Finnish Literature

Yksi Suomen taide- ja kulttuurihistoriallisista sivujuonteista on muinaisegyptiläisen kulttuurin ja sen tutkimisen eli egyptologian vaikutus joihinkin Suomen kulttuurin osa-alueisiin 1700-luvulta aina nykypäivään saakka.Tästä vaikutuksesta voidaan käyttää myös yleiseurooppalaista nimitystä egyptomania, joka tarkoittaa innostunutta ja joskus jopa yliampuvaa suhtautumista kaikkeen alkuperäiseen muinaisegyptiläiseen kulttuuriin ja esineistöön samoin kuin usein pseudoegyptiläisen mallin mukaan valmistettuihin esineisiin ja arkkitehtoonisiin yksityiskohtiin. Egyptomania on melko erikoislaaatuinen ilmiö taidehistoriassa. Se yhdistää niin tieteen kuin mielikuvituksen ja sen vaikutuspiiri käsittää arkkitehtuurin, sisustuskulttuurin, kuvanveiston, maalaustaiteen, teatterin, elokuvat, käyttöesineistön ja lukuisat muut mitä moninaisimmat alat ja muoti-ilmiöt. Tässä artikkelissa pyrin valaisemaan hieman tätä osa-aluetta Suomen kulttuurissa.

Egyptomania in Finland. Ancient Egyptian culture has been so fascinating that since the Romans this cultural phenomenon, usually called egyptomania or Nile style has been a part of our culture in various levels, also in Finland.

‘First I will take care of the women’ she begins. Tablet GLO-75 is a letter dated 300 BC from the wealthy mother of a groom to her future daughter-in-law, whose family or tribe has been hostile. She promises an extravagant wedding to soothe the bride’s clan. The entire village must have read the tablet and preserved it, until Emile Fradin found it in 1924 in an underground room at Glozel, a little south of Vichy,
She encourages her future daughter-in-law ‘to stand tall, be brave as four men’, soothe Anna’s anger and spin the men’s hostility into strands. She will bring dresses and blouses for the women, a thousand red meads for the men, and a metal star of marriage for the maiden. To gather the families, her husband Star Champion prepares a fleet of wedding sleighs drawn by five reindeer, enough for fifteen families. For herself, she will wear a high gown, blouse and woman’s crown. They leave on a sleigh at dusk to gather dresses from a hundred maidens.

Arto Salminen wrote his six novels in the context of the neoliberal turn in Finland. They were a response to the rapid growth of the power of capital over labor. Salminen's thematization of neoliberal class difference and the supporting ideological conditions is intense. The aesthetic and literary representations (most notably, the figure of the dirty class) by which Salminen politicizes the world and subjectivities of the working class are ambivalent in their ironic tone, yet always compassionate on the deeper thematic level of his texts. Modifying the critical ethos of social realism with some naturalist and modernist influences of style, his novels are among the most important and original works of art in the field of the contemporary Finnish novel.

Journal of Finnish Studies 18 (2), 181–209

Essee Pussikaljaromaanista, Pölkystä ja Nenäpäivästä. Teoksessa Kertomuksen luonto (toim. Kaisa Kurikka, Olli Löytty, Kukku Melkas & Viola Parente-Capkova, Nykykulttuuri 2012)

https://www.jyu.fi/hum/laitokset/taiku/opiskelu/nykykulttuuri/julkaisusarja/index_html#107

The poet Pentti Saarikoski (1937-1983) was one of the most significant Finnish writers of the 20th century. He was also a prolific translator, who received many prestigious awards for his literary production. Throughout his life Saarikoski showed evidence of a certain psychopathology and mental complications for which he was twice hospitalized. The paper argues that Saarikoski possessed a large number of autistic traits and elevated symptomatology of ADHD. The traits of these conditions are often found in persons with high creative achievement. The works of the psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald provide the theoretical background, on which the biographic evidence from Saarikoski's childhood and adult life is analyzed. The identity diffusion under which the poet suffered can be shown as beneficial to this level of creativity. Saarikoski was an autistic writer, who visualized his poetry which eventually provided him with artistic identity. In addition to autistic traits and high intelligence, Saarikoski also sought novelty and sensation, which can be attributed to his ADHD traits.

