i don't remember the "possibly, pedophilia" thing, omfg. maybe i missed it, or maybe i just plain forgot about it. it's been at least six years since i read the book (and did the paper). i read the book in both the original finnish and the english translation (because at the time my finnish wasn't so strong that i was confident i understood everything) and...well, the translation could've been better, but it got the job done.
the paper was an exam paper, which meant that i was given a set research question and thus didn't actually decide which direction to go in myself (entirely). i got a week to write the paper, then. i was asked to 'discuss the theme of the novel in relation to Einar Már Guðmundsson's essay about "realistic fantasy" in an anthology about nordic fantasy. so my approach to the novel was through the fantasy genre and less through...well, literally anything else :'''D
the title, ennen päivänlaskua ei voi (not before sundown) is a line from a poem/song. several other lines from the poem are section titles throughout. the poem is Reino Helismaa's Päivänsäde ja Menninkäinen (performed by various artists through the ages - it's a cultural cornerstone), which was not actually in the original Finnish version! it's in the English translation in the same spot where the Finnish version has a poem by Eino Leino called Pimeän Peikko ("the troll of the darkness)". my guess is because the author didn't need to lampshade the poem because literally everyone knows this song, but translated? hmm, well. foreign readers wouldn't know it. so eino leino's poem went, and was replaced with this one instead.
that song is about Päivänsäde, a human (girl, though the song is not gendered) who falls in love with a troll even though the troll is a 'dark' being, and ends up leaving so that she won't fall under its spell and die. basically. this sounds familiar, no? :''D Päivänsäde means "rain during the day", not a common female name, and definitely one that evokes a fairytale feel. and Menninkäinen is a word for troll. Here's a link to the lyrics (in finnish). the lines from the song that make the section titles are (translations are mine):
1st part hämärä jo maille hiipi "twilight already creeps over the land". in the song it's metsään (over the forest) instead of over the land, a change that baffles me and that I suspect may have been an error on behalf of the author. anyway, this is from the beginning of the poem when Päivänsäde finds herself alone (dropped behind) in the forest and the sun is going down.
in the second half of that first verse we find the title to the book, as Päivänsäde sees the troll appear after the sun is gone, and is an explanation "as trolls cannot exist/live above ground before sundown".
2nd part tunsi kumma leiskuntaa "felt strange bliss", from the second verse. it's the troll that's feeling the strange bliss, as they looked at one another. (in the book, it is Enkeli who feels this strange bliss...) and Marte notices that Enkeli has a new aftershave, and is attracted to him, but this 'aftershave' is Pessi's pheromones lingering on his skin.
3rd part loisteesi mun sokeaksi saa "your light blinds me", and the entire line in context i in the poem is "it doesn't matter if your light blinds me, it's good to live in the dark" which is, said by the troll to Päivänsäde. uh, a self destructive thought if i ever saw one. sounds familiar, no? :'''D Enkeli, blinded by Pessi, is headed for the darkness...starts not caring about anything else in his life and continues to manipulate people around him.
4th part pimeys vie hengen multa "darkness takes my breath away" is from the third verse, the verse where Päivänsäde realises she must leave if she wants to live. it goes: Säde answered: "lovely troll, [your] darkness takes my breath away, and i don't want to die. i have to leave immediately, fly towards the light, or else I will not live for a moment [longer]". and so beautiful Päivänsäde left, and yet, when menninkäinen goes to sleep at night he thinks, why is one the child of light and why does the night love the other
in the book this is...where everything takes on a more 'devilish' and religious turn, where for example the section literally starts with an excerpt from an old sermon that with old-timey spelling says "old finns have have called evil angels also: [lists of various words for the devil, many of which are taken from old folklore for nature spirits, including words for trolls]. the other non-fictional part of the section is about satanic cults in northern finland. and also, this is the part where everything starts falling apart for Enkeli, Martes tries blackmailing him, he tries getting rid of the troll and can't, etc. and there is a line in there that goes "and again i close the door, again i run away. i run away into myself, into Pessi." so like. :'''D
5th part ja toinen yö rakastaa "and the night loves the other". this is the last section and the one where Enkeli gets "lost" - as you know, he goes with the troll to the forest, where they are met with another, adultier troll, WITH A FUCKING GUN.
also sidenote here because i don't remember how this was in the translation, but Enkeli means angel. and Enkeli is described like an angel, all cherub and blond and blue eyed and beautiful etc, so it seems like he's supposed to be Päivänsäde's counterpart.
so, i've explained all this because I think it's massively interesting that the book is presented within the framework of the song, this important cultural thing, which is all about falling in love with nature and its dangers and then, in order to stay alive, have to *not* engage with that love or succumb to it. it's this...seduction of the mystic nature we don't fully understand that we are advised to resist, you know? don't turn your back on the sea, etc. it's based in folklore, fairytales, and there's a theme in many (western) folklore/tales a theme of nature vs civilisation which is about the boundaries between the two and how they should not be breached lest bad things happen. red riding hood gets eaten by the wolf when she goes into the forest, and even in modern storytelling you see it - king kong wreaks havoc on the city when he goes into it. the message seems to be that you don't mess with nature, you leave it be, you respect it, you stay alive. don't get seduced by it.
