Finland-Swedish dictionary online

The Institute for the Languages of Finland has made freely available an online dictionary of Finland-Swedish. The dictionary's compilers are Charlotta af Hällström-Reijonen and Mikael Reuter. Editing is by Bianca Holmberg, and the publisher is Schildts & Söderströms Ab.

The background to the language situation

In the latest issue of the Finland-Swedish journal Nya Argus (nr. 11-12, 2010) linguistics professor Fred Karlsson considers the present uneasy situation surrounding the status of the Swedish language in Finland above all through the prism of the past. In doing so he raises some interesting points that are sometimes forgotten: the men who in the 19th century worked to establish Finnish as Finland’s national language were, after all, Finnish Swedes. Snellman, Forsman and other representatives of the country’s Swedish-speaking intelligentsia helped to bring about a peaceful linguistic revolution, but were soon regarded as traitors by their own Swedish-speaking compatriots. Karlsson also examines the nowadays neglected role of the Finnish linguist and politician Emil Nestor Setälä (1864-1936) who single-handedly drafted Finland’s declaration of independence in 1917 and also wrote an important work on the language law of 1922, in which he emphasized that although Finland had two languages, this did not mean that Finland had two nationalities: “Finland’s people are one.”

The essay also traces the history of pakkoruotsi (tvångsvenskan or “compulsory Swedish” – the preferred translation “mandatory Swedish”  seems like a bit of a euphemism) – in Finland’s schools, pointing out, somewhat drily by reference to online discussions, that compulsion is not usually the way to make friends. There are, however, difficult decisions to be made. An education minister of the Kekkonen era is quoted as saying that if compulsory Swedish is abolished, it will be replaced by another language, “and that language is not Spanish”. Karlsson believes that it’s incumbent on Finland-Swedes to keep a low profile in the current language debate, and to leave it up to the Finnish-speaking majority and their political leaders to draw up guidelines as to their situation in Finland, Europe and the constantly changing modern world.

Cold comfort

Swedish crime fiction is very popular in Germany, but it's not so often that German crime fiction is translated into Swedish. Reviewing the third of three recent translations of detective novels by Andrea Maria Schenkel – the three books constitute Schenkel's entire output so far – Bodil Zalesky notes a disturbing trend:

The voices of the main characters are almost completely interchangeable and shorn of identity, which gives me as a reader a sense of discomfort. Perhaps this is the author's intention, and it contributes to the cold undercurrent that persists throughout the book.

Carl O. Nordling

The Finland-Swedish historian and architect Carl O. Nordling (1919-2007) created an interesting website which is still maintained online in his memory, and also updated from time to time. The site contains numerous essays, articles and archive materials in a number of fields, including Scandinavian and Soviet history, music, literary criticism, anthropology, and Finnish and Finland-Swedish culture. Of particular interest to readers of this blog, perhaps, are the essays and reflections contained in The Finland-Swedes, a compendium of lists and writings relating to Finland-Swedish writers and artists, Finland-Swedish military men and civil servants, Finland-Swedish scientists and Finland-Swedish promoters of the Finnish language.

Among the site's more unusual offerings are a reconstruction of Stalin's speech to the Politburo of August 19, 1939 and the complete text of a book entitled Shakespeare: Who Wrote Hamlet and Why?

(Hat tip: Mari-Ann Kelam)

00-tal - Finland-Swedish issue

The Swedish literary quarterly 00-tal has just published a Finland-Swedish issue. According to one claim on the internet, Finland-Swedish literature is often met almost with silence in Sweden. If this is indeed the case, it is a pity. Because two Finland-Swedish prose authors are publishing new novels this autumn.

This is significant because Finland-Swedish literature has always had more of a reputation as a literature where poets abound. Even short stories were part of the canon, but Finland-Swedes often used to complain that they had no real novelists. The situation has changed gradually over time, but it is nevertheless encouraging that Kjell Westö (pictured) and Monika Fagerholm will be adding Finland-Swedish novels to the pile this year. There will also be recent poetry by Tua Forsström.

Another interesting feature in this issue is a questionnaire where major Swedish authors are asked about their favourite Finland-Swedish writer. And Merete Mazzarella describes the breakthrough of radical prose.

See also in this blog: The book harvest

Larry Silván: poems

The first sentence of Sven Willner's introduction to what, sadly, became the collected poetry of Larry Silván says it all: "Larry Silván var 21 år när han i august 1976 gick frivilligt in i döden". i.e. "Larry Silván was 21 years of age when he, in August 1976, chose to take his own life". Silván was a budding talent, but something went wrong. There are hints of schizophrenia. Nevertheless, he wrote quite a body of poems in his native Ekenäs before the perhaps inevitable end. Poems from the book appeared the next year in a collection simply entitled Larry Silván - Dikter:

native country

I am not a resident of Finland
I am not
a member of any fucking society
Finland and all
countries in the world can go to hell
I am
a child of the universe, a child of the sunset
I stand alone and see
my generation go astray in a
crazy labyrinth of machines and decisions
I see
my forest being annihilated by
a road that constantly becomes
ever wider and ever longer
by
a town that smells like shit
by
red lawn mowers that are
the pioneers of the new culture
Æsthetic beauty is promoted by
making animals extinct
Culture means
laughing at my generation
and locking it up in a madhouse

*

WHEN I REALLY DID CYCLE HOME AND PICKED CABBAGE AND TOOK DOWN THE WASHING FROM THE LINE

He had been in there for a fortnight
He'd been in there like this
and I can't describe it
But to break off
to Break Off
This is me is what I thought
my whole damned face
and I thought of going out again with the firewood
men suddenly noticed it

*

Ludde speaks about the revolution in Finland

What's wrong with Finland is that here
there are natural disasters far too rarely
said Ludde and I laughed
That's why the Finnish people are so introverted
That's why there is no real community
There is nothing that shakes people up
A big new war would be fine
Or maybe not that... but a revolution
Fucking hell how I'll laugh
the day there's a revolution
Think of all those people who are now
sitting around thinking of cuts
with their ridiculous problems
Imagine what a shock it'll be for
them when the communists suddenly take over
simply take everything from them
Everything will belong to the state and
they will be left empty-handed
Then they'll get a chance to think it all over
because they will no longer have anything to
to build up a crazy way of life around
Then they'll be forced to choose between
thinking and sinking

I forgot to ask what we would do if
there was a counter-revolution
***

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Class acts

Hbl reports that Finland-Swedish publishers Schildts and Söderströms will each publish an anthology of writing on the subject of social class this autumn, with 19 contributors per book. "The main difference between the books seems to be that Söderströms will take a broader view and also include Finnish contributors, like Sauli Niinistö and Sofi Oksanen. The anthology will also be published in Finnish by Teos."

