Ask Me Anything: The Answer Post, Part 1

The blog birthday is here! I'm so excited to share my answers to the Ask Me Anything questions that some of you readers sent me. In fact, there were so many more questions than last year and I ended up giving such lengthy answers to some of them that I thought it might be a good idea to do the Answer Post in two parts. Today's post will include the questions from Hannah and Siiri L. – thank you both, for coming up with such interesting questions and for being such great blog friends all this time!


Hannah asked...

If you could play any character in a musical and/or play, who would it be and why?

I'm going to pick one character from a musical and one from a straight play. My musical character choice would be Éponine, without a doubt. "On My Own" and "A Little Fall of Rain" are among my favourite songs from Les Misérables, and although the character in the musical is often criticized for lacking the complexities of her Victor Hugo counterpart, I think there would be plenty of chances for an actress to explore more of the derangement and instability that characterize Éponine in the novel. Everyone loves a good stage death, and Éponine departs singing a beautiful duet and fills the remaining rebels with new resolution to keep fighting. Plus, I really love that hat.

August: Osage County is my favourite modern play so far, and Ivy – the middle one of Violet Weston's three grown-up daughters – is one of the most interesting characters in it. She makes her sisters uncomfortable with her blunt and apparently cynical comments, but with Little Charles around she becomes a completely different person, which just adds up to the devastation that the romance ultimately brings her way. She shows deliberate indifference to what are often perceived as commonplace feminine values; her mother nags at her for not caring about her looks, and she appears completely fine with the fact that she can't ever have children. Like Éponine, Ivy has a wonderful last scene in the play, involving emotional breakdown and finally breaking away from the mother whose problems she was forced to deal with as her sisters moved away. All the different layers in Ivy's personality and that heart-wrenching character arc would be just wonderful to play.


Can you rank the Dickens novels that you've read so far?

I'll be more than happy to do that! I have only read three and a half of his novels so far, plus A Christmas Carol which I'll also include in the ranking even though it's a novella. I'm seriously working on my Dickens education, though – just look at my Classics Club list! I would like to point out that I have loved every Dickens novel I have read so far, they are all brilliant in different ways. Therefore, even the works that I have placed low on this ranking are not bad – just less amazing than the ones above them.

1. A Tale of Two Cities
This one bounced straight up to my list of "all-time favourite books of literary magic which will affect me for the rest of my life" – as soon as I was finished with despairing over the cruelty of the human race and crying about that bloody guillotine. Dickens does something very different than his usual thing here; the setting is in the late 1700s exploring the devastating effects of the Revolution and the Terror on the French society, there is none of Dickens' trademark satirical humour, and the page count is just over 400. The result is an absolutely heartbreaking account on how humanity's struggle for "justice" leads to tragedy both nation-wide and in the lives of ordinary men and women. I don't think any other book ever has sent my mind reeling so wildly, both during and after reading it.

2. Nicholas Nickleby
This was my first Dickens experience and it will most likely stay high in my esteem no matter how many Dickens novels I will read after it. It is a big book in terms of length and story, covering diverse layers of Victorian society in their various pursuits. However, the focus stays on young Nicholas Nickleby of idealistic values, as he develops one of literature's loveliest bromances with poor Smike, and learns to stand his ground against his miserly uncle Ralph. Nicholas Nickleby is many things, which makes it such an engaging read – it's viciously funny and unflinchingly tragic, a broad social commentary as well as an eventful coming-of-age adventure.

3. A Christmas Carol
I'm a complete junkie for fantasy, character development and the Christmas spirit, so if there exists a story about a sore old miser finding redemption through supernatural intervention at Christmastime, written in brilliant Dickensian prose, is there anything else for me to do but adore it? As always, Dickens' masterful pen creates literary images so awe-inspiring that it is best described as pure magic.

4. Little Dorrit
I'm exactly halfway through this one while I'm writing this blog post so I won't say much right now, but I'm fairly certain that Little Dorrit will rank somewhere hereabouts once I'm finished with it. The book is very slow-paced at times, but the good parts are very good. It explores themes such as the effects of institutionalisation (in this case, in a debtors' prison), the vapid constructions of high society, and the importance of a fulfilling life in great depth. Arthur Clennam is an interestingly atypical literary hero and the reader gets to really delve into how his past experiences have shaped his personality and current views of life.

5. Oliver Twist
As I discussed in my review about a year ago, this book has some structural flaws and Oliver Twist himself is not the most interesting or realistic of child heroes, but there is still more than a fair share of brilliant bits to be found here.


Would you rather J.K. Rowling wrote a series about the Hogwarts Founders, a series about the Marauders or a series about the next generation at Hogwarts?

