Culture|Book review
Maria Turtschaninoff digs deep into the Finnish relationship with nature, at the same time the mundane and mystical eye of the bog. The subject is universal, the rights to the novel have already been sold to 15 countries.
Novel
Maria Turtschaninoff: Finland (Arvejord). Finnish Sirkka-Liisa Sjöblom. Oak. 371 pp.
By chance just under independence day i read Maria Turtschaninoff (b. 1977) of an enchanting novel Marsh. It allows you to delve into the core of Finnishness and our relationship with nature in a fresh way.
My most shocking observation is this: the biggest rupture in the relationship between man and nature dates back to my own lifetime. Urbanization that began in the 1960s broke the century-long relationship, and that rift has not yet been repaired.
A vital connection is lost. However, the problem is not only the Finns’. Urbanization has uprooted billions of people in the world. That is exactly why people in different parts of the world have started to turn to ancestors and mothers, to seek meanings and answers from their wisdom.
Finlandia Junior for the award-winning Turtschaninoff Marsh is the first adult novel. It is located on the Nevabacka family farm in Ostrobothnia and takes place in time from the 17th century to the 21st century. Over the course of four hundred years, the symbiotic relationship of the people of Nevabacka with nature becomes step by step more distant, instrumental and suggestive.
Turtschaninoff impressively describes this change: how every human being connected to and dependent on nature with their cells is gradually distancing themselves from it.
A person connected to nature relates and adapts his life and activities to the cycle of the year and changing weather conditions. The connection is not only physical, but also spiritual. Forest people live in the forest, which is a part of everyone’s life. Everyday life includes taking it into account and respecting it.
Author has studied the landscape closely, physically and mentally, even spiritually. He also impressively describes man’s deep relationship with animals.
When telling about the young cartographer Anti, the author describes a reality where human life still has clear limits. A person’s space is limited to his own village, where everything he does can be drawn on a map. Everything happens in a controlled area, life has edges. Modern people no longer have those edges.
But our ancestors also had their states, which did not submit to a map drawing: emotions. When Ant falls in love, it no longer bends into a map. Emotion has no boundaries, never has.
Little by little, people’s limited space is starting to break down. Some relatives move further away, and so new thoughts, ideas and influences begin to flow into the village. Women are starting to get educated, to become independent. You no longer have to choose a spouse right next to you.
The grandchild finds his grandfather filling birds when the mother leaves for America and does not return. Many others also leave, and when they return, they are no longer the same. War takes boys and men.
Maria Turtschaninoff has written the perfect Christmas gift novel.
Turtschaninoff sings the praises of Finnish Finland in his novel. Shows its mystery, beauty and specialness. The swamp and its spirits demand respect: it can take its own, you can sink there.
Marsh grows into an allegory for Finland.
According to the Research Center for Finnish Languages, the name of our country Finland has been explained in many different ways, starting from the phonetically close Finnish words such as suo (“suomaa”, marshy land).
Turtschaninoff has taken this proposal: Finland is Finland, the land of thousands of swamps.
In all nations has had its own relationships with the forest people and the elements of nature. From this point of view To Finland the subject is universal. Turtschaninoff deals with issues that are current and fascinating all over the world, and the translation rights of the novel have been sold immediately after publication in at least 15 countries.
Turtschaninoff tells the story of the family episodically. The narrator’s voices and perspectives change, each era sounds and rhythms in slightly different ways.
It is also interesting that, on the one hand, Turtschaninoff writes the story of a very privileged family. The family farm Nevabacka in Ostrobothnia has been in the possession of the same family since the 17th century. In Finland, this continuity was broken during the Winter and Continuation War (1939–44) for more than 400,000 people, when they had to leave their homes in Karelia across the border. Those genera and families don’t have roots like this – but very different ones.
Turtschaninoff is wrote the perfect Christmas gift novel. In its last pages, Stina, who inherits Nevabacka’s estate, feels that she is an outsider in Nevabacka, relying on flimsy stories and memories.
His reflections connect the story to this moment and make it clear: my parents’ generation collected berries and mushrooms. They knew the plants and the birds. Is all that know-how going to waste now? What is my role in this continuum? How do I get attached to this country?
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