Archive for 2010

Nature girl: on the poetry of Sirkka Turkka

21 January 2010 | Authors, Reviews

Sirkka Turkka with a friend. Photo: Pertti Nisonen

Sirkka Turkka writes precise, lucid sentences, as if composing a treatise. But her poems often relate utterly loopy things; the work is playful, frisky. It is not based on explication or hidden themes. When it refers to abstract matters, it always couples them with concrete reality, with natural or everyday occurrences. ‘Trees have the snowy faces of ancestors, and on the road where dogs walk in their wind-blasted trousers, silence eats itself like silk.’

The poems contain numerous allusions to literature and culture, including popular culture. The tone can be parodic in these instances, but not critical; rather, a new point of departure is established, as when Turkka writes about Hamlet in her 1970s collection, Yö aukeaa kuin vilja (‘The night opens like corn’). ‘On long, silent winter days, when his father immersed himself in additional studies or demonstrations of learning, Hamlet would shut himself up in his room in order to rewrite history. He colonised countries and swapped their locations. At one stage he even thought of making the sun rise in the West and America encounter Columbus, but he restrained himself.’ More…

John Simon: Koneen ruhtinas. Pekka Herlinin elämä [The Prince of Kone. The life of Pekka Herlin]

15 January 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews

Koneen ruhtinas. Pekka Herlinin elämä
[The Prince of Kone. The life of Pekka Herlin]
Finnish translation of original English manuscript completed by various translators in collaboration with the author
Helsinki: Otava, 2009. 415 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-1-23478-4
€ 33, hardback

Pekka Herlin (1932–2003) was the long-serving chairman of the board of the Kone lift and escalator company. During Herlin’s tenure, Kone completed a number of corporate acquisitions to become a major global corporation. John Simon, an American writer and researcher, takes an unusually honest and direct approach; the project was undertaken at the request of Antti Herlin, the current chairman of the board at Kone and son of Pekka Herlin. Pekka Herlin was known for being both gregarious and a cool-headed business strategist, but his irascible, unorthodox nature was familiar to many as well. Within his family he emerged as a tyrannical alcoholic with a severely disturbed personality, feared by his children. John Simon interviewed a great many people who knew Pekka Herlin personally, including members of Herlin’s immediate family. This biography was Finland’s best-selling non-fiction book in the autumn of 2009.

We Finns

15 January 2010 | Columns, Tales of a journalist

Illustration: Joonas Väänänen

Is it so bad to criticise a Finn, if you’re a Finn? Columnist Jyrki Lehtola takes another look at what you think about us Finns out there

Recently, the word ’Finland’ has been repeated in Finland, and generalisations made about what we Finns are like.

Last year saw the seventieth anniversary of the Winter War, and we congratulated ourselves on what a fine fighting nation we are.

A government branding work group tells us at regular intervals how creative a nation we are.

From time to time someone remembers to mention the sauna, while someone else is a little more critical and says we are also an envious nation. More…

Beating the winter blues

8 January 2010 | This 'n' that

Helsinki Cathedral. Photo: Hans Põldoja

We’ve passed the solstice, so in principle the days are getting longer; but as we drag ourselves back into the office after the holidays, the mornings and evenings still seem pretty gloomy. We’re not complaining; further north, as the radio weather forecast reminds us daily, it’s even darker. Here, sunrise is after nine and sunset before four; further north, in Utsjoki, right up in the Arctic, it set in late November and won’t rise again until 16 January.

Still, even here, any glimmer of light is welcome. All over the city, at this time of year, SADS cafes spring up, with high-intensity light sources to combat seasonal affective disorder or, as we call it in the vernacular, the winter blues. The effect, especially after a couple of hours spent in an editorial board meeting, can be electrifying. More…

Architecture update

7 January 2010 | In the news

Helsinki Art Nouveau: KOP Bank by Onni Törnqvist (later Tarjanne)

Finland’s really strong suits in terms of culture, it could be argued (although not by us!), are not so much literature as architecture and music. Enter a new website designed for those in search of information on both news and the history of Finnish architecture and its makers, on the built environment, policies, research and organisations. More…

Johanna Holmström: Camera Obscura

6 January 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews

Camera Obscura
Helsinki: Söderströms, 2009, 334 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-2616-7
€ 24,90, hardback

This short story collection is Johanna Holmström’s fourth book since her debut in 2003. Camera Obscura is a fabric of narratives and personal destinies which create a dense, novel-like whole. The preamble is a young environmental activist’s suicide. The form is interwoven with the content, so that the stories in the book can be read as separate narratives, but to understand them fully we must read them all. Each person’s destiny is shaped in part by the choices and actions of others; to what extent is the individual responsible for the whole? Holmström (born 1981) writes fiction that is unpredictable but stylistically assured. She seamlessly weaves with classic fairytale motifs and also has a keen eye for detail and psychology. Camera Obscura is at once eerie, suspense-filled and socially aware.