Each of these ideas holds its own element of intrigue, but being such a history person, I would most like to hear about how Hogwarts came to be. I just happened to do some reading on the Anglo-Saxon period in British history, and how amazing would it be to know what that era was like for witches and wizards? And even compared to all the countless magical people that came from Rowling's imagination, the four who founded Hogwarts must be terrifically interesting characters!


If you could put various Doctor Who Doctors and companions together for a one-off episode, who would you pair up?

Oh, I was hoping Hannah might come up with a Doctor Who question, and this is a wonderfully interesting one! (Hannah, I want your answer on this in the comments.)

First of all, I would pair up the Twelfth Doctor with Donna simply because, as this article points out, it would be hilarious. Donna would first ask what the hell "Caecilius" was doing in the TARDIS and why he was even bothering to do such a lousy impersonation of the Doctor – the accent? being all grumpy? WHAT?!

Now, the Doctor that Donna knows – the Tenth – would have to go with one of the Eleventh's companions, and I would pick post-marriage Amy and Rory – I love them best when they're together, so that's a package deal. I don't really know what we might expect to happen with these three. The Doctor might notice that Amy has succeeded in being ginger, unlike him. He would also, for once, get to meet a pretty young woman who doesn't fall for him, and that young woman's husband whom he can't call an idiot, unlike the "companions' boyfriends" that he met. He would also witness two companions whose lives don't revolve entirely around TARDIS traveling.

Because Martha is my favourite companion right after Amy and Rory, I would definitely want to see her somewhere in this mix-up. She and Nine would make up a very interesting, business-like TARDIS team, wouldn't they? Nine might also appreciate her talents more than Ten did, and I think Martha would lecture the Doctor on how he's not allowed to label all humans as "stupid apes".

Martha and Donna being taken, the only regular companion left for the Eleventh Doctor would be Rose, and I can't really see anything interesting coming out of this. Maybe I'm just biased against Rose. Anyway, I had another idea... Captain Jack Harkness. He's not one of "the" companions, but think about it, seriously! The "Captain of the Innuendo Squad" paired up with the Doctor who doesn't understand why a married couple doesn't want bunk beds – endless hilarity! Also, my favourite Doctor + my favourite supporting character from series 1-4 would mean an extra birthday for me...


What are your top 5 Disney films?

A Disney question, yay! First of all, I did some thinking on what sorts of things make my personal favourite Disney films stand out from all the good Disney films. Here is a list of things that really matter to me regarding this question. All of my Top Five don't have all of these qualities, but mostly they do.

• Well-rounded main characters whose background, motivations and hopes are properly explored
• Great music
• Beautiful animation
• An interesting setting
• A well-paced, eventful story that has equal measures of touching and funny moments
• A good voice cast – I watched most Disney films with Finnish dubbing first, and I still think many of the Finnish voice actors are better than the original ones, no matter how objective I try to be.

So, getting to the point, my Top 5 Disney films are...

1. The Lion King

This was an easy choice to make; there has never been and never will be a competitor to how much I adore just about everything in this film. The music is wonderful, the animation is gorgeous, I love every single character (including that classic, awesome Disney villain Scar) and no matter how many times I watch it, I'm always completely heart-broken about how Mufasa's death affects Simba way into adulthood. No other movie in the world makes me cry three times in one viewing. The story is truly inspiring and I wish I could have Timon and Pumbaa as my best friends – the Finnish voice actor for Timon, Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, really stands out. Let me give all of you non-Finns a piece of him:

2. The Princess and the Frog
This film carries none of the childhood nostalgia that I get from The Lion King and Pocahontas and the likes, because it came out as late as 2009 and in fact I only saw it a year ago – so I was quite surprised at how high it jumped (frog-like) into my favourites list, I simply loved it straight away! New Orleans makes a wonderfully imaginative setting and I love how the "Disney Princess" concept gets a modern update in Tiana, who is one of my favourite Disney heroines ever. She knows wishing and dreaming won't get her anywhere – she's gonna work for it! She's also got Anika Noni Rose's voice, which is such a perfect fit for a Disney princess. I'm very happy with how her relationship with Naveen develops throughout the film; they go through a lot together and actually make each other better people, so when they (spoilers, sort of) fall in love and start a life together, it feels like they have truly earned it. I really enjoy the music in this film and Charlotte, Louis and Ray (sniffles!) are some of my favourite Disney supporting characters! This is the only film on my list that I haven't heard the Finnish version of, but Tiana's voice actress (including the singing) is Laura Voutilainen, whom I liked very much as Megara in Hercules. 