Hanna Klingenberg: "The Pearl"

Thirty years ago, I spent a happy year in Jakobstad, a small town on the coast of Ostrobothnia. Now, decades later, Hanna Klingenberg, a native of that town, has written a short story about the feel of the town. Little has changed in the three decades:

The Pearl

Hanna Klingenberg

The first days back in Jakobstad were always the worst. When I had been living for longer periods in larger cities I tended to forget how people behaved here. Where every street corner was charged with a sensitive memory. And where I couldn’t just glide past and wander about in my own thoughts but would be interrupted by some old figure of authority. The district nurse. My former classmate’s strict stepfather. My ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. They would pop up everywhere, in doorways, on viaducts, waving madly.

I preferred to drive through the centre first. Then I could whizz along the pedestrian precinct on a bicycle, towards somewhere far out of town. After that, I would perhaps dare to take a walk around.

In the library I caught sight of my old gym teacher. She was standing some stacks away and I immediately rushed up to her and gave her a long, heartfelt hug.

"Hej!" I said.
"Hej!" she replied.
"Long time no see!" I said.
"That’s for sure!" she said.
"How are you getting on?" I asked.
"Great!" she replied. "Nice it’s now summer."

Then we somehow slid apart. I walked along the stacks, studied the spines of books and gradually remembered that I never got more than seven out of ten in gymnastics. I had skived, not bothered to shower, been careless with dropping catches, letting the ball fly past me. And had I made a habit of hugging teachers? Even before, when I was a pupil? I can only remember hugging a teacher on one occasion, and it wasn’t me that hugged the teacher, but he hugged me. I was in the eighth form at the time, and my grandfather had just died. My physics teacher came up to me and lay his arm on my shoulder and offered his condolences. But went I think back to that hug I think mostly of the jumper which I happened to be wearing at the time. And this was in fact a man’s vest that I had bought at a jumble sale for one mark, and on which there was a rather strange text, criss-crossed right under the open neck. For men only was what it said. I remember all my sorrow about granddad disappearing for a short while, because I was wondering whether my physics teacher was really hugging me to console me. Or whether he had first spotted the text printed on my jumper.

Now my gym teacher and me bumped into each other again, by the art shelf. We looked kindly at each other and smiled slightly. I fixed my gaze on a book and read "Ernst Brillgren".

"Oh!" I exclaimed.
"What is it?" asked my gym teacher.
"Nå, I thought I read Brillgren, with and ‘r’," I laughed. "But it said Billgren, nonetheless. I’d read it wrong."

We slid apart again and I walked rapidly and determinedly towards the reading room. I sat down there and took out my green rough book. "Jakobstad is my pearl", is what I wrote in it.

"Pearls can be compared to myths spun / around crass truths. / Because the mussel spins its pearl / around something as tiny and insignificant as a grain of sand! / Am I the mussel that spins the myth around my Jakobstad? / Is the town really an insignificant grain of sand when it comes to it."

It ended up a crappy little poem. I wanted to stop writing immediately, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so, as I felt there was a man standing and staring at me. I had to carry on, though it was dreadful to be stared at when you were being creative.

"When I dreamt feverish nightmares in the Jakobstad of my childhood / I always dreamt about grains of sand. / It would all start when I took up something that was so big I didn’t understand how big it really was. / And if I did understand it, I would only get giddy. / When I realised that the big thing I’d got myself involved in was in fact very tiny - when I realised that I was in fact inside a very tiny grain of sand that was light brown and hexagonal - well, then I would always get a panic attack. / What was huge was in fact very tiny. / That’s what my Jakobstad feels like too. / Little and big at one and the same time."

I wrote till my cheeks glowed. In the corner of my eye I could see the man standing and staring at me, uninterruptedly, intensively. Now it no longer mattered what I’d written in my rough-book. All that was important now was to be seen to be writing.

"Jakobstad, you are my pearl. But if I am to wear pearls they shall be in the shape of earrings. And the earring will only hang from one ear. / If it were a necklace it would have to be broken in some way. Otherwise it would become too / ladylike and frumpish / for me. / When I was little I used to chew on a necklace when I was doing my homework. It helped my concentration."

The sentences grew too long to be poetry. And I wrote the last sentence so carelessly that my pen slipped beyond the rough-book. The last word ended up on the desk surface. I blushed when I noticed. Now, you could bet your life that the man in the corner of my eye would be standing there laughing. That was the end of our flirtation. I just had to look up, and when I did I noticed that there hadn’t been a man standing and staring at all. It was a rack of brochures!

In Jakobstad anything can gawp at you.

I left the reading room immediately and mooched about, wandering past everyone I met on the street. Deeply absorbed in my own thoughts. One of the boys I passed was one I had slept with. We merely greeted each other. I remembered a simile that the clergymen would make during confirmation classes. "If you share out all your slices of cake right, left and centre, you’ll have no cake left for your wedding night!" Mum had come up with something similar. This was about pearls, as it happened: "Every boy you sleep with gets one of your pearls. It’s no fun standing there with a broken necklace on your wedding night, later on." She had no doubt forgotten that I used to chew on pearl necklaces.

Things were beginning to get better now. On the town square I passed the boy who had spread the story that I had driven through the centre one evening with the handbrake on, so that you could hear the squealing and screeching all over town. All I actually did was sit at the steering wheel, look surprised, and wonder what was making the screeching noise. We had never greeted each other before, so we didn’t this time either.

