Focus on Finnish Writers |
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Extract from the quarterly journal
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When men go off to war, women must do their best to take their place at home. Lauri Sihvonen examines Sirpa Kähkönen's latest novel Lakanasiivet ('Linen wings', Otava, 2007)
When the Continuation War broke out in June 1941, Finland was in dire need of strength to fight the Soviet Union. Field Marshal and commanderin- chief of the armed forces Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim wrote to the Finns in an order of the day as follows:
‘I call upon you to embark with me upon a holy war against the enemy of our nation. The fallen heroes [of the Winter War, 1939–1940] will rise again from beneath the summer hillocks to stand beside us this day, as we set out on this crusade against our enemies, firm in our purpose to ensure the future of Finland, with the glorious military might of Germany at our side and as our brothers in arms.’
Sirpa Kähkönen (born in Kuopio in 1964) has taken this wild bit of zombie fiction as the basis for her new novel; Mannerheim gets exactly what he ordered.
Lakanasiivet (‘Linen wings’, Otava), the fourth independent instalment in Kähkönen’s novel series, tells of Kuopio on 1 July 1941. This was the only day on which this largest city in northern Savo, 400 kilometres northeast of Helsinki, was bombed during the Continuation War (1941–1944).
Lakanasiivet is a polyphonic one-day novel. Even one of the characters, a reporter by the name of Lehtivaara, becomes enthralled with the idea of a symphony as a stylistic approach to a text. The historian and novelist Kähkönen does what she knows best: she tells with empathy how different people, especially women, react to the attack. The previous works in the series have been Bildungsromane, but now the same characters are faced with a single, sudden event.
At the beginning of the novel, a German-born cabaret dancer Mizzi arrives in Kuopio with her daughter Charlotta. Dawn breaks; Mizzi has many matters to attend to, so her daughter is left in the care of a certain musician.
At the same time, the war orphan in Mrs Lehtivaara’s charge, 10-year-old Juho Tiihonen, runs away and wants to get to know the new girl who has arrived in the city. When the roar of the bombers begins around midday, Juho takes the girl to a hideout he had built.
The main character of the series’ previous instalments, Anna Tuomi, has sent her children to safety in the countryside. Anna’s friend is also there, the daughter of Karelian evacuee Helvi Martiskainen.
There are hardly any men in the town to speak of; in fact, only the reporter, Lehtivaara, and the owner of the timber yard take on major roles. The men’s absence triggers a feeling that they now only exist in a dream reality, as zombies.
Lehtivaara’s young son who died in the Winter War, Jaakko, lurks as a spectre in the fatherless Juho’s life. The main story in the novel is wound up in Charlotta’s search for a father.
For Juho, in the Savo dialect, the girl is Saaralotta. Kähkönen’s use of dialect is affective – it brings the characters closer, making them more real.
Lakanasiivet’s harsh story also contains an ample amount of subtle humour. In one delicious scene, Juho’s grandfather, a postman named Korhonen, entreats Juho to bring Charlotta, who has fallen ill, out of their hideout and into the house by playing Indians with him.
The women’s talk about sex reminds us that people did in fact talk about it back then too; the author calls into question the concept of the ideal of the nuclear family. Although the number of divorces in modern-day Finland has grown exponentially, families were not unchanging units before either. Many men died in the war, lost their sanity or just left. Lakanasiivet is also a critique of the monolithic view of history.
Lauri Sihvonen
Translated by Owen Witesman |
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