Sillanpää

So one day, quite some time ago, I had decided to give Finnish writers a chance. And what better start than a Nobel prize novelist, right?
Thus I chose Sillanpää's Maid Silja, a referential work for the time; also representative for the author's overall distinction of "deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature".

The book shows nothing of my expected - why? - feminist sprouting of those particular Northern realms; instead, it's a simple and dramatic narrative of Silja's life in a certain given set of historical circumstances.

Big themes raise their heads and cross the path of the narrative - poverty and infant mortality, civil war and the brutal alternation of reprisals, the crossed purposes of love ... Somehow, the main character retains integrity, courage, and a sort of good cheer, even in the face of premature death. The intensity of life, although brief, is like the few summers that are imprinted on the heroine's mind.

[from here]
And so it ends, with a distinct sensation of having depicted life's small and large cycles alike.
It left me wondering how different might our great grandparents' lives have been back in the glory days of Bolshevik inception.

And today's Remembrance

Simo Häyhä:

nicknamed "White Death" by the Soviet army, was a Finnish soldier. Using a standard iron-sighted, bolt action rifle in the Winter War, he has the highest recorded number of confirmed kills in any major war.

Here: the Sniper Central list.

Lá-ú-rí, Lá-ú-rí!!

Lauri Tähkä & Elonkerjuu: official band site [why in Finnish, of course!]
I wanna go to these guys' show. Whenever.
Seriously.