In search of a language and an identity

An injured young man wakes up on a German hospital ship in 1943. His mind is blank: he cannot remember who he is, or even how to speak, and has no identity documents with him. Petri Friari, the doctor on duty, notices a label in the man’s jacket, with a Finnish name, Sampo. Friari, who is Finnish by birth, but a naturalized German citizen, helps narrate the story. Yearning for a homeland lost long ago, Friari assumes the injured man must also be Finnish and sets out to help him to rediscover the language and organizes for him to move to Finland. And so, the newly-named Sampo embarks on the painstaking process of both learning the Finnish language and (re)constructing a Finnish identity for himself.

Diego Marani’s novel New Finnish Grammar (translated by Judith Landry from the Italian original, Nuova Grammatica Finlandese) has won multiple awards and has already been reviewed many times. The (English language) reviews discuss Marani’s fascination with language in both this and his other novels, mentioning his professional background as a translator and Europanto, the “mock” language he created. The novel has even been reviewed in the Australian Journal of Linguistics (Libert, 2014).

As the glowing reviews indicate, while the novel indeed discusses language, its structure, and acquisition, it does so in a poetic and engaging way. However, even more striking for me were the links between language learning and migrant identity. This really is a story about language on the move. As I read about Sampo’s emotionally charged and difficult journey to rediscover his lost language and identity, co-narrated by Friari, who reflects on his own experiences as a migrant, I began to consider it a metaphor for the migrant’s journey of building an identity and sense of belonging in a new place, all while adopting a new language. Sampo’s struggles learning Finnish and trying to find his place in a country he is supposed to come from but of which he has no memory, and his striving for authenticity as a speaker (and thus a member of the society) are beautifully portrayed throughout the novel:

My words betrayed my outsider status: my very voice gave off sounds that did not ring true, like a cracked glass. The language did not flow with ease; I had to construct each word carefully before pronouncing it, laboriously seeking the right amount of breath, the correct pressure of the lips, sounding out my palate with my tongue in search of the only point which could produce the sound I was looking for and then turning it into the right case before actually delivering it up…. It seemed impossible to me that everything should be played out within those fractions of a millimetre, that a segment of muscle, if too tense, should alter a meaning completely, that one puff of air too much, or too little, should be enough to cause me to be mistaken for an Estonian or Ingrian, or indeed break off the thread of meaning entirely.

Reading the novel also encouraged me to learn a little bit about Finnish history and led me to consider Sampo’s individual journey as representing, or at least being similar to, Finland’s recent history. I realized that the novel involves multiple references to language (and identity) on various levels.

In Finland, Sampo’s language acquisition continues with the assistance of his new friend, Koskela, a somewhat eccentric priest. Koskela helps him learn the language by telling him about Finnish history, sharing his thoughts on geopolitics, and through the Kalevala, a collection of epic poems from Finnish mythology and folklore, which was compiled in the 19^th century after being passed down orally through songs.

The Kalevala constituted an important tool for developing and protecting a Finnish national identity against Swedish and Russian influence, as Karner (1991) argues. It was published at a time when Finland was emerging from 600 years of Swedish rule, which ended with (semi-autonomous) integration into the Russian Empire. Despite such a long period under Swedish rule, the Finnish language had largely survived, with only around 14% of the population speaking Swedish. However, Karner argues, Finland was lacking a clear national identity. The Kalevala came to form a pivotal role in the construction of this national identity in what was otherwise a void of “we are neither Swedish nor Russian”. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot, who collected the folklore from rural Finns throughout the country, and published it in 1835, the epic soon became famous throughout Europe, and regarded as constituting complete and “authentic representations of Finnish history: heroes, customs, and religion” (p. 159).

Therefore, the Kalevala forms an important parallel or analogy in New Finnish Grammar: much like Sampo who has no memory of his past, the Finnish nation relies on reconstructing a set of Finnish folktales to reclaim and reconstruct a past Finnish identity, bypassing the preceding 600 years of Swedish rule. In fact, even Sampo’s name itself comes from the Kalevala. As the priest explains to him, the Sampo was a magical and much-coveted object throughout the mythical stories. However, once again resembling Sampo’s own story, nobody is quite sure what it was.

In both cases, the Finnish language is the crucial conduit to reconstructing identity and a sense of history. Language and emerging identity are interconnected and interdependent in both the individual and national. In Finland’s case, in the 1800s, elite Finns spoke Swedish, and Finnish had been maintained through the peasant communities. The Kalevala’s fame and acceptance as an authentic artefact of Finnish history and culture created a renewed value in the Finnish language. Therefore, acquiring and using Finnish was an essential part of national identity formation (Karner, 1991, 159-160).

Likewise, for Sampo, a crucial step in recreating himself, fulfilling his yearning to uncover his past and thus learn who he is, is to learn Finnish. This is a monumental undertaking that he documents throughout the journals that form the medium through which the novel is presented. As he sits watching the priest Koskela discuss the Kalevala in a Finnish that is much too fast and complex for him to understand, he reflects:

I had grasped the bare bones of it even if much escaped me, above all those strange words, those fantastical objects whose shape the pastor outlined vainly with his hands: I had never seen anything like them. But I had been captivated by seeing the sounds forming themselves in his mouth, to be turned into words, then melt away. When I could not understand them, I listened to them like music, a fascinated witness to their fleeting life. How many words needed to bring a man to life!

Language, and the Finnish language in particular, is therefore a fundamental part of Sampo’s struggle to rediscover himself. Set against the bleak backdrop of World War II Finland, it is far from an easy exercise, and in the end – without revealing too much – not a very successful one either.

Diego Marani’s acclaimed novel is therefore much more than an essay on language learning. He seamlessly threads together different languages and identities as they operate on different scales: the individual migrant language-learning struggle, with that of national discourse creation about language and identity against the background of sweeping geopolitical change. While the novel is full of struggle, these engaging themes and the poignant, near-poetic way the story is told (even in its English translation) make reading New Finnish Grammar both a pleasurable and fulfilling undertaking.

References 

Karner, T. (1991). Ideology and nationalism: the Finnish move to independence, 1809-1918. Ethnic & Racial Studies. Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 152-169.
Marani, D. (2011). New Finnish Grammar (trans. J. Landry). Sawtry, UK: Dedalus Books.
Libert, A.R. (2014). Book review of New Finnish Grammar. Australian Review of Linguistics. Vol. 34. No. 2, pp. 292-293.

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