This article focuses on affects and emotions that are constructed and conveyed to readers in depression writing. How can fictional texts evoke the experiential world of depression? How are the often distressing and unsettling experiences of depression mediated through writing? Phenomenologists and theorists of embodied cognition have in recent years emphasized the interaffective, interpersonal and embodied nature of depression (cf. Fuchs 2013a, Ratcliffe 2015). In these views, depression is understood as a disorder of “intercorporeality and interaffectivity” and as “a ‘detunement’ of the resonant body that mediates our participation in a shared affective space” (Fuchs 2013a: 219). The aim of this text is to show how this new understanding can help us to see why depression writing is able to evoke such powerful corporeal and emotional responses in its readers, and also how depression writing may point to the embodied and interaffective nature of the human mind, thus opening up new possibilities for understanding experiences of mental illness.

Completata nel 1789, sotto gli auspici dell'Aufklärung tedesca, quest'opera del curato Christfrid Ganander è in assoluto la prima trattazione scientifica di ampio respiro sulla mitologia finlandese e, insieme, una delle sue più preziose fonti a monte dell'imponente lavoro di riorganizzazione effettuato da Elias Lönnrot per il suo Kalevala. Impostato in forma enciclopedica, il Mythologia Fennica espone elementi tratti da tutti i livelli della tradizione, sia colta che popolare. Da un lato, vi sono i temi legati al mondo letterario delle saghe scandinave, dai miti sul misterioso "fondatore" Fornjótr alle battaglie degli antichi re svedesi contro gli stregoni finnar, per arrivare ai resoconti dei navigatori vichinghi sui misteriosi popoli incontrati lungo le più remote rotte nord-orientali. Ma Ganander riporta anche una notevole quantità di materiale folklorico finnico e lappone, che espone affidandosi all'autorità dei runot raccolti dalla viva voce del popolo. Tra divinità, spiriti guardiani ed esseri  soprannaturali, tra riti sciamanici e celebrazioni sincretiche, spiccano le tradizioni sui possenti Kalewan pojat, i "figli di Kalewa", tra i quali il lettore riconoscerà i principali eroi kalevaliani – Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen, la signora di Pohjola, il malevolo Soini (Kullervo) – le cui fisionomie, non ancora addomesticate dalla penna di Lönnrot, si affacciano qui con tratti sovrumani e terrifici.
Con l’attenzione del naturalista e con l’entusiasmo del pioniere, Christfrid Ganander si sforza di far luce sul materiale mitico-leggendario della più remota periferia d’Europa, con analisi a volte ingenue, a volte sorprendenti, aprendo la strada alla successiva stagione del risveglio nazional-romantico finlandese.

(Toim. Mika Hallila, Yrjö Hosiaisluoma, Sanna Karkulehto, Leena Kirstinä ja Jussi Ojajärvi)     

Mitä Suomen kirjallisuudessa on tapahtunut vuosituhannen taitteessa? Kaksiosainen Suomen nykykirjallisuus kartoittaa nykykirjallisuuden teemoja, ilmaisukeinoja ja yhteiskunnallista kontekstia yli kahden vuosikymmenen ajalta.

Ensimmäisen osan keskiössä ovat lajit ja poetiikan kysymykset. Proosan, draaman ja lyriikan kehityslinjojen ohella käsitellään niin lasten- ja nuortenkirjallisuutta kuin esseistiikkaakin. Tarkastelussa ovat myös taiteenalojen ja medioiden rajoilla operoivat lajit: sarjakuva, elokuvasovitukset, popsanoitukset ja verkkokirjallisuus.

Toinen osa käsittelee kirjallisuutta kehystävää yhteiskunnallista todellisuutta ja kirjallisuusinstituutiota. Kirjallisuus on hahmotellut uudelleen kansallista identiteettiä ja heijastellut entistä monikulttuurisempaa Suomea. Keskeisiä aihepiirejä ovat olleet niin ikään sukupuoli ja seksuaalisuus, globaalit ympäristöongelmat ja kapitalismi. Osan jälkipuolisko kartoittaa kirjallisen elämän muutoksia – kirjailijakunnasta lukijakuntaan ja kustannusalasta kirjallisuudenopetukseen.

Yleistajuisesti kirjoitettu teospari on tarkoitettu sekä kirjallisuuden harrastajille että opiskelu- ja ammattikäyttöön lukioista yliopistoihin.