3. Mulan
Mulan is another wonderful heroine! She is such a great role model for anyone out there who feels like they don't fit in. She's smart, selfless and butt-kicking! She might even have actually existed! Again, the film looks beautiful and I really like the Chinese setting. It's possibly one of the funniest Disney films ever and makes me literally roar with laughter, but among the things I love most about it is the lovely relationship Mulan has with her father. "The greatest gift and honour... is having you for a daughter." Almost all of the earlier Disney heroines' relationships with their fathers were built on the fact that their mothers just weren't there, but I don't think any of their Disney Dads can top that line by Mulan's father. The soundtrack is amazing. The singing voices for both the original and the Finnish Mulan (Lea Salonga and Heidi Kyrö respectively) are very good, the scene where Mulan leaves her parents gives me the chills every single time, and this one below is one of my favourite work-out songs! (Shang's Finnish voice actor, Santeri Kinnunen, also voiced John Smith.)

4. Aladdin
Just hearing the first beats of "Arabian Nights" gets me all excited. By the time I finish watching, I think "Wow, this was even more awesome than I remembered", every single time! The setting in Agraba is full of mystery and excitement and Jafar is damn impressive as the villain. Jasmine is definitely on the smarter side of the Disney Princess line-up as she sees right through "Prince Ali's" pretense and fools Jafar into thinking she's suddenly smitten by him (I never stop giggling at that scene). Like Tiana, she gets to have adventures with Aladdin and learn things about him before she decides he's the man. The Finnish voice cast actually received some sort of a Disney award for best dubbing, with special recognition to the Finnish Genie, Vesa-Matti Loiri. He's a long-time household name over here and a man of many talents, and the energy and character that he brings to the Genie is spectacular. I do appreciate Robin Williams' portrayal as well.

5. Pocahontas
I wonder what people might think about me placing Pocahontas in my top favourites, because it seems that nobody particularly likes it. However, for me it was one of the most important films of my childhood. In all honesty, I can say that the importance I place on anti-racist and environmental values originates from how profoundly affected Little Me was by Pocahontas. Years later, when I had to give a presentation of a hero for a school assignment, I chose the real-life Pocahontas. I love the look of the film, the character designs and the colours (of the wind). Watching Pocahontas is also one of those times when being a Finn is a vast advantage, because you get to hear Arja Koriseva and Santeri Kinnunen as the leads. I don't really like Judy Kuhn's singing, whereas Arja Koriseva's voice seems to vibrate with the forces of the wind, the earth and the river that she sings about. I also find John Smith much more believable when he doesn't speak with the voice (and the American accent) of Mel Gibson. Now listen to Arja Koriseva sing like a goddess.

Honourable mentions: Fantasia because of its amazingly imaginative re-interpretation of some of the greatest compositions of classical music, and The Great Mouse Detective because it's such a fun tribute to Sherlock Holmes.


Have you seen any Jane Austen adaptations? If so, which did you like best?

I haven't seen many Jane Austen adaptations and, to be honest, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about them. In my opinion, Jane Austen's strongest asset is her distinctive, sharp and witty narrative voice – when that gets inevitably eliminated in the process of adapting to screen, the result is mostly leisurely-paced relationship dramas with very predictable endings. Therefore, I often get a little bored when watching Austen on screen. I have seen the Pride and Prejudice film from 2005, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries web series, the 1995 film and part of the 2008 miniseries of Sense and Sensibility, and the 2009 miniseries of Emma. My favourite of these would be The Lizzie Bennet Diaries because the modern update is very cleverly done! Out of the actual period dramas, the film version of Sense and Sensibility is my top pick because it has a good cast, a couple of additional scenes that really advance the characters, and beautiful directing by Ang Lee.

You're a polyglot: what's your favourite word in Finnish, Swedish, English, French and Spanish?

What an interesting question – and what a challenge! It's impossible to give definite answers to this one, but I tried to come up with something.

• Finnish: possibly valo, which means light (the noun). I'm not even remotely sure about this, though – it's really hard to evaluate my first language in this way! Eino Leino, one of the greatest Finnish poets (1878-1926), liked to use words with the back vowels a, o and u, and I really like the Finnish sound of them as well. 
• Swedish: Swedish words are almost always cluttered with sounds like d, j, ä, g, and r (seriously, there are so many r's!) which don't make the pleasantest combinations if you ask my ears. There is also an abundance of weird phonemes which involve s in the front and a variety of other consonants right after it. Himmel is a nice, soft exception, and it means sky.
• English: Damn, this isn't any easier than the two previous ones! English is my favourite language and I'm constantly impressed by the scope and variety of its vocabulary. If I had to pick one, I might go with dramatic. It sounds exactly like what it means – dramatic!
• French: Oh, everything sounds beautiful in French, even vulgarities and words like trash ("Oh là là, this pubelle is rotting!"). Avenir is a particularly nice one, I think – future. It's rather clever too, as it's constructed from à venir, which means upcoming. 
• Spanish: On my last visit to Spain, I stayed near to a village that has the word arroyo (brook) in its name, and I realized that even though the rhotic r is one of my least favourite sounds in Finnish and Swedish, in Spanish it sounds passionate and vivacious. 

