The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy Read online

  THE EDITOR

  Johanna Sinisalo is one of the leading Finnish authors of her generation. She is the author of many highly acclaimed short stories and her first novel Not Before Sundown (called Troll – The Love Story in the USA) won the prestigious Finlandia Prize in 2000 and has been translated into English, Swedish, Japanese, French, Latvian, Czech, German and Polish. The book also won the James Tiptree Jr. Award in the USA in 2005. Her second novel Sankarit was published in Finland in 2003 and transfers the national epic, the Kalevala to the twenty-first century. One of her stories is featured in the anthology.

  THE TRANSLATOR

  Since graduating from University College London in 1999 David Hackston’s work as a translator has focussed largely on the stage and he has translated Finnish drama for theatres around the UK including the Gate, the Royal Court and the Royal National Theatre. He is a regular contributor to the journals Books from Finland, Swedish Book Review and Nordic Literature. He currently lives in Helsinki where he is working on a thesis dealing with theatre translation. He is also an active composer and viola player.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The editor and translator would like to take this opportunity to thank a number of people whose help has been instrumental in the completion of this book. First and foremost our thanks go to Iris Schwanck and her staff at FILI, the Finnish Literature Information Centre, and the Arts Council of Great Britain for their tireless work and financial support. Thanks go also to Eric Lane and all at Dedalus Books for the opportunity to present this selection of Finnish fantasy writing to the English-speaking world. Our gratitude goes to the featured authors for their comments and advice and to the numerous rights holders for their cooperation. Many thanks to Hannele Branch – a truly inspiring Finnish teacher – and to Emily Jeremiah, Casper Sare and Oliver Wastie for their invaluable comments at various stages of the translation and for their support, moral and otherwise. Finally we would like to express our warm thanks to each other: this project has been a fascinating journey into a world building bridges between languages and cultures, and working on it together has been a true pleasure.

  Johanna Sinisalo

  David Hackston

  For more information on Finnish literature and a link to Books from Finland, a quarterly journal of writing from and about Finland, please visit: www.finlit.fi/fili

  CONTENTS

  Title

  About the Editor and the Translator

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction by Johanna Sinisalo

  Aino Kallas: Wolf Bride (‘Sudenmorsian’, 1928)

  Aleksis Kivi: The Legend of the Pale Maiden (‘Tarina kalveasta immestä’, 1870)

  Mika Waltari: Island of the Setting Sun (‘Auringonlaskun saari’, 1926)

  Bo Carpelan: The Great Yellow Storm (‘Stormen’, 1979)

  Pentti Holappa: Boman (‘Boman’, 1959)

  Tove Jansson: Shopping (‘Shopping’, 1987)

  Erno Paasilinna: Congress (‘Kongressi’, 1970)

  Arto Paasilinna: Good Heavens! (‘Herranen aika!’, 1980)

  Juhani Peltonen: The Slave Breeder (‘Orjien kasvattaja’, 1965)

  Johanna Sinisalo: Transit (‘Transit’, 1988)

  Satu Waltari: The Monster (‘Hirviö’, 1964)

  Boris Hurtta: A Diseased Man (‘Tautimies’, 2001)

  Olli Jalonen: Chronicles of a State (‘Koon aikakirjat’, 2003)

  Pasi Jääskeläinen: A Zoo from the Heavens (‘Taivaalta pudonnut eläintarha’, 2000)

  Leena Krohn: Datura and Pereat Mundus (1998–2001)

  Markku Paasonen: Three Prose Poems (2001)

  Sari Peltoniemi: The Golden Apple (‘Kultainen omena’, 2003)

  Jouko Sirola: Desk (‘Kirjoituspöytä’, 2003)

  Jyrki Vainonen: Blueberries (‘Mustikoita’, 1999)

  The Explorer (‘Tutkimusmatkailija’, 2001)

  Maarit Verronen: Black Train (‘Musta juna’, 1996)

