by K. A. Laity
Trolls have long had a firm grip on the Finnish imagination. While written records do not reach far enough back to find its roots, no doubt the traditions of folk religion play a role. As Matti Salo has argued, it "recognized no sharp distinction between the natural and supernatural" and the world was seen to be peopled with a variety of gods, spirits and creatures. Things may not have changed as much in the twenty-first century as you might be tempted to believe. As Johanna Sinisalo writes in her introduction to the Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, "To this day, Finns live in a very sparsely populated country, surrounded by lakes and large expanses of forest. Every Finn appears to have very close, personal ties to nature. In Finland culture and nature do not struggle against one another, they are not mutually exclusive, they merge and influence one another" (9). That unique creature, the troll, seems to spring from this melding of nature and culture, realism and fantasy. Perhaps the greatest flowering of troll love erupted in the mid-twentieth century, embracing Tove Jansson's Moomin family and their often melancholy young son Moomintroll. While the robust attendance at Moominworld in Naantali would seem to suggest that everyone loves trolls, the realities of that affection have remained entirely fantastical until recently.
Johanna Sinisalo's 2000 novel, Troll: A
Love Story, tells a complicated story of interspecies love. Due to my very poor Finnish skills, I am relying on the 2003 English translation by Herbert Lomas.
The American translation of the book meets the issue head on by its choice of title. While the British edition approximated the original Finnish title (Ennen Paivanlaskua Ei Voi) with the title Not Before Sundown -a reference to a popular song about a fairy and troll in love -the American publisher chose a title less resonant with a Finnish audience, but more indicative of the content. At the heart of the story is the relationship between a young photographer, Angel, and the troll he rescues from a drunken group of rampaging oafs. What Angel first mistakes for "some young person" turns out to be a creature of myth and folklore. As he describes the scene later, it is rife with an electric pulse of tension:
I creep closer and reach out my hand. The figure clearly hears me coming. He weakly raises his head from the crouching position for a moment, opens his eyes, and I can finally make out what's there. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I know straight away that I want it. (6)
What initially seems to be an acquisitive impulse gradually peels away the layers of curiosity and surprise to reveal a more physical attraction Angel is a comfortably out gay man, but his growing desire for the young creature leads to a closeting of his desire, first from himself but eventually from the group of men who are, have been or desire to be Angel's romantic partners. In a twist