What's your favourite pizza topping?

Pineapple! It's one of the best fruits ever, not just in pizza – when it's fresh, actual pineapple, that is. The sickly-whiteish bits that swim around in tin cans do not deserve to be called pineapple.


Siiri L. wanted to know my Hogwarts house, wand and Patronus.

I am a Ravenclaw according to every single Hogwarts test I've ever found on the Internet, including Pottermore's, and I completely agree with the results. I have always identified with the bookish, knowledge-valuing Ravenclaw crowd, and when Pottermore revealed that the house also values creativity and originality (to the point where others call it being just plain weird), it sounded exactly like my old high school which specializes in performance arts and is locally famous as the "artsy weirdoes' school". (Note that I use the phrase as a term of endearment.)

According to Pottermore, my wand is of maple and unicorn hair, 10 inches and surprisingly swishy. Unicorns are my favourite mythological creatures and maple wands are supposed to fit for travelers and explorers who don't like to stay in one place, so I think it fits pretty well! The Patronus question is a tricky one because I don't think it's something you can choose, but I would love a wolf Patronus. Fear and hate of wolves is a deeply-rooted mindset in the Finnish population, but I've always thought they're beautiful and mysterious (though I do understand how people who live in the heavily wolf-populated areas where children are sometimes afraid to walk to school might find it hard to agree with me). The Starks' direwolves are one of my absolute favourite things in A Song of Ice and Fire!

The Ask Me Anything event finishes tomorrow with my answers to Hamlette's and Olivia's questions! :) Please feel free to share your own thoughts on the questions above!

The Curious Incident of a Brilliant, Finnish Theatre Experience

Alright, I'll have to explain that title. To be perfectly honest, the more I've learned about theatre and my own preferences in it, the more wary I've become of productions in my home country. There will probably be a separate blog post on this subject because I've actually given a lot of thought as to why I'm generally so unimpressed by Finnish theatre. Fortunately, though, I get to say generally and not always. Because sometimes, a production like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Tampereen Työväen Teatteri will reveal how much potential there could be even in my home town.

The triumph of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time began in 2003, as a very successful mystery novel written by Mark Haddon. The novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, just to name a few, and in 2012 it was adapted to the stage by Simon Stephens. The play went on to win a staggering amount of seven Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play. So, when Tampereen Työväen Teatteri (one of the two biggest local theatres, originally a workers' theatre) staged it this autumn, I was both intensely intrigued and somewhat reassured to see a production that had already won so much acclaim in London. Now I can say, without a moment's hesitation, that TTT's Yöllisen koiran merkillinen tapaus is the best theatre production I have ever had the good fortune to see here in in Finland. It is respectful of the original Britishness of the play, simple yet stunningly effective in its visual execution, abundant in versatile actors and masterfully directed by Otso Kautto.

The play's rather singular title originates from a phrase that Sherlock Holmes coins in The Adventure of Silver Blaze. The protagonist is 15-year-old Christopher Boone, who starts investigating the death of his neighbour's dog, à la the Great Detective whose adventures he reads avidly. Asperger's syndrome makes it difficult for him to interact with people and his father seems especially opposed to his investigations, but eventually the clues lead Christopher to a revelation even more devastating than the identity of Wellington's killer.

The entire nine-man cast of this production is superb, and Jyrki Mänttäri does the most admirable job of all in carrying the weight of the principal role. Mänttäri is of course considerably older than his character, but he expresses Christopher's unwavering conviction, shattering feeling of betrayal, and everything in between with such credibility that you won't doubt for a second that you are watching a 15-year-old boy who never lies and doesn't understand metaphors. Auvo Vihro and Minna Hokkanen, a married couple in real life, make Ed and Judy's scenes thick with tension, and the way Miia Selin plays Christopher's teacher makes it perfectly self-evident that Christopher would draw inspiration and comfort from her when he faces a dilemma. The rest of the cast play a platoon of minor roles and are all extremely enjoyable to watch – Eeva-Riitta Salo's Mrs Alexander and Petra Ahola playing an ATM machine especially had the entire audience in stitches. Director Otso Kautto deserves all the praise I can possibly give for his work because all the (numerous!) funny bits roll on effortlessly, without ever lapsing into the domain of typically Finnish, overblown, eye-roll-inducing "comedy" with giant quotation marks. Equally, all the serious moments are given the space and the weight that they need in order to reach the audience. The scene where Christopher finds the letters (I won't be more specific than that, in case someone doesn't want spoilers about the plot) is especially chilling, combining Mänttäri's excellent physical expression, the best dialogue between Vihro and Hokkanen, and what is in my opinion the most genius part in Simon Stephens' script.