***

The story first appeared in the Finland-Swedish literary periodical Horisont 1/2009.

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

The Eurovision Song Contest and me

The Eurovision Song Contest plays a strange role in my, Eric's, life. It was, in fact the start of my now decades-long Scandinavian quest. In 1968, a few months before the Russians crushed the Prague Spring (which I also saw live on TV), one Kristina Hautala sang a song in a language I had never heard of: Finnish. Nor had I heard of Scandinavia.

The song, which can be listened to on YouTube here in Finnish, or here in Swedish (the latter of which I have heard for the very first time this morning, 17th May 2009), was called "Kun kello käy" and "Vänta och se". At the Eurovision, held that year in London, she only sang it in Finnish, hence my initial interest in that language. But observant people will notice that she is called "Kristina" not "Kristiina". The Christian name or forename is an almost infallible guide to whether someone with a Finnish surname is a Finland-Swede, or at least has one Finland-Swedish parent. Although in Hautala's case, she spent her childhood in Sweden, so that may have had more to do with her forename.

What fascinated me was not so much the singer, who, after 41 years looks strangely childlike there rather than sexy, but the Finnish diphthongs. It led me to borrow my first ever Finnish primer from Shirley branch library, a small and very ordinary public library in the Midlands, UK: "Finnish For Foreigners". There was no degree course in Finnish at the time, so when I had to choose, a few years later, I chose Swedish instead. These two languages have played a role in my life to this day, not least because when it came to doing my year abroad to practise the language for my Swedish course at the University of East Anglia, I ended up in Åbo (Turku), not in Sweden. The rest is history.

Last year, several of us sat in a small room at the Writers' and Translators' Centre on the Swedish island of Gotland watching the Eurovision Song Contest. One of those present was the Finland-Swedish novelist Kjell Westö. I would never even have heard of Finland-Swedes, were it not for, indirectly, the Eurovision Song Contest, forty years previously.

After that piece of self-indulgence, back to 2009. Well, the Finns did catastrophically, coming last. The big Swedish blonde didn't charm voters despite her powerful opera voice (I voted her top, along with the British singer). And the young Norwegian with the Alastair Darling eyebrows won the day. So whether that talk with the Russian that David mentions did the trick, we will never know.

Susanne Ringell - So Long, Marianne

I borrowed a typewriter from Susanne Ringell and her then boyfriend thirty years ago. So I thought I'd pay her back by saying a little about her and reproducing here the first scene of a radio play of hers, broadcast on Radio Vega last November-December and printed in the latest edition of Kontur, the literary insert in Ny Tid.

Ringell has also published poetry, including the recent book of prose-poetry Ryggens måne, Söderströms, 2009.

The play is gently absurdist, something that David touched on in his mention of her in the Swedish Book Review.

So, without further ado, here is my draft translation of Scene 1:

SO LONG, MARIANNE


by Susanne Ringell


A radio play


CAST


MARIANNE I - 17-year-old girl
MARIANNE II - in her 50s, played by a man

Anne - an older woman, over 70

Harold - in his forties, dad, played in English
Kim - Marianne’s American sister, played in English

A waitress
A girl’s choir
A chorus, in English


Set in the 1970s and the present day.
There is music.


SCENE 1

Rain. Music. (Zarah Leander: I’m standing here in the rain and waiting for you, only for you...) Rain. Music. (From the same song: I heard a clock strike, all too many strokes...) Footsteps pacing, another cigarette is lit, an umbrella that is put up by someone else. Two pairs of footsteps that walk round one another, the women’s footsteps impatient, nervous, the man’s calmer. Rain.


MARIANNE II
Are you...

MARIANNE I
No.

MARIANNE II
I think you are, you know.

MARIANNE I
Absolutely not, no, absolutely not.
(pause)How could I be?

MARIANNE II
I knew all the time it was you.

MARIANNE I
But I was meant to meet myself grown older.

MARIANNE II
Yes.

MARIANNE I
But... you’re a man!

MARIANNE II
Yes, That too. I’m also a man.

(pause)

MARIANNE I
Have you...?

MARIANNE II
No, absolutely no way! I’d never think of doing so.
(pause)
It was more something inside me, a broadening out, a new orientation. Perhaps it’s only an optical illusion. Don’t worry about it.
(pause)
You freezing?
I knew it was you all the time.
(pause)
That it was me.

MARIANNE I
Yes, you’ve got the better of me.

MARIANNE II
Not really.

MARIANNE I
You’re holding all the cards! I’m just an unshuffled pack, an almost unshuffled pack.

MARIANNE II
No, you aren’t.

MARIANNE I
No, I suppose I’m not.

MARIANNE II
Haven’t you in fact been shuffled away? Pretty well shuffled away?

MARIANNE I
When I arrived there, I was almost new. I was almost a new pack, I had played mostly with low cards.
(pause)
She broke my seal.
(pause)
It started out as a game. I thought it was a game, I thought I was in control.

MARIANNE II
I know.

MARIANNE I
But she ran away, everything ran away, everything became chaotic. She was no game. She was deadly serious. She was my first seriousness, and it crushed me, I became frightened. I became cruel.

MARIANNE II
You became unhappy. You were 17.

MARIANNE I
I am 17.
(pause)
Do you like me?

MARIANNE II
Hard to tell.
MARIANNE I
Tell me, honestly. I can put up with it.

MARIANNE II
No, you can’t. That’s just it. You think you can put up with anything, that you ought to put up with things and manage, that that’s what life and adulthood are all about.

MARIANNE I
But you do like me?

GIRLS’ CHOIR
Do you like me? Do you like me?
(pause)

MARIANNE II
You have my sympathy.
(pause)
Shall we share an umbrella? We can’t stay out here in the rain.

MARIANNE I
Why not?

MARIANNE II
Because you get wet.