A defining feature of retranslation is that a previous translation exists, and this earlier text has a first translator. In this article we argue that the figure of the first translator exerts an influence in the retranslation process, and all retranslators are forced to develop a stance towards the predecessor. Taking Harold Bloom’s notion of anxiety of influence in poetry as a starting point, we look at two cases of retranslation that share the same famous first translator, Pentti Saarikoski, analysing how and where the voice of this first translation can be heard in the retranslations. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, there are six modes available to poets. Applying the same taxonomy to our two retranslators, we find that they have resorted to different modes. What remains constant is that the figure of the first translator is an unavoidable function of the retranslation process and needs to be taken into account both by the retranslator and by researchers studying retranslations.

Keywords: retranslator, first translator, anxiety of influence, Pentti Saarikoski, dependency/abhängigkeit, translator roles

Series editor alexandra büchler The present study was commissioned in the framework of the LEILA Research project supported by the Anna Lindh Foundation and coordinated by Literature Across Frontiers in partnership with ArabLit and iReMMO. The LEILA Research project represents the initial research phase of the cooperation project LEILA-Arabic Literature in European Languages coordinated by iReMMO and co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

This article focuses on the films Sampo and Rauta-Aika, the most in-depth audio-visual interpretations of the Kalevala, both born at cultural interfaces: Sampo as a joint Finnish-Soviet production where Finnish research on the Kalevala met the Russian cinematic fairytale tradition, and Rauta-Aika as a meeting ground of two different media, film and television, and drawing on the visual arts, music, and opera. The article analyzes how these two interpretations of audio-visual monuments came about and how contemporaries saw their relationship to the Kalevala. Both films also signified the drawing of a boundary between historical and mythological views of the
Kalevala.

Both re-interpretations sought to distance themselves from the more nationally isolated interpretations of the Kalevala tradition. In Sampo, this distantiation was visible at all levels from the production process to the film’s style. Rauta-Aika, on the other hand, aimed at a materialistic re-interpretation from a monetary
perspective. Despite their differences, Sampo and Rauta-Aika focus on the same problem, the interpretation of the epic through changing audiovisual narrative means. The filmmakers were also fascinated by the same theme: the Sampo, the wondrous Kalevalaic miracle machine.

The collection, first one ever on Aino Kallas in English, highlights her significance to the artistic and intellectual horizons of modernity of Finland and Estonia as well as those of Scandinavia and Europe. Containing articles focusing on the question of female voice and echoes of feminist ecological thought in her fiction, a contrapunctual reading of her fiction and that of Isak Dinesen, her unknown manuscript “Bathseba”, the implications of existentialist thought for her work, Kallas’ engagement in her cultural criticism and life writings with decadent modernism, issues of race and heredity, subjectivity and borders, travel, ageing, her interpretation of Goethe, and the iconography of Kallas, the collection features the work of today’s leading Aino Kallas scholars in Finland and in Estonia

In the Steaming Lap of the Land is concerned with the metaphor of land
as woman in the works of Lapp author Timo K. Mukka (1944–1973).
This recurrent metaphor in Mukka’s prose and poetry derives from the
Romantic tradition, in which nature is depicted as mother of a human
child, but it does not only represent a material unity of earth and human
body: the archetypal metaphor and its variations also embody many
ideological and social themes in Mukka’s works.

Sono raccolti in questo numero della rivista saggi di studiosi italiani e stranieri che indagano il rapporto fra Verga e “gli altri”. Le ricerche qui esposte muovono in tre principali direzioni: la prima riguarda gli autori che sono stati fonte di suggestioni tematiche e formali, anche indirette, costituendo la “biblioteca” reale o ideale dello scrittore catanese; la seconda riguarda scrittori che ne hanno ricevuto stimoli e spunti, in Italia, a partire dai suoi contemporanei e fino al tardo Novecento; la terza guarda alla ricezione di Verga in vari paesi, anche lontani geograficamente e culturalmente. Molti dei saggi qui pubblicati sono il risultato degli interventi proposti in occasione del Convegno Internazionale Verga e “gli altri”. La biblioteca, i presupposti, la ricezione, tenutosi a Catania (27-29 settembre 2017), su iniziativa del Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche dell’Università di Catania, della Fondazione Verga, dell’ADI-SD (Associazione degli Italianisti – Sezione Didattica).