Normally, I'm not a visually-minded person and it shows very much in how I appreciate different forms of art. Reading a good book or listening to a wonderful piece of music is the best thing in the world, but place me in front of a painting and my mind goes completely blank, regardless of how exquisite and/or famous it is. I suppose being practically blind in my other eye might have contributed to my inclination of appreciating the none-visual aspects in life and in arts. When I go to the theatre, I'm always on the look-out for well-written dialogue and good delivery from the actors, rather than impressive staging. However, I'll have to say something about the visual execution of TTT's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, because it was brilliant enough that even I noticed how brilliant it was. Once again, that brilliance was founded in fearless simplicity. In the first act, there is nothing on the stage except a small, circular platform where Christopher stays throughout the action; other characters talk to him from the main stage and sometimes sit on the edge of his "bubble", but never quite share his space. It didn't hit me till the intermission that all the various scenes in the first act had taken place on this bare and simple staging – the fact is, the stage had served the story so accurately and the actors had carried the action so effortlessly that I doubt it ever crossed anyone's mind that the stage itself should somehow visually represent the setting.

In the beginning of the second act, Christopher undertakes a journey to London, and his safe bubble is gone. Instead, there are grey walls on wheels that look rather menacing, especially as they circle around poor, lost Christopher in a representation of his new, frightening surroundings. The entire journey sequence is marvelously presented; the walls transform into a Christopher-crushing tunnel, a train, a London tube station and a bedroom without a moment's hesitation. What to most people is a simple movement from point A to point B is an adventure of heroic proportions to Christopher. The atmosphere is set so accurately and the actors deliver so powerfully that you find yourself rooting for Christopher as if he was on a quest to save the world. As someone who has a very public long-distance love affair with London, I could only adore that short, but effective representation of the tube station in particular. It's really just a little moment where Christopher is surrounded by the diverse layers of the metropolis' population and an operatic busker provides background music, but I knew instantly where we were and rejoiced in the moment.

If you appreciate good theatre to any extent and if you happen to be anywhere near Tampere, I think you should see this play. I repeat, it is the best Finnish theatre production I have ever seen. Mark Haddon's novel and Simon Stephens' script make a solid foundation from which the cast and the production team have constructed a theatre experience that takes every advantage of the cleverness and truthfulness of the story they are telling.

Photos by Jouko Siro, from the TTT web page

The Guardian's "1000 novels everyone must read"

Finland has a lot of "national days of this and that", which are often celebrated on the birthday of a notable Finnish personality. They are not official holidays and it really depends on one's own interest how much or how little you care to mark the occasion. Personally, I mostly forget about these various dates completely and wouldn't even notice they existed if it wasn't for all the Finnish flags being hoisted up. Today, however, I'm actually aware that it's the birthday of Aleksis Kivi, which also stands for the national day of Finnish literature. Aleksis Kivi is renowned as the author of Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä) – one of the first Finnish novels ever, published in 1870 – and he is also considered a Finnish pioneer in the genre of realism, and one of the first people over here to make their entire living by writing – though this never quite worked out as well as Kivi might have wished and his life was unstable both mentally and financially.

Well, my relationship with Finnish literature is what it is, but as I was planning a bookish blog post anyway, I will take this chance to appreciate literature in a more global sense. So here follows the original post which I planned some days ago and which now fits in very conveniently with the national day of literature.

While the BBC booklist went around the internet last spring, The Guardian's list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read that had been compiled in 2009 re-surfaced. This list had been made by the Guardian's review team and a panel of expert judges, rather than by a public poll. I hope that readers everywhere will choose their reading according to their own interests (and occasionally because the teacher said so) instead of feeling pressure from some "definitive" list, but of course it was very interesting to see what this list looked like – and how I measured up against it myself. You can get your score on List Challenges. Here is what I have read out of the list:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Earthsea series by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

That's 33 novels, which makes 3,3% out of the list. There were also a couple of books on the list that I started but never finished: Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. The first two I gave up because I got too bored, but I really don't understand why I never finished the last book of His Dark Materials, because I was absolutely fascinated by the first two. I must have been busy with other stuff and put the book aside in order to return to it at a better time. I'll have to keep that in mind. I've also read City of Glass, which is one part of Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy – I didn't think much of it, it was one of those compulsory reads for a University course. 

There were also many books on that list that I will definitely be reading some day. I just made myself a "near-future reading list" (meaning "I won't take up any other reading till I've finished these") which happens to include eight books from the Guardian list. (My "far-future reading list" is vague and constantly changing, with no time limits except "before I die" and includes all the Charles Dickens books, for example.)