The play centres around a young girl who visits a family in America. The play continues in a multi-voiced way, with several versions of Marianne, at various ages and during various decades, overlapping in their commentary of events.

I shall post the remaining scenes, one by one, assuming I get copyright permission from the author to do so.

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Eva-Stina Byggmästar - a poem

Only one poem from a collection of more than fifty. Because this author is tricky. But the poem does not involve too many multi-puns, except that curious word "bröstsocker" which means "candy sugar", while the literal meaning is "breast sugar" (!). It is regarded as archaïc usage in Swedish, the term now being "kandissocker".

I like these slightly fay, slightly pantheïstic, poems that Byggmästar writes, but she can test the translator to the limit with some of her multiple associations. This poem is the first in her 2008 collection Men hur små poeter finns det egentligen (But How Small Poets Are There Really).

*

POETRY IS
CANDY SUGAR SURELY
MOVING TOWARDS IT, little book
rocked asleep, the nearness, gladness
of small letters, now dreaming next to each other
about transparent libraries.

And if I were a green-clad poet,
in corduroy with hood,
with intrusive woodcocks,
what a blessed piece of luck,
you would walk as if on a naze,
a spit, a tongue of land along
the light word-swell
of small lakes,
like a mere ripple -


***

ETT BRÖSTSOCKER
ÄR DIKTEN VISST
MAKAR SIG DIT, lillboken vaggas
i sömnen, småbokstävernas närhet,
gladhet, drömmer nu intill varann
om genomskinliga bibliotek.

Och om jag var grönklädd poet,
med manchester och luva,
med närgångna morkullor,
vilken signad lyckoträff,
man gick som på näsa,
ett ed, landtunga lång
invid småsjöarnas lätta
ordsvall,
som en krusning bara –

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Lars Sund wins the Svenska kulturfonden book prize

Lars Sund (born 1953) has just won the annual Svenska kulturfonden cultural prize worth €20,000. He will be accepting it in Vasa this evening (29th April 2009). This is the latest in a number of book prizes, including the Runeberg Prize, and a nomination for the Nordic Council Prize.

But first of all: what is Svenska kulturfonden? It is the Finland-Swedish fund based in Helsinki (aka Helsingfors) that supports literature written in Swedish in Finland. Such a fund is necessary, as Finland-Swedish authors can sometimes fall between two stools, especially if they emigrate to Sweden itself. (Sund lives in Uppsala.) And the once powerful Finland-Swedish minority has dwindled to a mere 6% of the population of Finland.

Lars Sund has written a series of novels, mostly set in Ostrobothnia. He began as a poet, some 35 years ago. But he is best known for his novel trilogy "Colorado Avenue" (idem; 1991), which has recently been filmed, followed by "Lanthandlerskans son" (Son of a Country Shopkeeper"; 1997) and "Eriks bok" (Erik's Book; 2003). There is more about Lars Sund and his works here in Swedish Book Review.

Today's article in the daily Vasabladet says, among other things:

Sund will be adopting a new genre. "I am principally a novelist, but my next book will be something else. Perhaps something between a novel and non-fiction."

Sund is also an eager participant in what he himself calls the first digital cultural debate in what is termed Svenskfinland, i.e. the parts of Finland where Swedish is spoken as first language. He points out that Finland is not unique in that cultural and literary debate has shifted from the columns of the press to blogs and e-mail, since about the year 2000.

And commenting on other Finland-Swedish authors, Sund notes that there are exciting new ones, such as poets Catharina Gripenberg and Heidi von Wright (some of whose poems are on this blog in English translation), plus the novelist Emma Juslin.

*

I myself published a translation of a poem by Lars Sund back in 1979 in the publication Swedish Books:

To Marilyn Monroe if ever I should meet her

stuck fast with chewing-gum to my wall beloved marilyn
with your eyes full of hollywood cancer
worn dusty under the studio lights
still a child with breasts as soft as san francisco hills

you should never have come here
where we turn heads inside out and make ideals from the contents
where everything we'll ever dream up has been ready for ages on 35 mm reels
& where there are canyons between the hotel rooms

but it's too late now I feel
because you hardly got to heaven
& in hell there are
far too many like you
we all helped to build the pool for you to drown in
& the heroin was refined on the poppy of our twinkling eye
by men who could stand only the darkness of the movie house

all we have to remember you by beloved marilyn
are the pictures
& your shrill voice on the sound-track hoarse with T.B.
but I sometimes wake up in the night in a cold sweat from your accusing presence
and switch on the lamp to look at you
stuck fast with chewing-gum to my wall beloved marilyn

Translated from Swedish (in 1979) by Eric Dickens

Lars Huldén: a dialect poem

Lars Huldén (born 1926) is the grand old man of Finland-Swedish poetry. Born in the Ostrobothnian town of Jakobstad (Pietarsaari), he later became Professor of Nordic Literature at Helsinki University. He first published poetry in 1958 and has, by now, a large œuvre.

A 500-page selection of his poems over 50 years, entitled Utförlig beskrivning av en bärplockares väg (Detailed Description of a Berry-Picker's Way) appeared in 2006.

One of his poetry collections Heim / Hem (1977) is a parallel text set of 30 poems written in the Munsala dialect, with a translation into standard Swedish. This book does, of course, raise all the fraught translation questions, should someone want to translate the thirty poems into another language. But rather than agonise, I am simply going to translate one poem from the standard Swedish version, and allow the reader to marvel at the dialect traits unhindered. The reader will note how strong the dialect is, and also, that there is not a whiff of Finnish in the dialect, which is in fact nearer to Old Norse:
Ti arbeit i laag

Hä ä in lykkotå an kan arrbeit i laag

mä tem såm an höör ihåop mää.

Papp såm ä håssbond,

Mamm så ä mattmåor,

båånin tå di byri dåga ti naa,

gambäfåltji så läng ti

levär å årk.

Såm tå an höibärga

på i uutsjifft förr i väädin.

Mitt i daain kuna mattmåor kåma

peedand mä maatin.

Tå sesstist vi allihåop i ladun åsta äta.