  Basement, Man and Wife (‘Kellarimies ja vaimo’, 1996)

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Literature written in the Finnish language is surprisingly young. Despite the fact that both a thriving folk culture and a highly creative tradition of oral poetry have existed throughout our history, it seems incredible to think that written literature in Finnish has existed for little more than a few centuries. The earliest books written in Finnish, dating from the mid-16th century, were all of a religious nature, and so those who could speak only Finnish had to wait until the 19th century for the publication of secular literature. Finland’s geographical position caught between two great empires created a strange climate in which the national language was subordinated at times to Swedish, at others to Russian, and this in turn resulted in that even the most respected Finnish writers wrote mostly in Swedish – a language which still has official status in Finland and from which many respected writers have appeared and still appear to this day.

  The rise of the Finnish language to a ‘real’ and true literary medium only began in earnest at the end of the 19th century. With such a short history it is striking to see how broad and rich the scale of writing and reading in Finland has become today. In a country with little more than five million inhabitants literature is read, bought and borrowed from libraries more than almost anywhere else. Statistically Finns are among the most literate people in the world.

  To generalise slightly, one could say that Finnish literature is dominated by the tradition of realism. In Finland realism is widely seen as the correct way to write, whilst other genres are deviations from this norm – some would claim that these deviations do not represent ‘respectable’ literature. All too often one hears the Finnish reader shun works including elements of fantasy on the basis that such things are ‘not true’. The overwhelming strength of the realist canon has made some readers forget the fact that even realistic literature is made up; that it is every bit as fictitious as the most unbridled fantasy literature.

  Realistic narrative is solidly anchored in the empirical, in that which can be proven and authenticated, and this is perhaps one of the reasons for its popularity in Finland. We are a small nation with a difficult, broken past. One of the greatest functions of literature in our country has been the depiction of history and human destiny in a form both easily approachable and recognisable; literature has thus become an important part of the Finns’ collective memory.

  Still, Finnish literature has given rise to – and, indeed, continues to give rise to – writers who wish to look at the surrounding world through the refracted light of fantasy. It was easy to find dozens upon dozens of authors who have taken bold steps into the realms of surrealism, horror and the grotesque, satire and picaresque, the weird and wonderful, dreams and delusions, the future and a twisted past. Far more difficult, however, was the task of making a final selection from this marvellous and wide-ranging group. This anthology presents the work of twenty authors, though it would have been just as easy to present the work of twice as many authors of the highest calibre.

  In making these decisions it was fascinating to note that, regardless of the great respect felt towards realism, the presence of elements of fantasy in a writer’s work has not prevented them from attaining the highest possible status in literary life. Of the twenty authors in this volume, six have received Finland’s most prestigious literary award, the Finlandia Prize, and many others have been shortlisted. Amongst the present authors there are some whose works have already been translated into numerous foreign languages.

  In making these decisions I have tried to build up a cross-section of Finnish fantasy, both thematically and chronologically. The oldest texts date from the dawn of our literature,
whilst the newest were written within the last few years. In addition to writers with a long and distinguished career behind them, I have also included works by a number of promising young writers.

  Once I had whittled the writers down to twenty I assumed that the diversity of the authors would automatically produce a selection of radically different texts. On one level this is indeed the case: the spectrum of styles, subjects and originality represented in these texts is impressive. Yet at the same time I observed that certain distinctly Finnish elements and subjects recur throughout these stories, albeit in a myriad of different ways, but in such a way that we can almost assume that, exceptionally, they comprise a body of imagery central to Finnish fantasy literature.

  One of these elements is nature. To this day Finns live in a very sparsely populated country, surrounded by lakes and large expanses of forest. Every Finn appears to have very close, personal ties to nature. In Finland culture and nature do not struggle against one another, they are not mutually exclusive, rather they encroach upon one another, they merge and influence one another. In the present fantasy stories the theme of nature often manifests itself through the very active role given to forests and animals.

