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Editorial

This’n’that
Map-thief appears.... and disappears; publishing news; literary prizes; new database; chairman retires; reader survey and T-shirt offer

Mikko Rimminen & Kyösti Salokorpi
Beastly beatitudes
Extracts from Hämärä luonto. Aamunkoista Yön tuhmaan lintuun (niiden käyttäytymisestä ja elämästä yleensä) (‘Natura Obscura. From the Moth of Dawn to the Naughty Bird of Night. [On their behaviour and life in general]’, Tammi, 2001)
The authors explore a linguistic animal kingdom which has hitherto been overlooked, saying that they wrote their book essentially to meet the needs of Finnish schoolchildren, who can now learn that the Rubber duck (Anas cummea) and the Hot dog (Canis calidus) are creatures they may expect to meet in either English- or Finnish-speaking countries...

Maria Antas
Life in the mist
Tove Jansson (1914–2001), artist and writer, is best-known for her classic Moomin books for children – but she also wrote some surprising fiction for adults, returning again and again to the cruelty of artistic creation

Tove Jansson
Art in nature
Writing letters
Two short stories from Dockskåpet (‘The doll’s house’, 1978) and Meddelande (‘Messages’, Schildts, 1997), translated by David McDuff and Silvester Mazzarella
Tove Jansson’s Moomin characters are known in 33 languages the world over. In these short stories for adults, both translated into English for the first time, she takes a look at the inscrutability of art – and the tribulations of world fame for the Moomins’ mother

Vesa Mauriala
Poetry for a new age?
Katri Vala (1901–1944) belonged to the Tulenkantajat (‘Torch-Bearers’) group of young poets of the 1920s who found common cause in cosmopolitanism, machine romanticism and the ideals of Europeanism. Vesa Mauriala traces Vala’s career from her spectacular debut in 1924 to her tragically early death, from tuberculosis, at the age of 42

Leena Krohn
Enough is enough!
Katri Vala’s poems were once praised for their glowing exoticism and youth-worship. The contemporary Finnish writer Leena Krohn (born 1947) is not convinced

Katri Vala
To live, to live, to live!
Poems from the collections Kaukainen puutarha (‘Distant garden’, 1924), Sininen ovi (‘The blue door’, 1926), Maan laiturilla (‘On the Earth’s jetty’, 1930), Paluu (‘Return’, 1934) and Pesäpuu palaa (‘The nesting tree is burning’, 1942), translated by Herbert Lomas

Helvi Hämäläinen
Memento vivere
The writer Helvi Hämäläinen (1907–1998) recalls how her friend Katri Vala, despite her poverty and illness, kept a ribbon pinned to her living-room wall bearing the message: Memento vivere! – ‘Remember to live’. For Hämäläinen, Vala’s poetry glitters with ‘the colours of fire and the dew of dawn’

Olli Jalonen
What if?
Between 1944 and 1956, Finland was forced to lease the Porkkala peninsula, a sizeable area of land close to Helsinki, to the Soviet Union for use as a military base. Olli Jalonen explores this extraordinary period with the help of images by the photographer Jan Kaila, who discovered and reprinted films taken by Russians during the occupation, and photographed objects they had left behind

The dog-man’s daughter
In an extract from the radio play Porkkalansaari (‘The island of Porkkala’, The Finnish Broadcasting Company, 1993), a policeman’s daughter remembers her father, one of the first to set foot in Porkkala after the departure of the Russians. What did he see? What does she remember?

Soila Lehtonen
A school for everyone
Soila Lehtonen traces the history of a former Finnish institution, the folk school, and its importance in the country’s national self-determination

Esa Kero
Crow into swan?
An extract from the collection of short prose Kansakoulu (‘Folk school’, Rakennusalan Kustantajat & Sarmala Oy, 2000)
Esa Kero remembers his less-than-carefree days as a young boy at folk school in the 1950s

Reviews

Kai Laitinen
Art for a new nation
Riitta Konttinen: Sammon takojat. Nuoren Suomen taiteilijat ja suomalaisuuden kuvat (‘The makers of the Sampo. The artists of Young Finland and images of Finnish consciousness’)

Pentti Holappa
Believe it or not
Visa Heinonen & Hannu Konttinen: Nyt uutta Sumessa! Suomalaisen mainonnan historia (‘New in Finland! A history of Finnish advertising’)