Tå va vi allihåop.

Vi va vi tå.

***

Att arbeta tillsammans

Det är en lycka

då man kan arbeta tillsammans

med dem som man hör samman med.

Far som är husbonde,

mor som är matmor,

barnen när de börjar duga

till någonting,

de gamla så länge de

lever och orkar.

Såsom då man höbärgade

på ett utskifte förr i världen.

Mitt på dagen kunde matmor komma

cyklande med maten.

Då satte sig alla i ladan för att äta.

Då var vi allesammans.

Vi var vi då.

***

Working together

It's a joy
when you can work together
with those you belong to.
Father who's the master,
mother the missis,
the children when they start to be able
to do things,
the elderly as long as they
live and are able.
Like when you made the hay
in a back field in the olden days.
In the middle of the day the missis could come
cycling along with the food.
Then everyone would sit down in the barn to eat.
Then we were all together.
We were ourselves then.

***

Translated from dialect into Swedish by Lars Huldén; from Swedish into English by Eric Dickens

Bror Rönnholm: Two Prose Poems

The Mirror

When she disappeared, she left her image behind in the mirror, where it wilfully obscured the reflection, making it impossible to see yourself, something that simply added to his sadness and despair.

His strange cousin did, however, have a solution. She placed another mirror opposite, so that the image was multiplied in the familiar manner and started to blow her didgeridoo. This combination made the mirror vibrate strongly, so that the image was broken up into small flecks, which glided around the room for a while until they came together as butterflies and flew out through the balcony door, which stood open.

But the mirror was never the same again. Nowadays, it presents a thin and worn reflection, so that you can see straight through your own face into a severe and stony landscape, beautiful and eternally frozen.

*

The Voice

When she returned, her voice had aged by forty years. This was appreciated at the clinic where girls in crisis sought solace and security in this grandmother’s voice. But when face to face with her, many would grow confused. Could they place any trust in the smooth face and the gravelly voice, the sporty life of the cheeks and the drunken nights of the voice? Her eyes gave no clue; they were constantly flickering, people couldn’t remember their colour. She herself would waver, torn between disgust and pity. No one would have been surprised had she dressed in black and masked herself with kohl. But she continued to dress in red and wind her scarves three times around her slender neck. One radio station offered her a job as jazz presenter on a night programme, but she declined the offer. Can’t stand improvisation, is what she said.

***

Another of Bror Rönnholm's prose poems from the same collection is here.

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Mårten Westö - "Nine Days Without a Name"

Mårten Westö (born 1967) has published around ten books of poetry, prose and essays. His 1998 collection is entitled Nio dagar utan namn / Nine Days Without a Name. What follows below is the title suite. Some poems from this collection have previously been translated by David McDuff for Books From Finland 2/1999. As David points out there: "In his third collection, the Finland-Swedish poet Mårten Westö (born 1967) rides the buses and trams of his native Helsinki, contemplating silence, childhood and the visibility of things". I, Eric, have also published a few poems by Mårten Westö in the Canadian anthology of Scandinavian and Baltic poets, The Baltic Quintet, 2008.


NINE DAYS WITHOUT A NAME

Mårten Westö


I

A night in a half-empty bus
The painful monotony of the reflection
In the seat behind a
recruit reading Donald Duck, the moon
that tosses around sleeplessly, from side
to side. In the lit-up shell unquiet dreams
of dental visits, cystoscopes and
soporific lectures about the rôle of the subject
in it all. When I
wake up we are already there, but
I still hear her
voice, as if under
my own: “I can see you
in what always remains silent in you”


II

Slept sardines, thought
I awoke, heard
her, saw her through a battered
visor, fading slowly away,
copper clashed,
she whispered determinedly, went
with sound in her body, so unlike
her, shut the door took
everything with her, the disappearance
remains like writing, stains
on the sheets


III

Last night I walked past the undertaker’s
window lit up with piety.
A lone sample gravestone stood in the window
and my name was chiselled into it:
everything was as vivid as if it had
happened yesterday when I still existed
and she wished me dead.
Even the inscription had been formulated by her:
“Went into the world black-and-white, grew disappointed when
someone lost touch with him.”


IV

I grow light as you grow dark
dark as you grow light

am woken up by the silence
as if it should say something

in my body something moving
ancient silver-white fish

and behind us
all those arms

reaching out for someone
resembling what we resemble


V

loss always arose suddenly
like the tide at Mont-Saint-Michel
heard nothing wandered haughtily
in and out of us with its sad patches
reminded us about something we would rather
not get involved in
places where there was no longer room for us
like childhood, dense
that you remembered when
the rain ploughed through your picture
and I for the last time heard you say
that we must save something
of the prospects we once had
like inside Beethoven’s Seventh
when someone reaches out to us
and we feel we could still have won


VI

the embassy courtyard empty and deserted
like the coming centuries

the cat’s eyes like fires at the gate

the light on your naked body
still an undecipherable language.

hear myself whisper: tomorrow
tomorrow I shall carry you

the light of your face
as it once lit up

the unutterable darkness
that bears my name


VII

I am saying it now, by way of your voice:
I was once another
who clung to the world without protection
like a torn pennant while the days
galloped away on their blinded chargers
in your absence the day grew light infinitely slowly
over the place I had got stuck, was pressed in
it was only the silence that said:
where I am not all languages cease
and when strength was at bursting point
when nothing else remained
your voice was suddenly
all that existed
and was left over


VIII

I blow my sight free,
my lungs empty
and the barely perceptible hammer blows
from the city brake the rhythm
slowly the human system of pipes ceases
to fill the world
joy forcing its way onwards
I will henceforth call pain it
doesn’t matter what I
call it When the first light
becomes visible I shall wander
with my face towards the city


IX

for nine days I inhabited the world alone
now I think constantly of you

see you more clearly
in the shade of my palm

at the door the child with its satchel slung absently-mindedly over its shoulder
he stands there boundlessly, guarded by the forest

but I cannot think of summer, mummified
insects and lifelines that hold

want to go back

back to your
black rooms that

have the imprint of
all my hands

*******

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Far Out

Not long before her death in 2006 at the age of 56, the Norwegian-Sami literary critic and translator Nøste Kendzior wrote an essay about the translator's profession. Kendzior, who translated a large amount of fiction into Norwegian from other Nordic languages, especially Finnish, had an acute sense for the spirit of Nordic literature, and sought with dedication, hard work and dry humour to transcend the local rivalries that sometimes prevent Nordic writers from making a unified contribution to European literature as a whole. Translation into English may be important for authors who write in the relatively little-known languages of Scandinavia. But as Kendzior points out, the translation of Nordic literature into Nordic languages may have even more significance.