This volume addresses the prominent, and in many ways highly similar, role that historical fiction has played in the formation of the two neighbouring ‘young nations’, Finland and Estonia. It gives a multi-sided overview of the function of the historical novel during different periods of Finnish and Estonian history from the 1800s until the present day, and it provides
detailed close-readings of selected authors and literary trends in their social, political and cultural contexts.

This book addresses nineteenth-century ‘fictional foundations’, historical fiction of the new nation states in the interwar period as well as post-Second World War Soviet Estonian novels and modern historiographic metafiction. The overall focus is on traditions of writing rather than on isolated highpoints; on chains of transnational influences and on narrative elements
that recur both synchronically and diachronically. The volume shows historical fiction prefigured many narratives, tropes, heroes and events that academic history writing later adopted.

The comparison of the two literary traditions also opens up a much broader view of how historical novels narrate the nation. While existing explorations of historical fiction have mostly been written from the perspective of the old and great nations, this book shows that the traditions of the young nations ‘without history’ often challenge many mainstream views on the genre.

In everyday use, the concepts of utopia and dystopia are often understood as binary oppositions of each other. However, a dystopia is not the simple reverse of a utopia. As literary traditions both utopia and dystopia belong to the same tradition of utopian literature, imagining alternative societies to the existing ones. Even though dystopian fiction imagines negative impacts of ongoing political or societal processes, it also mirrors the temporal society the author and the readers inhabit. The utopian fiction works the same way.
Dystopian and utopian fiction also share some thematic features. Even though the fictional worlds of dystopias are often dark and horrifying, modern dystopias also share an idea of resistance and change for the better. Especially dystopias addressing young readers always offer a certain amount of hope no matter how evil the depicted situation in the fictive world is.
In this article I concentrate on the positive undertones in young adult (YA) dystopias and show that works of the genre often question the strict dichotomy between utopia and dystopia.  I claim that hope is always an important part of YA dystopias, and they offer young people a path to active political agency in a way that is not otherwise open to them in contemporary Western societies.
YA authors (as well as their audiences) often follow the international literary trends and the late increase in popularity of YA dystopian fiction has made YA dystopias appealing in many cultures. This article focuses especially on Finnish dystopian literature aimed for young adults.  Over the past decade there has been a commensurate boom in young adult (YA) dystopias in Finland. In this article I analyze two Finnish YA dystopias, Siiri Enoranta’s Nokkosvallankumous (2013) and K. K. Alongi’s Kevätuhrit (2015). In both novels, the young characters have both the opportunity and the obligation to change the ruined world around them. In my reading of these two novels I discuss the YA dystopia as a genre that offers young protagonists a chance to fulfill their potential and change the world.

Despite the increasing number of research on translating for children, no study has so far taken into consideration the translations of children’s literature from Finnish into Italian. This dissertation sets out to fill this gap with a comparative study of Finnish picturebooks and their translations into Italian. Besides being the first research in the field analysing the shifts between these two systems, the study thoroughly investigates the characteristics of the translation process of picturebooks. The works chosen as case study are the Finnish
picturebooks by Mauri Kunnas and their Italian translations from the period 1979-2009 because they are characterized by a high number of linguistic and cultural complexities which
challenge translators’ skills and knowledge.
The dissertation establishes whether and how culture-specific elements (anthroponyms, toponyms, food and allusions) and the word-image interaction have a significant impact on
the quality and the nature of the target works, and also whether these aspects are still consistent after the translation and the adaptation process to the target system. Since
picturebooks are multimodal texts whose message is produced by both the verbal and the visual, it has been necessary to use a multimodal comparative analysis. Such a descriptive comparative study has allowed me to describe the textual and cultural manipulations undergone by Kunnas’s picturebooks translated into Italian. Indeed, it has helped to identify what kind of shifts occur when cultural specific elements are transferred from the source system to the target one, to determine the most frequent translation strategies used to ensure a higher degree of readability, and to establish whether particular translation choices have contributed to modify the word-image interaction.
The results of the multimodal comparative analysis have shown that Italian translators have been deeply influenced by the preponderance of the illustrations and for this reason they have often verbalised the visual and added information not originally contained in the source written text. Moreover, the findings of the analysis together with the interviews to the Italian translator and publishing house have also demonstrated that the latter aimed at producing works “good for the child” – and at the same time “good for the adult” – and at minimising Finnish cultural specificity, even to the detriment of the aesthetic nature of the original picturebooks.

Keywords
Children’s literature, translation, translated literature, cultural elements, picture books, Mauri Kunnas.

Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment is the first English language anthology that presents ecocritical research on northern European literatures and cultures. The contributors examine specifically Nordic narratives of nature and the environment, with a focus on the cultures and literatures of the modern northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, including Sápmi, which is the land traditionally inhabited by the indigenous Sami people.
Covering northern European literatures and cultures over a period of more than two centuries, this anthology provides substantial insights into both old and new narratives of nature and the environment as well as intertextual relations, the variety of cultural traditions, and current discourses connected to the Nordic environmental imagination. Case studies relating to works of literature, film, and other media shed new light on the role of culture, history and society in the formation of narratives of nature and the environment, and offer a comprehensive and multi-faceted overview of the most recent ecocritical research in Scandinavian studies.

Dass Manfred Peter Hein, der im Mai 2021 seinen 90. Geburtstag beging, zu den wirklich herausragenden zeitgenössischen deutschen Autoren gehört, ist erst in jüngster Zeit ganz deutlich zu erkennen. Aber immer noch scheint es, als stünden sich die unterschiedlichen Facetten seines Werks gegenseitig im Wege. Der Übersetzer verdeckt den Dichter, der Dichter den Prosaschreiber, der Prosaschreiber den Essayisten und dieser wiederum den Übersetzer und Vermittler fremder Literaturen. Die „Hermetik“, die sperrige Unzugänglichkeit des einzelnen Gedichts korrespondiert mit der Unüberschaubarkeit des Lebenswerks, das wiederum einem nur schwer zu entziffernden Lebensweg entstammt.

Andreas F. Kelletats Aufsätze zu Manfred Peter Hein wollen und können dessen äußerst komplexes Gesamtwerk nicht restlos erschließen, aber sie eröffnen Zugänge zu diesem Werk und seiner Vielschichtigkeit; und sie verbinden die Analyse einzelner Texte jeweils mit Blicken auf das Werkganze, auf die Biografie des Autors und auf den zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext. Kelletats Studien lassen freilich auch erkennen, was an interpretatorischer und analytischer Arbeit noch zu leisten sein wird, bevor Heins seit einem halben Jahrhundert „im utopischen Abseits“ entstandene Gedichte, Prosatexte und Übersetzungen als in Deutschland und bei seinen des Deutschen kundigen Lesern angekommen bezeichnet werden können.

The purpose of this article is to explore the binary relationships found in the novel My Cat Yugoslavia by the Finnish Albanian writer Pajtim Statovci. The theoretical background to the discussion is the previous research on deconstruction in literature, particularly Jacques Derrida’s theory of the supplement. I construct a research tool based on the assumptions of Derrida’s theory and the polemical exchange with Derrida of Iranian literature researcher Mahdi Shafieyan. On the basis of studies of traditional Albanian society (including Albanians from Kosovo), I introduce the reader to issues such as the traditional model of the Albanian family, ancestral revenge and the role of women in society. These issues undergird the analysis of excerpts from the novel My Cat Yugoslavia, which takes into account the theory of binary relations with regard to elements of the traditions of the ancestors of Albanian immigrants from Kosovo who settled in Finland.

Original article in English (2014) published in the bilingual anthology Kalevala: Epica, Magia, Arte e Musica / Kalevala: Epic, Magic, Art and Music (ed. by Piludu and Frog, 2014, VociFuoriscena-Viterbo). Proceeding of the bilingual scientific seminar "Kalevala: Epica, Magia, Arte e Musica / Kalevala: Epic, Magic, Art and Music" (2012, Bottenicco di Moimacco & Cividale del Friuli, Udine) organized by Kalevalaseura (Kalevala Society), Associazione Sergio Gaggia and many other Finnish and Italian institution to celebrate the centenary of Kalevalaseura.

The theme of environmental destruction and human-induced climate change has become a staple of fiction in the first decades of the twenty-first century. This article explores how a particular genre, crime fiction, responds to this challenge. Focusing on two examples of what I call crimate fiction, the article examines the ways in the novels move between the specific social, cultural, political, and environmental space in which the crimes and their detection occur and the larger world in order to foster a form of "eco-cosmopolitanism" among readers.