Finnish and Quenya

I just found out that if you Google search "Kalevala Middle-Earth", my blog post Traces of Kalevala in Middle-Earth will come up on the first page of search results – how amazing is that?!

Today's post will continue the theme of Finland and Middle-Earth. Non-Finnish Tolkien fans have often asked me how much Finnish and Quenya (the High Elven language in Tolkien's works) actually have in common, since the latter supposedly drew inspiration from the former. I'm going to try and shed some light on the question. I admit that I haven't done any extensive study on the grammar and linguistics of Quenya, but I'm familiar with some of its basic principles and can definitely make some comment on how it relates to Finnish, which is my first language. It is not my intention to make a linguistic essay out of this, so I'll try to avoid saying things like "sonorants" and "voiced stops". I'm mostly just providing a viewpoint on what Quenya looks like to an average Finn.

Most of the "Elvish" language that is spoken in The Lord of the Rings, both book and film versions, is actually Sindarin, which was mainly influenced by Celtic (most notably Welsh) and Germanic languages. There is, however, one very good and lengthy example of Quenya in the chapter Farewell to Lórien where Galadriel sings as the Company depart. I'm going to attach the lyrics of that song right here for illustrational purposes:

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lirinen

Si man i yulman nin enquantuva?

An si Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë,
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë;
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbë met, ar hisië
untúpa Calaciryo miri oialë.
Si vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa Valimar!

Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!



The Alphabet

I'm going to start off with the most immediately perceptible feature of language. In this respect, Quenya includes quite a lot of things that Finnish doesn't. First of all, written Finnish doesn't use any kinds of accent marks or the e with dots on it. Accent marks aren't needed because the stress is always, and I mean always, placed on the first syllable, which is one important difference with Quenya. Also, the letters b, c, f, q, w, x and z never appear in native Finnish words, though we do have them in lots of loan words. 

Now, we have to get back to the subject of letters with dots. Like I said, Finnish doesn't have ë, but we do have ä and ö. You would find these in Quenya words as well – for example, the word for the Universe in which Middle-Earth exists is Eä. However, the dotted letters have a bit of a different function in the two languages. If you take a look at the Quenyan song lyrics, you'll notice that the ë appears most often with another vowel right before or after it, or if that's not the case then it will be at the end of the word. So, Quenya uses the dotted letters to signify that they should be pronounced as separate vowels, even when they appear right next to other vowels or at the end, but dotted vowels are still essentially the same letters and sounds as the undotted ones. In Finnish, though, the addition of dots changes the pronunciation entirely and can also change the meaning of the whole word. For example, Väinö is a man's name, but vaino means persecution; moi is the equivalent of hi, but möi is the past tense of the verb to sell. Ä is always pronounced like the first vowel in apple, and nearest equivalent I can think of for the pronunciation of ö would be the British pronunciation of the vowel sound in curse – though it's by no means a perfect example of it. 


Pronunciation

In one respect, Finnish and Quenya agree perfectly: everything is pronounced exactly as it's written. Each vowel is pronounced separately even if they appear next to another vowel, and the pronunciation of r is similar to Spanish and Swedish (just a couple of examples). Here's a video where Tolkien himself recites the poem that I showed above:

If you asked a Finn to recite the same poem with no knowledge of Quenya pronunciation, there would no doubt be some differences in the overall rhythm and colour of speech (because that part was inspired by Latin more than by Finnish), but they would get the essentials right (except they might be confused about what to do with all the c's). When I first read The Lord of the Rings aged thirteen, in my mind I simply pronounced all the Elvish names like I would have done in Finnish; later, I found out that that was exactly what Tolkien had intended. I imagine an Anglophone's first instinct would be to pronounce Sauron something like saw-ron, but a Finn would get it right automatically. We also wouldn't say things like Minus Tirith or Orodroown. 


Grammar

I'm not going to go too deeply into this section because firstly, as I mentioned I really don't know that much about Quenya, and secondly, because I still don't want to make this blog post a full-blown linguistics monster. 

Anyway, there was one quality in the Finnish language that particularly interested Tolkien: agglutination. Basically, it means that the kind of things that are expressed in languages like English by means of prepositions are in Finnish put into little "word bits" (I made that up) that are just attached to the main word. Usually, Finnish doesn't even need to employ things like personal pronouns because you can tell by the verb conjugation who the subject is. Visually, this means that Finnish sentences often have much fewer words than English ones, but our words tend to be ridiculously long. Example: you can say I wonder if we would see in a single Finnish word: näkisimmeköhän. Tolkien found this discovery so thrilling that he would later write: 

"It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."