FAR OUT

Being a translator is not a status profession. Translation, that art of the invisible, is carried out by persons whose name the reader never even notices. Most people apparently believe that literature – the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the Donald Duck comics – just falls from heaven, ready-translated into their mother tongue. Few readers ever reflect that someone, someone or other, has taken the trouble to translate the books they read. And even fewer people ever consider that this anonymous someone-or-other has translated the book in a certain way, a way of his or her own, and that the book would have been quite different if it had been translated by someone else, or by the same translator at a different point in time. Not even literary critics consider this. The work of the translator is seldom mentioned in book reviews. If the translated book has an elegant style, it is the author who receives all the credit for it.
If there is any status connected with the translator’s profession, it must be found among those who translate from Greek, Italian, French – in short: those who translate literature from a refined culture.

Seen with Norwegian eyes, Finnish culture is not a refined one. Finland is one of Norway’s neighbours. Norway shares seven hundred kilometres of border with Finland. In spite of this, there is scarcely a country in Europe that Norwegians know less of than Finland. A journey to Finland is a journey in the wrong direction. Finland is a country for those with a special interest.
For on the one hand, while Finland is a little too exotic for Norwegians, on the other it is not exotic enough. Too exotic, because the language is considered incomprehensible and impossible to learn, and because the Finns are thought to obscure and unpredictable. And not exotic enough, because Finland is situated too close, too far to the north, and too far out.

Finland is associated with wilderness, hard life, wild conditions, isolation, primitive emotions and inexplicable actions (such as, for example, whipping oneself with a birch rod while sitting in a room that has the temperature of boiling water). One might be tempted to believe that most Norwegians view Finland and Finnish culture as something frightening that is best kept at a reassuring distance. What is more, until recently Finland belonged to a different world from the other countries of Scandinavia; Finland has been involved in things that were part of life behind the Iron Curtain. The fact that Finland today is famed for its pioneering work in technology and design, is a member of the EU (unlike Norway), and also uses the euro in such a sophisticated way as a means of payment, is not enough to eliminate Norwegians’ prejudices about Finland as an out-of-the-way, inaccessible and undeveloped country.

So the translation of Finnish literature has no status. For it is in no way connected with refinement.

Most people I come into contact with think I translate from Finnish because I have spoken the language since the cradle. I am from Finnmark, or Sameland, the most northerly part of Norway, and we who come from up here are descendants of Finnish migrants crossed with Norwegians, Sami, Russians and anyone else who came along.

But I never learned Finnish at home. Finnish and Sami were spoken behind closed doors; we children had to learn Norwegian, the only ‘real’ language. I probably started to learn Finnish because I was attracted by the mysterious and impenetrable, by what was different. It could have been Sami. But Sami was spoken in Norway, and Finnish was more strange and special; a language that belonged to another country and another world.

So I studied Finnish at the universities of Copenhagen, Helsinki and Oslo. In Oslo I majored in Finnish and specialized in the work of Marja-Liisa Vartio. For the past seven years I have made my living as a freelance journalist: I am primarily a translator, of Finnish, Danish, Finland-Swedish and Swedish literaure. But I am also an essayist, literary critic and commentator. In Norway I would never have been able to make a living solely as a translator of Finnish literature, even though I have very little competition.

Today I have translated about fifty works in all. One of them is Aleksis Kivi’s Seitsemän veljestä. As far I have been able to ascertain, that book (Seven Brothers) got one review. A Finnish bestseller in Norway is something I am still looking forward to, but authors like Annika Idström, Leena Lander and Rosa Liksom have had a fairly decent reception. Anja Snellman has also now been launched in Norway, and soon some books by Pirjo Hassinen will appear. My favourite author is Marja-Liisa Vartio, who wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. I have translated her novel Hänen olivat linnut into Norwegian, and am now working on a translation of her poetry.
Not even my fellow translators associate my knowledge of Finnish with refinement. A Norwegian translator from Italian would roll his eyes in vexation if I were to betray a zero knowledge of Italian literature, film and history. The same rolling eyes would acquire a glassy blankness were I to mention Väinämöinen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, or Pentti Saarikoski, and the word ‘Kalevala’ would be a cry in the wilderness.

I was looking for a different landscape. And of course I found it, just around the corner! That discovery has not given me high status in the world, but it has given me a couple of prizes, and also a state artist’s pension, at the minimum level. And sometimes I detect a small gleam of respectful curiosity in other people’s eyes: I translate peculiar literature written in an extremely complicated language by a barbaric people in a distant land beyond all civilization. Ergo, though I may not be refined, I am fearless, indeed – heroic.

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Eva Wichman: Five Poems

Eva Wichman (1905-1979) is something of a neglected Modernist. There is virtually nothing about her in English on the Internet, and precious little in any other language. Wichman began her career as a doll designer in a factory, not the most usual start for a Modernist poet.

Her first books were in fact prose. Her early novels, starting with the novel Mania (1937), were about young artistic women carving out a place for themselves in life. Her first collection of poetry Ormöga (Snake’s Eye) appeared in 1946.

She joined the Communist Party in the 1950s, after which, it has to be said, some of her poetry deteriorated into agit-prop, though she never quite lost touch with Modernism, and later in life returned to more tranquil waters. By the mid-1960s, her poetry was poetry once more and had lost its shrillness.

The poems I have chosen to translate here come from various decades, before, during and after her “conversion”.