This study introduces the professional and life story of translator Marta Hellmuthová (1917–1988), both in the context of cultural and political history and as a contribution to the translator studies. Hellmuthová, the educated and linguistically gifted wife of a diplomat, decided to learn Finnish in order to make Mika Waltari’s novel The Egyptian available to Czech readers. Thanks to archival research, it was discovered that the translation of one of the most popular books in the Czech Republic was partly done in the late 1950s behind the bars of the Pardubice correctional labour camp, where Hellmuthová had been unfairly imprisoned. While the 1950s and 1960s were a period in which she struggled to establish her position as a translator, the years of so‑called normalization, which brought significant progress in Czechoslovak‑Finnish relations, strengthened her reputation and allowed her to become Waltari’s “sole translator”. At the same time, thanks not only to her determination, hard work and high‑quality translations, but probably also to her good relations with the diplomatic corps of Finland, she became a recognized translator from Finnish.
//
Studie představuje profesní a životní příběh překladatelky Marty Hellmuthové (1917–1988), a to jednak v kontextu kulturních a politických dějin, jednak jako příspěvek k tzv. translator studies. Vzdělaná a jazykově nadaná manželka diplomata se rozhodla naučit finsky, aby zpřístupnila českým čtenářům román Miky Waltariho Egypťan Sinuhet. Díky archivnímu bádání se podařilo vypátrat, že překlad jedné z dosud nejpopulárnějších knih v České republice vznikal částečně na konci 50. let za mřížemi v nápravně pracovním táboře Pardubice, kde byla Hellmuthová nespravedlivě vězněna. Zatímco léta 50. a 60. pro ni byla obdobím, kdy si musela složitě vydobýt svou překladatelskou pozici, léta tzv. normalizace, která přinesla výrazný rozvoj československo‑finských vztahů, posílila její postavení coby Waltariho „dvorní překladatelky“, potažmo vážené překladatelky z finštiny, v niž díky svému odhodlání, pracovnímu nasazení a vysoké kvalitě překladů, ale zřejmě i dobrým vztahům s diplomatickými zástupci Finska dospěla.

Monitoimimies Sakari Pälsi on erityisen tunnettu maailmanmatkoistaan. Ensimmäiselle tutkimusmatkalleen ulkomaille hän pääsi kuitenkin vasta 26-vuotiaana, nykynäkökulmasta ajatellen varsin myöhään. Pälsi oli edellisenä vuonna saattanut arkeologian yliopisto-opintonsa kunniakkaaseen päätökseen ja kaipasi mahdollisuuksia hyödyntää vastavalmistunutta tutkintoaan. Gustaf John Ramstedt (1873–1950), joka oli jo tuolloin tunnettu kielitieteilijä ja tutkimusmatkailija, oli lähdössä kuudennelle Itä-Aasian tutkimusmatkalleen. Ramstedt oli jo aiemmin tutkinut Mongolian kieltä ja kulttuuria, mutta halusi laajentaa tutkimustensa aikaperspektiiviä myös esihistorialliseen aikaan ja etsi sopivaa matkakumppania. Pälsi tarttui hanakasti mahdollisuuteen päästä Ramstedtin matkaan, ja kahden hengen tutkimusretkikunta suunnisti puoli vuotta kestäneelle tutkimusretkelle Mongolian aroille keväällä 1909. Tässä matkassa oli
monia piirteitä, joista tuli leimaa-antavia Pälsin myöhemmille reissuille. Mongolian matkalla olikin ilmeisen huomattava vaikutus Pälsin myöhemmän uran muotoutumisen kannalta.

Jack-of-all-trades Sakari Pälsi was especially renowned for his journeys abroad. However, he was able to depart on his first expedition only in the age of 26, comparatively late from a contemporary
perspective. Pälsi had, the year before, successfully completed his archaeological studies at the university and was looking for opportunities to put his newly acquired qualification to use. Gustaf
John Ramstedt (1873–1950), who was already then a renowned linguist and explorer, was leaving for his sixth expedition to East Asia.
Ramstedt had already earlier studied Mongolian language and culture, but was keen to broaden the timescale of his research to include prehistory and was in search of a suitable traveling companion. Pälsi jumped at the chance to travel with Ramstedt, and the expedition-of-two headed for a six-month exploratory journey to the Mongolian steppes in the spring of 1909. Many aspects of this journey were
to become a model for Pälsi’s later trips. This journey to Mongolia had a remarkable impact on the formation of Pälsi’s later career.