Apparently, a massively excited linguistics geek produces the most wonderful expressions ever. They should do this more often! Tolkien would of course make his Quenya an agglutinative language as well, and even took it to a higher level than Finnish. Another example: in Quenya, the single word utúvienyes means I have found it. But even in Finnish, you would need three words to express the same: olen löytänyt sen. So sometimes, Quenya agglutinates things that Finnish doesn't. 


This will be the last post on my Tolkien Blog Party series. To Hamlette, I would like to say a big hantanyel! for hosting such an amazing blog party. For you readers, I hope my couple of posts about Tolkien's mythology from a Finnish point of view have been more interesting than boring. 

Traces of Kalevala in Middle-Earth

A small, remote and young country like Finland doesn't have many things to boast about on an international level, but there is one accomplishment in particular that makes me a little proud (just a little, because I'm not big on patriotic or nationalistic values) of being a Finn: it is an indisputable fact that our mythology was a source of inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most globally renowned and beloved writers of all time. Now, in celebration of the Tolkien Blog Party hosted by Hamlette at The Edge of the Precipice, I'm going to have a little fun speculating which specific characters and elements of Finnish legends contributed to Tolkien's creations.

By having fun, I mean that none of my speculations here are facts set in stone. As far as I know, Tolkien rarely made explicit statements like "this character of Middle-Earth was based on that one of Finnish mythology". Also, I would like to make very clear that I'm in no way implying that Tolkien ripped off of our legends – being inspired by something and blatantly copying are two very different things. And as you read this post further, you'll notice that even when there are parallels to be seen, they usually don't run directly from one character to another.

Finally, before I start speculating, I should mention that all the elements of Finnish legends that I will be talking about come from a collection of Karelian oral folklore called Kalevala, which is our national epic. Because of its considerable length, archaic language and the fact that it's structured completely in trochaic tetrameters, very few Finns actually undertake the task of reading the entire, original Kalevala – and I'm not one of them, not yet at least. Tolkien, however, did read it. In Finnish. That deed alone shows quite an admirable dedication to foreign folklore!

I hope that served as enough of an introduction – let's start looking for parallels!


Tom Bombadil, Gandalf, Väinämöinen and Tapio

Tom Bombadil is possibly the oddest character in Middle-Earth, but for someone with basic Kalevala knowledge his portrayal seems eerily familiar. In Kalevala, one of the central characters is an old shaman with superhuman powers called Väinämöinen. He is the son of a goddess who came into the world before everyone else and could wield a great power through song. A certain quote by Tom Bombadil comes to mind:

"Eldest, that's what I am... Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn... He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside."

Then again, most Tolkien scholars who bring up the connection to Kalevala see Väinämöinen as a model for Gandalf, which is also entirely plausible as both of them are very powerful and are central figures in a resistance against a "dark" power – in Kalevala, the bad guys live up North and their leader is Louhi, who is basically an evil witch with an unspecified number of stunningly beautiful daughters and every man in the "good guys'" land of Kalevala (including Väinämöinen) wants one for his wife.

Personally, I also like to draw parallels between Tom and the Finnish god of the forests, Tapio. There is one particularly striking scene in The Lord of the Rings where the four hobbits are staying at Tom Bombadil's house and Tom wears a crown made of autumn leaves – Tapio also wears a crown that changes according to the seasons. He has a beautiful, fair-haired wife as well, called Mielikki.


The smiths and their creations

While characters like Saruman and Gandalf can make things happen with just the force of their words, the manual work of smiths is of great importance in Middle-Earth. One of the defining characteristics of the entire race of dwarves is their love of metals, but other races have their own share of legendary smiths as well. Not only do they make swords, helms and armour that become legends themselves in the course of time, but some of their creations are so powerful that they change the fate of the entire world. Fëanor made the Silmarils which caused a raging war between Morgoth and the Noldor; his descendant Celebrimbor forged the Three Rings that made it possible for the elves to resist Sauron's power when many others were defeated; and, of course, Sauron himself created the One Ring.

I believe that the concept of smiths making things of great power might have gotten its inspiration from Kalevala – one of its most central heroes is llmarinen, a smith who, according to folklore, forged the dome of the sky and invented iron. His most famous accomplishment, however, was the Sampo. The legends are a bit vague and varied about precisely what sort of an object the Sampo was, but in any case it brought endless riches and prosperity out of thin air to whoever owned it. Similarly to the One Ring, it caused quite a massive squabble over who had the right to use it. Even though it was made by Ilmarinen, who was on the side of the "good guys", he was taking orders from the witch Louhi. Can you guess why? Oh yes, he just wanted to impress her so he could marry one of those desirable daughters of hers.

"The Defence of the Sampo" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, depicting Väinämöinen and an eagle-shaped Louhi as they fight over the Sampo (which doesn't make an appearance here).