  Another recurring element is that of war. Throughout the length of its history Finland has lived between two great empires: Sweden to the west, Russia or the Soviet Union to the east. Both have taken turns to conquer our country, and the struggle to maintain our precarious independence has led to wars whose scars are far from healed. Here the theme varies just as much as the treatment of nature: in addition to the many direct references to war, its ghost can be seen in the themes of power, slavery and control, or even as a post-apocalyptic vision.

  In any case, it is a joy to present here twenty different voices, each of whom draws open the curtain of reality and offers us a glimpse into their own highly distinctive worlds.

  Johanna Sinisalo

  Wolf Bride

  Aino Kallas

  Aino Kallas (1878–1956) is well known as a writer of poetry, short fiction and novels. She spent the majority of her life in Estonia, where she was inspired by local history and folklore from which she drew inspiration for many of her ballad novels. The theme of destructive love is central to all her works and in the novel Wolf Bride (‘Sudenmorsian’, 1928), from which the present extract is taken, she combines the motif of illicit desire with ancient Estonian religious beliefs. As no literature was written in Finnish during the mid-17th century – when events in this novel take place – Kallas’ work constitutes a highly original, creative vision of what such a written language may have been like.

  Chapter Four

  Yet just as the day has two halves, one governed by the sun and the other by the moon, so there are many who are people of the day and who busy themselves with daytime deeds, whilst others are children of the night, their minds consumed with nocturnal notions; but yet there are some in whom the two merge like the rising of the sun and the moon in a day. And all this shall be known in good time, when Fate thinks it fit.

  And so it was that at first no one had a thing to say about Priidik, the woodsman of Suuremõisa, or his young wife Aalo, nor in the mill of chatterers and babblers was there a drop more water than in the island’s rivers during summer-tide. For they lived a quiet life in loving harmony, in amity and accord with the villagers, and like good Christians they went often to church and received Holy Communion, and showed respect and loyalty to the law and to the estate in everything they did. No one spoke ill of Aalo, for she rose early in the morning and was good and gracious, neither rude nor rash nor indignant nor aloof, but good-mannered and in every way as calm and clement as a meadow breeze. Though in sooth many a man was vexed by the pallour of her appearance and the colour of her hair, so like the autumn-rusted juniper it was, though it was cropped short and covered in winter-tide with a woollen hood and in summer-tide with a long and narrow scarf with lace ribbons hanging on both sides upon her shoulders, as befits a wedded woman.

  Thus when Priidik the woodsman and his young wife Aalo had been married almost one year Aalo bore their firstborn, a daughter, who was duly baptised in the church at Pühalepa and given the name Piret.

  But the Wicked Spirit, who despises peace, had already chosen this bride for his own, just as a lamb is marked out from the flock, and cunningly lay in wait for the moment upon which he could shape her in his image.

  For as from the same piece of clay a potter may fashion either a pot or a tile, so the Devil may shape a witch into a wolf or a cat or even a goat, without subtracting from her and without adding to her at all. For this occurs just as clay is first moulded into one, then shaped into another form, for the Devil is a potter and his witches are but clay.

  And so it was that in the month of Lide (the villagers’ name for Martius) a great wolf hunt was to be held in Suuremõisa once again, as soon as the ice across the strait of Soela had begun to thin and could no longer bear so much as a wolf’s paw, thus cutting off his only escape.

  Indeed, like other public festivities, this event had been planned for many months, and ale and spiced liquor brought for the villagers to the inn at Haavasuo, with bagpipers too, for at the hunting feast there is also much dancing.

  And so lookouts were sent to the swamps and to the marshes, and in every village old wolf spears were sharpened and cleaned of their rust.

  But it was not only the villagers who waited eagerly for the wolf hunt: Satan’s minions rejoiced too, as this came at a most opportune moment for them.

  Thus one morning a lookout, who had been keeping watch from atop a tree, brought news that the wolves had been sighted.