ANGRY QUESTION

Will the roses bloom forever?
Now autumn is here, listen –
you see the grass has yellowed, a rotting
smell emerges from the fallen leaves,
chilled breath enters
the shrunken breast,
and glances sail calmly
over the indifferent surface of the leaden lake.

The swallows flew off. The ducklings
now swim around alone
and damp seeps in everywhere.
But the roses:
are blooming glowingly red
crazily!
Soon will fall the first night frost:
all be prepared
for decline to come!

(From the collection: Ormöga, 1946)

*

SATURDAY IN MOSCOW

Seething, splashing, rushing –
rush hour wandering home.
A whiff of petrol –
a huge caravan of traffic
proceeds into the thundering city.

Stop!
At that very moment
exactly, precisely
lorries, like mastodons splashing
overtook.
As if all given the signal –
huge white Zims
and Volgas, ordinary Pobedas
engines, cycles, carts –
they all stand still:

for now a man,
an ordinary worker
in soot-stained overalls
crosses the road.
His arm around several loaves
– quite calmly –
walks across the sixty metres breadth of road.

They are holding their breath, everyone
: for someone in working clothes
calmly going home
with his burden of bread.

(From the collection Dikter, 1960)

*

A DROP OF POISON

(A wasp
drowned in a coffee cup
and the night rain on top)

Sun, that gets up
one blinded autumn day
gives my puzzled ego
a glimpse of terrace
of shining white breast of bird.

Woe, muddled ego
who does not glance up. What
is it I have downed!
Poison of an old wasp
in stagnant liquid –
What disgusting medicine
I ended up swallowing
(what a dirty drink
on a clear autumn day
humiliating
must spit it out!)

The little drop
of contrast –
(solace?)
Without that
I would perhaps never
have fathomed – guessed: the greatness
of the autumn dawn

– glimpse of blinding white breast of bird.

(From the collection Det sker med ens, 1964)

*

Chance?

O chance, what are you then –
if not the struggle
between many grey
to snatch the prey.

If not the game itself
– urged by strong insights –
suggests: from desperation light!
The grip released
makes his way towards it.

(From the collection: Det sker med ens, 1964)

*

Illustrations

They lie spread out
in an ancient city
Districts where cats
sneak around and live
have their paths in
the sign of the sun
with cheerful click-on-
click-signals
from backyard washing

At night they have got up
And darker
than the dark over the city
a black massif
huge houses of giants
stand conjured up from the depths
And only at midnight
a grim light can be seen
in the vaulted windows
high up under the roof



What unknown being
is now awake?
Who came who
went – for whom
was the light switched on – what
parley was there
What vibrations
knock the house out
towards the city
In the morning grey
it is taken down We again
see: the peaceful district.

(From the collection Orientering, 1967)

***

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Inga-Britt Wik: Three Poems

From what people who knew her have said, Inga-Britt Wik seems to have been a loner with feminist convictions. A strange combination, perhaps. And as a young woman she moved from the provinces to the capital to get an education. These qualities are hinted at in these poems:

*

When the telephone rings
she flicks back her hair
and answers: no he’s not at home
and stares absent-mindedly
into space as if listening.
Yes, she’ll be the same one
to come back to
with his nearness like torrents
in the blood and she is the same one
dully clattering the washing-up for
the world rests on necessities.
What the blood leaves as traces
in the mouth must be washed away daily.
The dark furrow of trust. Creased brow.
While ironing she kneads life
the heat emptying her mind.
Trapped in
the indifferent disaffection of the afternoon
she wanders through the backyards of memory
lays out their faces,
one by one, till she has discovered
another one she could have loved in order to
let the sudden fire quietly
deny its origins.

(From the collection: Fönstret, 1958)

*

PS from Mother Human Being

I’m the one that lives with you all
the one that is born with a feeling for the dark rooms
where life begins

you do all you can to get rid of me
lift me up onto pedestals
where I must stand and listen

it’s lonely to be worshipped
one is shut out
from ordinary life

one can’t take part in your
simple and impetuous arrangements
one is too “good” for that

I can take part in your festive days
but you are kidding yourselves
it’s not me standing there on your

pedestals – it’s only a childish copy
I myself am out there in life
with you all
it’s there you can find me

(From the collection Jack’s café, 1980)

*

Whether it was early or late
I don’t remember.
We ate grilled trout in a wide open
world,
read Runeberg’s Idylls and Epigrams
to our coffee.
It seemed like the first time,
the resurrection poems speak about.

(From the collection: Skriver I dagarnas book, 2008)

These three poems come from a selection of ten, published in the literary magazine Horisont, 1/2009.

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens

Horisont 1/2009 - Inga-Britt Wik

The Ostrobothnian-based literary magazine Horisont has been around for decades, and still now in 2009 four further issues are planned after the first, which appeared recently. The theme of this issue is the Finland-Swedish poet Inga-Britt Wik who died last year. To give some idea who she was, I will translate the small biographical note from Horisont:

Inga-Britt Wik was born 18th December 1930 in Vasa. Both parents were brought up in the countryside, her father as the son of fisherfolk and smallholders from the island of Replot in the Vasa archipelago. Her mother was the daughter of a so-called "America widow" from Vörå. (An America widow was similar to a "grass widow", except that the husband was living in America.) Her father Arvid Wik worked as a customs officer during the 1930s, while her mother ran a small grocer's shop. During the war years, her father was called up, and spent time in the army first in Hangö then, during the Continuation War, in the Karelian Isthmus.

Inga-Britt Wik moved to Helsinki in 1950, and graduated in philosophy in 1956. In 2003 she returned to Vasa. She was principally a poet, and all her books appeared with the Schildts publishing house in Helsinki. Key themes in her poetry are various women's rôles, love, feminism, the environment, but the basic tone of her poetry reflects nature.

She was married to the author and film producer Jörn Donner from 1954 to 1962, later marrying the children's psychiatrist Gustav Amnell. The marriage and separation from Donner caused her to write the books Ingen lycklig kärlek (No Happy Love; 1988) and Bryta upp (Breaking Up; 1996). She was also the editor of poetry by Solveig von Schoultz and Lars Huldén.

