#sankarit

[kiimaisetmuumipeikot]

Isänmaa sarja: Lopussa kiitos seisoo.

[neuvostosuomi]

Kunnia Punakaartille – 1918

[siruannika]

I just finished reading Johanna Sinisalo’s Sankarit, which is a retelling of Kalevala set in modern world (Finland in 90s to early 00s), the characters reimagined as all kinds of famous people; rock stars, athletes, scientists, beauty queens. First of all, it’s excellent (as is her Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi, and I’m going to add everything she’s ever written on my superlong reading list now). 

The story parallels that of Kalevala’s closely, which means it’s pretty harrowing a lot of times, especially when it comes to women. In Kalevala, mostly women aren’t considered their own creatures, but are seen as someone’s mothers daughters, sisters. And if they’re young and attractive, they end up sold, given and used, and always have a tragic ending. The one female character with a power comparable to the male characters’ is of course evil. Sinisalo’s book pulls no stops either with these parallels, which might be seen as an odd choice for a female writer. (Mind you, the men don’t come out unscathed through the story either, because it’s “nobody’s happy” kind of book, but they do fare better than women as a group.)

However, the very ending is where it differs. In Kalevala, in the last poem a boy child is born through apparently immaculate conception, and he becomes the king of Karelia and a new time begins with Väinämöinen leaving. In Sankarit, the child in question is a girl. She appears already in the prologue, the daughter of Rex (who is the reimagined Väinämöinen and hence the main character). We see her grow in the background, always in the periphery, but never really part of the story until the end. She doesn’t come through unscathed either, but she isn’t broken and destroyed, she becomes more. Different and stronger than she was.

At the end of the book she leaves her father with a letter, where she notes that his world is one where women are dependent of men, defined by their relationship to men, and the world that’s opening now for her isn’t like that. She has left it behind for a new time that is beginning, one where she’s only defined by her own choices and deeds. A world where she matters, just as much as anyone. A world where she is the center of her own story, instead of an element of someone else’s.

Even with the start of a new time, Kalevala’s ending doesn’t promise change, not really. It’s still the world of men. With this little change, this acknowledgement that the world described in the book is wrong and fucked up, the ending of Sankarit does.