Nuova versione riveduta e corretta dell'articolo pubblicato nel 2014 (versione bilingue) e 2015 (versione italiana). La nuova versione del 2021 è pressoché identica nei contenuti, ma ci sono delle piccole variazioni, per esempio alcune correzioni e nuove note editoriali.

This dissertation argues that Finland is currently being under-represented on the literary world scene and the translation of an excerpt from Marjo Niemi’s novel Kaikkien menetysten äiti (2017) that forms part of this study is set to be a first step towards enabling Finnish literature to make its voice heard internationally. The commentary section that follows this empirical exercise examines some of the challenges posed by the source text and it illustrates how theory can encourage reflections and ultimately assist in identifying solutions to be adopted in the practical translatorial process.
Taken in its entirety, this dissertation can thus be regarded as a reasoned demonstration of the literary value of Finnish literature, whose feeble voice is indeed worth the practice of translation.

Globalization, immigration and the multiculturalization of society have had a deep impact on Finland in the last few decades. But what effect did these altered cultural-societal circumstances have on literary life in Finland in the early 2000s? The object of research in this article-based dissertation is the transnationalization of literary life in Finland. This is investigated through what is called ’new transnational literature’ in this study by means of analyzing literature published by writers with migrant backgrounds during the first decade of the 20th century in Finland. The study analyzes the reception of debut novels by Ranya ElRamly, Umayya Abu-Hanna, Zinaida Lindén and Alexandra Salmela. Furthermore, it considers how this reception has implicitly defined and canonized Finnish literature, and how transnational and cross-border writers are situated in the literary field in Finland. By problematizing how to approach the transnational in literary studies, this dissertation contributes to current debates on methodological nationalism.

The research material consists of works of fiction as well as texts published on internet and print media that deal with the reception of the novels. These sources are examined within the framework of cultural studies, mainly from the perspectives of close reading and sociological criticism, media studies-oriented reception theory, and the history of literature, as well as transnational approach that goes beyond national framework.

This research demonstrates that approximately 90 writers with migrant backgrounds, often writing in languages other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami, have published texts in Finland in the 2000s. Although many of them have been successful, most of them have continued working without due recognition hampered by prevailing monolingualism. New transnational literary works have been placed in rigid categories, and the reception has emphasized authors’ backgrounds and national borders, thus concealing the literary dimensions and qualities of their works. New transnational literature questions the understanding of literature as nation-bound. According to this study, Finnish literary life appears to be a transnational and multi-lingual space, in which writers simultaneously belong to both transnational and national literary cultures. The significance of gender is also evident, in that women writers and their books have had a pivotal role in the transnationalization of Finnish literature.

-

Globalisaatio, maahanmuutto ja yhteiskunnan monikulttuuristuminen ovat viime vuosikymmeninä
luonnehtineet Suomea. Miten muuttunut kulttuuris-yhteiskunnallinen tilanne on vaikuttanut kirjalliseen elämään 2000-luvun alun Suomessa? Artikkeliväitöskirjassa tutkitaan suomalaisen kirjallisen elämän ylirajaistumista. Tätä hahmotellaan tarkastelemalla maahanmuuttajataustaisten kirjailijoiden julkaisemia tekstejä, joita kutsutaan tässä uudeksi ylirajaiseksi kirjallisuudeksi.

Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan myös teosten vastaanottoa, vastaanoton sisältämää suomalaisen kirjallisuuden määrittelyä ja kanonisointia sekä ylirajaisten kirjailijoiden sijoittumista kirjalliselle kentälle Suomessa. Pohtimalla sitä, miten tutkia kirjallisuuden ylirajaisuutta, tutkimus osallistuu kansainväliseen keskusteluun metodologisesta nationalismista.

Tutkimusaineisto koostuu kaunokirjallisuudesta, erityisesti Ranya ElRamlyn, Umayya AbuHannan, Zinaida Lindénin ja Alexandra Salmelan esikoisteoksista, sekä internetissä ja printtimediassa julkaistusta, kirjallisuutta käsittelevästä tekstimateriaalista. Aineistoa lähestytään tekstilähtöisen ja yhteiskunnallisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen, mediatutkimuksellisesti painottuneen vastaanottotutkimuksen, kirjallisuushistoriallisen tutkimuksen sekä kansallisesta kehyksestä irtaantuvan ylirajaisen lähestymistavan suunnista.