and the book does a fantastic job of building up this world where not only are trolls real, they are presented as animals, listed in the encyclopedia, etc. and does this by including real poems and stories from finnish culture amongst the fictional non-fiction parts. so you think you're reading a book about a rescued troll, by the way trolls were recently discovered, isn't that neat? but by the sole act of Enkeli taking the troll into civilisation (his flat) he has upset the boundaries between nature and civilisation and triggered a process that's going to end badly. and as a reader familiar with trolls' cultural role in finland, you might be aware that something isn't right, but if you know Päivänsäde and Menninkäinen, you'll expect a happy ending - for Päivänsäde to get away, and thus for Enkeli to get away. but Enkeli isn't in the forest. the troll is in the city. that story is turned upside down here, and it's revealed, slowly, that trolls aren't all they seem to be, and that not only are they intelligent beings in their own right (literally the hairs on my neck rose when i read the bit where Enkeli came home and saw the troll had built a complex structure in the living room) the entire nature vs civilisation dichotomy might be blatantly false to begin with? or nature has been corrupted already (the machine gun)? and by flipping the Päivänsäde and Menninkäinen narrative on its head, it's also asking us to consider - who in this scenario is the dark, destructive force, really? is it the troll, or is it the human? (and knowing now what i didn't then about Sinisalo's other books (which i haven't read yet), it seems an obvious allegory for manmade environmental destruction.)
so...that's why i don't think it's entirely accurate to call it a love story (though it is, in a way) and why i prefer the original title, because the original title directs our attention to the subversion of the poem (and the finnish troll folklore & cultural 'identity', and the nature vs civilisation trope) the novel is built around. it does it by reframing a love story, sure, but that's not really what's important here? imo anyway!
i think there are loads of other things to dig into re: this book and i haven't even mentioned the other half of my paper which was about the 'realistic fantasy', but basically what that was about was that i was remarking how nordic fantasy often seeks not just inspiration in local folklore and traditions, but grounds it in reality and presents it as something that's real. some other works that do this are the movies Rare Exports (2010) (finnish movie about, uh, the real santa claus) and Trolljegeren (2011) (norwegian blair witch project style movie about trolls), which...surprisingly, are both about trolls. and this book does that, because it takes this local thing and turns it real. so it's fantasy, but it doesn't have wizards and high magic and made up countries or whatever else we think of first when we hear 'fantasy', it's realistic to a degree, and it's intensely familiar, and in the case of this novel, uses that familiarity to provoke the reader and also pose questions.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-07-10 12:00 pm (UTC)the paper was an exam paper, which meant that i was given a set research question and thus didn't actually decide which direction to go in myself (entirely). i got a week to write the paper, then. i was asked to 'discuss the theme of the novel in relation to Einar Már Guðmundsson's essay about "realistic fantasy" in an anthology about nordic fantasy. so my approach to the novel was through the fantasy genre and less through...well, literally anything else :'''D
the title, ennen päivänlaskua ei voi (not before sundown) is a line from a poem/song. several other lines from the poem are section titles throughout. the poem is Reino Helismaa's Päivänsäde ja Menninkäinen (performed by various artists through the ages - it's a cultural cornerstone), which was not actually in the original Finnish version! it's in the English translation in the same spot where the Finnish version has a poem by Eino Leino called Pimeän Peikko ("the troll of the darkness)". my guess is because the author didn't need to lampshade the poem because literally everyone knows this song, but translated? hmm, well. foreign readers wouldn't know it. so eino leino's poem went, and was replaced with this one instead.
that song is about Päivänsäde, a human (girl, though the song is not gendered) who falls in love with a troll even though the troll is a 'dark' being, and ends up leaving so that she won't fall under its spell and die. basically. this sounds familiar, no? :''D Päivänsäde means "rain during the day", not a common female name, and definitely one that evokes a fairytale feel. and Menninkäinen is a word for troll. Here's a link to the lyrics (in finnish). the lines from the song that make the section titles are (translations are mine):
1st part hämärä jo maille hiipi "twilight already creeps over the land". in the song it's metsään (over the forest) instead of over the land, a change that baffles me and that I suspect may have been an error on behalf of the author. anyway, this is from the beginning of the poem when Päivänsäde finds herself alone (dropped behind) in the forest and the sun is going down.
in the second half of that first verse we find the title to the book, as Päivänsäde sees the troll appear after the sun is gone, and is an explanation "as trolls cannot exist/live above ground before sundown".
2nd part tunsi kumma leiskuntaa "felt strange bliss", from the second verse. it's the troll that's feeling the strange bliss, as they looked at one another. (in the book, it is Enkeli who feels this strange bliss...) and Marte notices that Enkeli has a new aftershave, and is attracted to him, but this 'aftershave' is Pessi's pheromones lingering on his skin.