I shall be translating a couple of her poems from this issue of Horisont later in a new thread.

Jac. Ahrenberg on Julius Krohn

Some days ago I wrote about the resident of Viborg, Jac. Ahrenberg, who had written a series of biographical sketches in Swedish about people he knew personally. Here are a few excerpts from his article (1914) about Julius Krohn. Krohn (who may well be a distant ancestor of the Finnish poet Leena Krohn) was an ardent proponent of the Finnish language. But at home he spoke German and Russian. Like Snellman and Mannerheim, some leading Finns did not always speak Finnish well! But Krohn persevered and became a revered promoter of Finnish.

For a translator, it is important to know which other languages are spoken in any given area; background languages, in other words. As Viborg (aka Viipuri and Vyborg) was very cosmopolitan, there are plenty to choose from. Areas of mixed language have fascinated me for a long time. And mixed language implies mixed background.

*

But first a few words about the family history of the Krohns. Three families came to Viborg in 1814 from Rügen, on the Pomeranian coast, then part of Sweden: the Sattlers, the Bützows and the Krohns. Julius Krohn’s grandfather, Abraham, came in 1795 to Saint Petersburg on a Swedish passport, and began to work there as a baker and brewer. In time, he managed to acquire a plot of land at the end of Nevsky Prospekt. This global thoroughfare stretched, during the reign of Catherine II, out to where Gostinni Dvor and the arcade now stand. When the street was to be lengthened and widened, the value of plots of land rose enormously, and this was the basis of the large fortune that the Krohn dynasty managed to amass.

Abraham Krohn had several children, two of whom moved to Madeira in order to improve their weak health. They started the world famous wine company called "Krohn and Brothers". The next youngest, Leopold Vilhelm, moved to Viborg, applied to become a Finnish citizen and became one from having been, via Russian citizenship, a Swedish citizen. He married the eldest daughter of a businessman called Dannenberg (who was married to the daughter of a Finnish clergyman from Ingria or Ingermanland) who was, by the way, a very eccentric gentleman. He was very musical, and occupied his time, among other things, with building sounding boards made of glass (from Rokkala foundry) for the fortepianos of the day, whose sound was rather weak; and also with chemical experiments. All these experiments were inherited, on his death, by his son-in-law, the incredibly many-sided genius Johan Gabriel Fabritius. He wasted a good deal of his inherited Dannenberg fortune on them.

Dannenberg owned Kiiskilä manor, whose main building (karaktärshus) was nearer the road to Helsinki than the present one. The original house is still intact and is now a tavern. (...) The Dannebergs spoke neither Swedish nor Finnish. Nor have I heard the Krohn couple speak a word of Swedish. The mother-tongue of their son Julius, as was often the case in the upper circles in Viborg in those days, was Russian and German. [Julius Krohn was named after his mother, née Dannenberg, who was called Julie and inherited the Danneberg property. Julius Krohn went to school in Viborg.] Whatever language you would hear him speak later in life, you could always hear the soft "y" and "s", which reminded you that he had had a Russian nyanya (nanny). As a boy he was taught by Russian, then German, then French tutors, and when he finally decided to go to school in Viborg, the Swedish language was added to these. (...)

Julius Krohn grew up at this crossroads, Viborg, where three races, Karelians, Slavs and Scandinavians, had fought for space for over five hundred years, in this language chaos, with German, Russian, French, Swedish and Finnish. He did not have one drop of Finnish blood in his veins, even though he became a fiery fennoman. (...)

The Swedish language had gradually found a foothold in two of the exceptionally good German schools in Viborg. The Swede, the outsider, had gained the upper hand regarding the church and the legal system, which had always been German up to then, so that Mrs Julie Krohn became an enemy of the Swedish language. Like many others, she regarded the German language as representing a higher form of culture. But these people were not afraid of all change. The language of the people in the area was the Karelian dialect of Finnish, of which Julie Krohn did have some knowledge. She, like many others, presumably wondered what the fate of the people of the Karelian isthmus would be once the Russian language, which was spreading beyond Saint Petersburg, pushed out the two languages of culture, German and Swedish. Presumably things would end up as they had done in Ingria. One should not forget that the Finnish language was once spoken right down as far as Nizhny Novgorod. Julius Krohn’s fennomania had increased subconsciously by way of his mother’s opinions and, I wish to express myself as mildly as possible, her lack of sympathy for the Swedish language. (...)

The language question is a question of emotions. Emotions are the bastion of conservatism, inaccessible to violence, power, and, yes, even to common sense. Feelings are untouchable... The fact that I [i.e. Ahrenberg himself] never joined the Finnish language camp was not only a matter of temperament. I have never – and I must say unfortunately – regarded the Finnish tribes as having the capacity to form a state. What exists now is a result of what once was, and what was then supports my case. There has never been a Finnish state. (...)

We all (i.e. the Ahrenbergs) spoke Finnish at home, even my father – although his Finnish was rather like that of Mrs Julie Krohn – and we often made fun of him. But now we had to start writing the Finnish language ourselves. My brother immediately picked out an illustrated Negro and Indian book in order to translate it. I, who tended to revolt more, tried my level best to avoid having to do such things language exercises at all. (...)

The plots of land around Viborg had been divided a long time before by the land assessor, so that everyone would have "forest for fuel and timber" as well as "a beach for fishing". Both Vainikka (the Ahrenbergs’ manor) and Kiiskilä (the Krohns’ manor) consisted of kilometres of land in broad rectangles right into the ancient forest of Mustakorpi. The forest part of Vainikka was some 7 kilometres in length. On the other side, and at an equal distance from the main plot, we owned two rocky islets, the so-called Neulorna "The Nails". You had to sail a long way through the sound in order to reach what we called "our property abroad"; and because of the crosswinds, this could be quite a hazardous enterprise.

Translated from Swedish by Eric Dickens