Tutkimus tuo esille sen, miten Suomessa on 2000-luvun mittaan julkaissut erilaisia tekstejä noin 90 maahanmuuttajataustaista ja usein muulla kuin suomen-, ruotsin- tai saamen kielellä työskentelevää kirjailijaa. Vaikka moni on menestynyt hyvin, edelleen suurin osa työskentelee näkymättömissä erityisesti kieleen liittyvien esteiden keskellä. Vastaanotossa aineiston kirjallisuutta on aseteltu jähmeisiin kategorioihin ja kirjailijoiden maahanmuuttajuutta on tuotu esille, mikä on korostanut kansallisia rajoja ja häivyttänyt teosten kaunokirjallisia ulottuvuuksia.

Uusi ylirajainen kirjallisuus on horjuttanut käsitystä kansallisesta kirjallisuudesta. Suomalainen kirjallinen elämä näyttäytyy tutkimuksessa transnationaalisena ja monikielisenä tilana, jossa kirjailijat kuuluvat sekä ylirajaisiin kirjallisiin yhteisöihin että kansallisiin kirjallisuuksiin. Tutkimusaineisto
havainnollistaa myös sukupuolen merkitystä. Kirjailijanaisilla ja heidän teoksillaan on keskeinen rooli kirjallisuuden ylirajaistumisessa ja neuvotteluissa suomalaisesta kirjallisuudesta.

Komisario Palmusta etnodekkariin, ympäristörikoksiin ja kyberuhkaan Johdanto Rikoskirjallisuutta on pidetty pitkään vain viihteellisenä ja vähemmän arvostettuna kirjallisuudenlajina. Viime vuosikymmeninä tilanne on kuitenkin muuttunut, ja rikoskirjallisuus nähdään nykyisin jo monitasoisena ja muuntautumiskykyisenä kirjallisuudenlajina. (Arvas & Ruohonen 2016, 9.) Oppimistehtävässä analysoidaan Leena Lehtolaisen Luminainen.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the composition of Johanna Sinisalo’s novel The Core of the Sun by
demonstrating how the author used excerpts of academic text to create the literary world of the novel. As
the theoretical foundation, I will use Lubomír Doležel’s research introducing the theory of possible
worlds in literary creation. The realia, possibilia, and the transworld identity of the fictional world of
Sinisalo’s novel is analyzed on the basis of excerpts from dictionary entries and scientific articles used as
world-building elements.

Il presente scritto si propone come obiettivo l’analisi e la traduzione di alcuni testi poetici di Aleksis Kivi, padre del romanzo finlandese. Nel primo capitolo viene descritto brevemente il contesto letterario e vengono presentati alcuni autori di spicco dell’epoca. In seguito è invece analizzata la produzione poetica di Kivi, accompagnata da un commento personale teso a illustrare le principali tematiche e le particolarità stilistiche dell’autore. Particolare attenzione viene prestata alle interazioni tra gli elementi di innovazione delle poesie d’amore e le componenti tradizionali che rimandano alla mitologia ugro-finnica. Questa compresenza dà vita a una poetica profondamente originale e rinnovata, in contrasto con gli scritti dei contemporanei.

"...What resonates most in these narrative pieces for me is the way that I story Finn-ness through nature. It is perplexing that, although I spend most of my time as a city rather than a country mouse, I feel most at home in the forest in Northern Ontario. Maslow (1971) identifies this “thrilling to nature [...] as a kind of self-recognition or self-experience, a way of being oneself and fully functional, a way of being at home, a kind of biological authenticity” (p. 333). Perhaps it is genetic, a part of my Finnish inheritance as a people of the woods, but when I am away from the north I am compelled to return to those woodlands through stories. In winter, I like to think of our little camp as the Moominhouse, blanketed by snow.  I imagine myself a Moomin, deep in a hibernation sleep with a belly full of pine needles, waiting for the spring thaw (Jansson, 1992/1957) " ...

Examining the particular ways a reader builds a sense of self through literary engagement can further our understanding of identity development, and highlights the significance of stories and storytelling in our lives.

This paper introduces the god/hero Lemminkäinen as developed in Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala in comparison with the oral traditions on which Kalevala is based, their variation and the history behind them. The historical perspectives are largely summarized from my dissertation Baldr and Lemminkäinen. Lönnrot's creation of the story surrounding Lemminkäinen in Kalevala is looked at as one more in a long history of transformations of this traditional narrative material that made it interesting and meaningful for a contemporary culture in which it was used.