3rd part loisteesi mun sokeaksi saa "your light blinds me", and the entire line in context i in the poem is "it doesn't matter if your light blinds me, it's good to live in the dark" which is, said by the troll to Päivänsäde. uh, a self destructive thought if i ever saw one. sounds familiar, no? :'''D Enkeli, blinded by Pessi, is headed for the darkness...starts not caring about anything else in his life and continues to manipulate people around him.
4th part pimeys vie hengen multa "darkness takes my breath away" is from the third verse, the verse where Päivänsäde realises she must leave if she wants to live. it goes:
Säde answered: "lovely troll,
[your] darkness takes my breath away,
and i don't want to die.
i have to leave immediately,
fly towards the light,
or else I will not live for a moment [longer]".
and so beautiful Päivänsäde left,
and yet,
when menninkäinen goes to sleep at night
he thinks, why is one the child of light
and why does the night love the other
in the book this is...where everything takes on a more 'devilish' and religious turn, where for example the section literally starts with an excerpt from an old sermon that with old-timey spelling says "old finns have have called evil angels also: [lists of various words for the devil, many of which are taken from old folklore for nature spirits, including words for trolls]. the other non-fictional part of the section is about satanic cults in northern finland. and also, this is the part where everything starts falling apart for Enkeli, Martes tries blackmailing him, he tries getting rid of the troll and can't, etc. and there is a line in there that goes "and again i close the door, again i run away. i run away into myself, into Pessi." so like. :'''D
5th part ja toinen yö rakastaa "and the night loves the other". this is the last section and the one where Enkeli gets "lost" - as you know, he goes with the troll to the forest, where they are met with another, adultier troll, WITH A FUCKING GUN.
also sidenote here because i don't remember how this was in the translation, but Enkeli means angel. and Enkeli is described like an angel, all cherub and blond and blue eyed and beautiful etc, so it seems like he's supposed to be Päivänsäde's counterpart.
so, i've explained all this because I think it's massively interesting that the book is presented within the framework of the song, this important cultural thing, which is all about falling in love with nature and its dangers and then, in order to stay alive, have to *not* engage with that love or succumb to it. it's this...seduction of the mystic nature we don't fully understand that we are advised to resist, you know? don't turn your back on the sea, etc. it's based in folklore, fairytales, and there's a theme in many (western) folklore/tales a theme of nature vs civilisation which is about the boundaries between the two and how they should not be breached lest bad things happen. red riding hood gets eaten by the wolf when she goes into the forest, and even in modern storytelling you see it - king kong wreaks havoc on the city when he goes into it. the message seems to be that you don't mess with nature, you leave it be, you respect it, you stay alive. don't get seduced by it.
and the book does a fantastic job of building up this world where not only are trolls real, they are presented as animals, listed in the encyclopedia, etc. and does this by including real poems and stories from finnish culture amongst the fictional non-fiction parts. so you think you're reading a book about a rescued troll, by the way trolls were recently discovered, isn't that neat? but by the sole act of Enkeli taking the troll into civilisation (his flat) he has upset the boundaries between nature and civilisation and triggered a process that's going to end badly. and as a reader familiar with trolls' cultural role in finland, you might be aware that something isn't right, but if you know Päivänsäde and Menninkäinen, you'll expect a happy ending - for Päivänsäde to get away, and thus for Enkeli to get away. but Enkeli isn't in the forest. the troll is in the city. that story is turned upside down here, and it's revealed, slowly, that trolls aren't all they seem to be, and that not only are they intelligent beings in their own right (literally the hairs on my neck rose when i read the bit where Enkeli came home and saw the troll had built a complex structure in the living room) the entire nature vs civilisation dichotomy might be blatantly false to begin with? or nature has been corrupted already (the machine gun)? and by flipping the Päivänsäde and Menninkäinen narrative on its head, it's also asking us to consider - who in this scenario is the dark, destructive force, really? is it the troll, or is it the human? (and knowing now what i didn't then about Sinisalo's other books (which i haven't read yet), it seems an obvious allegory for manmade environmental destruction.)
so...that's why i don't think it's entirely accurate to call it a love story (though it is, in a way) and why i prefer the original title, because the original title directs our attention to the subversion of the poem (and the finnish troll folklore & cultural 'identity', and the nature vs civilisation trope) the novel is built around. it does it by reframing a love story, sure, but that's not really what's important here? imo anyway!
i think there are loads of other things to dig into re: this book and i haven't even mentioned the other half of my paper which was about the 'realistic fantasy', but basically what that was about was that i was remarking how nordic fantasy often seeks not just inspiration in local folklore and traditions, but grounds it in reality and presents it as something that's real. some other works that do this are the movies Rare Exports (2010) (finnish movie about, uh, the real santa claus) and Trolljegeren (2011) (norwegian blair witch project style movie about trolls), which...surprisingly, are both about trolls. and this book does that, because it takes this local thing and turns it real. so it's fantasy, but it doesn't have wizards and high magic and made up countries or whatever else we think of first when we hear 'fantasy', it's realistic to a degree, and it's intensely familiar, and in the case of this novel, uses that familiarity to provoke the reader and also pose questions.