Eagles

Alright, many mythologies all across the world place eagles as the noblest of all birds. Still, I just have to point out that Kalevala features a gigantic eagle who saves Väinämöinen (the possible inspiration for Gandalf as I mentioned earlier) from drowning. Louhi also transforms herself into an eagle when Väinämöinen leads a force of Kalevalan men in an attempt to steal the Sampo.


Túrin and Kullervo

Spoiler warning for The Children of Húrin! Tolkien himself confirmed that the tragic story of his unluckiest hero, Túrin, was inspired by the similarly unlucky though less heroic Kullervo. Both of them are sent away from home at a young age, though Kullervo's story is much darker already in the beginning – Kullervo's uncle destroys his home, and he is sent off as a slave to Ilmarinen. His journey takes many turns, always to the worse, until he unknowingly commits incest with his sister, just like Túrin. Both of them have a little talk with their swords before killing themselves. I'll be writing more about Túrin in my upcoming review of The Children of Húrin.


So, what do you think about these comparisons? Eagles, smiths, tragic heroes and wise old men of course exist in folklore all around the world, but knowing Tolkien's interest in Kalevala, it's quite tempting to compare these two mythologies especially. I'm hoping that this little analysis might be of interest to non-Finnish Tolkien enthusiasts who may have heard how Finnish mythology inspired Tolkien but never knew what it was all about.

Of gratitude and family history

My blog is dedicated to my love of stories. Usually, this means works of fiction in one form or the other, but today it'll be something different. Today's post is actually a result of a bizarre coincidence that just begs to be blogged about.

Fact #1: For no specific reason that I can think of, my late grandfather (dead for at least ten years now I think) had been a lot on my mind for the last couple of days.

Fact #2: The media are constantly reporting about the situation in Ukraine.

And the last bit that somehow, weirdly binds the aforementioned facts together in a coincidental way: according to our newspaper today, it's now exactly 70 years since the Continuation War in Finland effectively came to an end. The official peace was made a bit later, but 5th of September was when the fighting ceased. I have to confess I had no idea of the significance of this date until today.

So how are my grandfather and Ukraine connected to September 5th, 1944? Well, it was just a bit of a mind flip that happened when I read that newspaper. I have always been grateful to have been born and raised in a country that has been one of the safest and most peaceful places in the world for all my life, but knowing about the recent events in Ukraine (which feels much closer to home than the Middle East crisis) gave that thought much more weight. This whole day, my mind has been going on and on about how incredibly lucky I am to have never known war. For my grandfather, it was quite different.

I was quite young, 10 or 11 years old probably, when my father's father died, and as all of dad's relations lived on the other side of Finland and visits were not very frequent, I can't say I knew him very well. Even if I had been older, though, I wouldn't have heard any war stories from him – it was a subject he never talked about. But the fact is, he did serve in the Continuation War, for a short time. And in 2001, he wrote down some of his wartime memories, which then became a part of a compilation of memoirs from war veterans of Imatra (Nuoruus sodassa 2 – Imatran sotaveteraanit ry:n jäsenten muistelmia sotavuosilta, published by the Society of War Veterans of Imatra in 2005). The 5th of September seemed like a fitting day to re-read my grandfather's contribution to that book.

Grandpa was 14 years old when the Continuation War broke out in 1941, and he was no older than that when he insisted he must join in. He had gotten the idea in his head that one man from every family should take part, and his own father had been released from war service for reasons that had something to do with his advanced age, his post as a police officer, and the fact that he had already served in the civil war of 1918. I suppose there was some sort of regulation against recruiting underage boys, but there was never enough staff to really oversee these things and the working conditions were more or less chaotic all the time, so nobody asked too many questions if someone came in saying they wanted to serve.

Grandpa writes quite frankly that there was nothing heroic or glorious about the time he spent on the war zone. He doesn't say much about the horrors of war, either. Not that a young boy like him was ever placed in the heart of the action anyway. He writes about a prank he pulled on some new recruits, about a wandering horse that he looked after for two days until the army took possession of it, and how him and his buddy took advantage of their small size when they squeezed themselves under the seats of a packed-full train on their way back home.

The last overall impression that he gives of his thoughts on the outcome of the war is that the only thing that mattered was the fact that the fighting came to an end eventually. He doesn't want to discuss the terms of peace and how much they cost, or how physically or mentally affected the men who came back from the war were. He was silent about the war, yes, but never bitter. I respect him tremendously for that.

The 5th of September is coming towards its end while I'm writing this. I have taken this moment to feel appreciation for a grandfather who grew up in a much more dangerous place and time than I did, and gratitude for the peace that we've had here for so long now. Please keep peace on the comments, too – this is not an expression of political views or patriotism. There was a story, an impact that it made, and a blog post – that's what Music & My Mind is for.