Wild Song (14 page)

I would like to warmly thank Creative Scotland for giving me a one-month writing residency on the island of Suomenlinna in Finland. Part of my task there was to foster literary links between Scotland and Finland in children’s literature. Finland boasts many vibrant
bookshops
and children’s publishers and is an inspiration in the world of children’s publishing. Thanks also to H.I.A.P. (Helsinki International Artist’s Project) for hosting and supporting me during this residency, and to the many wonderful Fins I met. Thanks also to Finnish storyteller Yvonne Karsten for reading several manuscripts of
Wild Song
, likewise to Rupert Jenkins. You are two very bright stars!

Finally thanks to my agent Kathryn Ross, and to the wonderful people at Piccadilly Press.

After reading
Wild Song
you might be interested to find out more about Finland and some of the themes touched upon in this book. The following is a brief introduction to Finland, the Sami people (Laplanders) and also to the Finnish national epic,
The Kalevala
.

Finland is the most eastern of the Scandinavian countries with Russia to its east, Norway to the north and Sweden to the west. It sits on the Baltic Sea, with the Bothnian Sea to the west. For a long time Finland was under Russian and also at times Swedish occupation, only gaining independence in 1917. Finland has a population of 5.2 million and the southern city of Helsinki is the capital. It is a large country with thousands of lakes and islands and the most forested land in Europe. Finland is known for the midnight sun in the summer and Northern Lights in the winter, for
Santa Claus, reindeer, rye bread, saunas, berries, ice and snow. Its national animal is the bear.

The Sami are the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. The area they live in, and have inhabited for over 2,000 years, stretches from the Kola area in the north of Russia and west across the north of Finland (through the region known as Lapland), and on through northern Norway and Sweden. In Finland there are different groups of Sami, numbering around 9,000 people. Amongst them there are the mountain Sami, the sea Sami, the lake Sami, the reindeer Sami and the river Sami. They speak several different languages. The traditional dress of the Sami – often brightly coloured and trimmed with fur, beading and embroidery – shows where a Sami person comes from. Traditionally the Sami people pursued a variety of livelihoods, such as coastal fishing, fur trapping and sheep and reindeer herding. But the traditional way of life for the Sami people is threatened by competing uses of land. If the government cuts down forests in a reindeer-herding area this destroys the reindeers' habitat. Generations of Sami children were taken away to boarding schools in the past, and the effects of this are still being felt. Today the Sami way of life experiences cultural and environmental threats, including oil exploration in the Arctic, mining, dam building, logging, climate change, military bombing ranges, tourism and commercial
development. In Finland today the Sami inhabitants have a right to maintain and develop their language and culture as well as their traditional way of life.

An important aspect of this tradition is the
yoik
– or wild song. The yoik can be deeply personal or spiritual in nature and is often dedicated to a human being, a landscape or an animal – for its wellbeing. Each yoik, sung by a yoik-singer, is meant to reflect a person, animal or place and comes out of the shamanic spirituality that sees nature as sacred and believes that human beings become unwell when we are out of harmony with nature. Shamanic practices, such as singing the yoik, aim to honour and restore that balance between human and nature. The yoik is one of the longest living music traditions in Europe.

Throughout history people have shared stories. Sometimes these stories remind us of our origins. Some tell of Gods and Goddesses. The actual creators of the Finnish Epic,
The Kalevala
– the ‘rune' singers, both men and women, lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago. Their names are long forgotten but in this great epic poem their stories live on. In the 1800s folklorist and collector Elias Lonrot made many visits to Eastern Finland to listen to the stories told by the old Finnish poem-singers. These people chanted their stories of creation in a particular rhythm (trochee) and some chanted their stories while
playing a kantele (a harp). Elias wrote hundreds of these poems and stories down and in time put them together and created a national creation epic for Finland called ‘The Kalevala.' The stories in
The Kalevala
here are set in Finland's prehistoric Iron Age. They could also be said to be set in a mythic dream place of the imagination.

Some of the main characters from
The Kalevala
are:

Vainamoinen
– steady, old, the father everlasting.

Ilmarinen
– the master craftsman, the smith who hammers the magical sampo – a Finnish Holy Grail.

Aino
– the young maiden pursued by Vainamoinen.

Louhi
– mistress of Pohjola, the gap-toothed hag of the northlands.

The characters and stories in
The Kalevala
inspired many works of art, and the book has been translated into forty-five languages. This dream-like and wondrous fantasy epic ends with the words:

Janis Mackay

Edinburgh, Scotland

December 2014