  And thus all the men from Kerema, from Värssu and from Hagaste, from Puliste, from Vahtrapää, from Sarve and from Hillikeste were summoned to the hunt, two or three from each and every house, some eight hundred souls, womenfolk and children notwithstanding, and all of Suuremõisa’s woodsmen, with Priidik amongst their number.

  Thus a biting, spring day dawned, sunshine melting the snow in parts yet holding still the lowlands in the grip of frost.

  When at daybreak Priidik the woodsman arrived at Haavasuo, the inn was thronging with folk as it does on market day, all turned out in their best attire as if for a grand banquet.

  Aalo too had come to follow the hunt and the festivities, clad in a loose and wide-sleeved jacket, and beneath this a skirt of lamb-grey, cross-striped and pleated throughout. Though because there still lay frost on the ground she wore upon her head a brown hood, such that is called a karbus, draped with pretty red ribbons. And around her waist hung a belt of brass, made of rattling coins, holding on the one side a knife tethered in a tin sheath and on the other a pin box.

  Yet little did she know of the trap set upon her path as she stepped out in all her finery, and that morning she was as gay and graceful as a young doe and her pretty countenance was a joy to behold.

  First the spearsmen were sent out with their nets to the hunting ground, they dashed headlong saddled upon their steeds at full gallop, their spears outstretched, like a horde of Cossacks or Kalmyks.

  Soon after them left the wolf hunters themselves, known as the loomarahvas, in a great circle around the island of Hiidensaari, hollering at the tops of their voices and firing their muskets, thus to fright the wolves from their hiding places, if indeed they had taken cover amongst the thicket or on the islands upon the swamp.

  And thus a great clamour and commotion spread across the boggy lands of Hiidensaari, where ordinarily none but crane and curlew sing, and where the wild wolf howls.

  But Priidik the woodsman sped towards their agreed hunting ground upon the vast meadow. At one end there stood a high stone wall, and behind the wall were hunting nets hidden from view.

  And so Priidik and the other huntsmen crouched amidst the coppices on either side of the meadow, waiting and making not a sound.

  Then all of a sudden there came a warning cry from a blackbird high in the treetops and at that moment, herded by the loomarahva
s, the two wolves came into view and the shouts and cries at their heels pealed out. Nor could they hide any longer amongst the thick bushes, for the fierce barking of the hunting dogs quickly spurred them onwards. And so they both began to gallop faster, their jaws open and their dark, ominous tongues dangling low to the ground.

  And with that Aalo, wedded wife of Priidik the woodsman, standing amongst the crowd of villagers, looked on as the pursued wolves dashed past her, gripped in the fear of death.

  And though at times they were obscured in gunpowder smoke, as shots rained in from behind them and from the sides, Aalo could see that the first of the wolves was smaller in stature, whilst the other was a large, powerful beast, its legs tall and its body long and grey, its muzzle sharp and its forehead wide, its wild, slanted eyes full of the fury of the forest.

  Then, all at once, Aalo heard quite distinctly in her ears the words:

  ‘Aalo, Aalo my lass, will you follow me to the swamp?’

  At this she shuddered, as if she had been shot in the side, for she could not see the speaker of these words. But both her body and her soul were shaken by a mighty wind, as if a great force had whisked her from her feet and lifted her into the air and like the finest fowl’s feather spun her in a sacred storm, until she began to gasp for breath and all but swooned upon the spot.

  And all this happened faster than a beat of a gull’s wings above the sea.

  Once recovered, Aalo saw the first of the wolves, every last fibre of its body strained in gallop, its head and legs and tail forming a single straight line as it leapt headlong twice the height of the stone wall, believing there to be sanctuary and salvation on the other side, though what awaited was in fact a certain death.

  But then the larger, more powerful beast, running behind the first, as the men’s eyes were fixed upon its companion, sped off to one side and escaped deep into the forest, thus breaching the men’s barrier.