid to rest,
the ripe season poured into sky’s brimless cup,
and swords snapped in two, and books taken up,
and a murmur descends like the flutter of wings,
and things from their cages like spirits ascend
brighter and whole after rest,

a snowy steed from the war on the steppes,
wades into a field, another star on its forehead,
and with it a child: a naked soldier;
and they run over the blossoming landscape
as over the skirt of the Madonna, billowing in blue
and boundless, woven from light
and emptiness.

And the beauty of everything
is endless,
tenderness, joy, play, friendship, and peace.
And morning after glimmering morning ascends,
birds to the branches.