Sankarit by Johanna Sinisalo

I’ve been a lousy reader this year. You’d think that I’d read more when I wasn’t working – and I intended to, but it just didn’t happen. Now that I’ve started working, I’ve also started reading more – go figure. So yesterday I finally finished Sankarit by Johanna Sinisalo I’ve been reading for months, and it’s really not the book’s fault.

This is actually quite a funny and clever book, but not one that would ever open up to anyone who’s never lived in Finland. Sinisalo re-writes Kalevala, the Finnish national epic (compiled from folk songs and poems – you can find an English translation here) – firstly you have to be familiar with the epic, and secondly she writes about Finns in a very Finnish way that probably wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else.

That being said, for me this was pure fun. Sinisalo’s style is mixture of fantasy and sci-fi, and figuring out what character in Sankarit corresponded to what character in Kalevala, guessing how Sinisalo would work the plot and how to change it to fit modern day Finland is entertaining. Some characters were easier than others – personally I wasn’t that fond of Rex (Juha K. Kuningas) as Väinämöinen, the shamanistic hero with magical power of song transformed to a rock star. My favourite is probably Mahti Karjalainen who is the modern day Lemminkäinen – he is a trickster who loves to please the crowds but lets his testosterone do the thinking which leads him to all sort of trouble.

Unfortunately in a way the clever bit of the book is also its downfall – the fact that you know what’s going to happen starts to lose it’s glamour at some point. I think some stories could have left out – like Kullervo, no matter how delicious that story is it served no purpose in the book. In fact, Sankarit, 150 pages shorter would have been a full 5 star book – the idea in itself doesn’t quite carry it far enough to justify the “epic” length.