Johanna Sinisalo is a Finnish writer of literary science fiction. Her debut novel Troll — A Love Story (published as Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi in 2000) has just been republished in English. The ERB’s Sander Pleij texted with her about Finnish Weird
SP
Is your book an incantation to keep the belief in trolls alive?
JS
Perhaps it is a bit like that, too, but one could also think that I have wanted to highlight the fact how little we still know about the nature that surrounds us, even so that we may wipe out life forms which we have not even discovered yet.
SP
It’s published in English for the 3th time, I think. It won you a literary prize in 2000, and you’re called a fantasy and SF-writer. Is that confusion, or good marketing to different audiences 😉 ?
JS
I actually did start my literary career as a SF/F short story writer and had already some name in that trade when my first novel got published. Perhaps that explains a little why I’m sometimes pigeonholed into those genres. I prefer being classified as a literary fiction writer, or, if some genre has to be mentioned, perhaps an author of magic realism or speculative fiction. Or Finnish Weird, a term I have myself coined 😀. People tend to think SF is about spaceships and laser guns, and Fantasy is telling tales of pseudo Middle Ages with magic rings. Because I’m writing nothing like that, it’s sometimes safest to assume I’m a mainstream author 😉.
SP
Please define Finnish Weird (😍) and name other books that are Finish Weird-ian?) and name other.
JS
Because there are quite many fine Finnish writers who are operating at the borderland of genres but having firm roots in realism, there was a need to have a marketing term for us: this is not sci-fi, not fantasy but realism with a twist. If you happen to bump into something that’s written by Emmi Itäranta, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen or Leena Krohn, you are right there.
SP
How do I distinguish Finish Weird from magical realism?
JS
Finnish Weird is not actually a genre, it is more of an umbrella term. Just like Nordic Noir, which embraces all Scandinavian crime fiction, Finnish Weird is practically non-realistic prose from Finland.
SP
Which Finnish series or movie that I can stream would you recommend now?
JS
I think that one of the best Finnish movies of all time is Rare Exports (2010), by Jalmari Helander. All Finns know that Santa Claus lives in Finland, but no one had known his real quality until this movie was released😱!, and I actually coined the term Finnish Weird after seeing this one! Perhaps I should mention the scifi comedy Iron Sky, for which I wrote the original story.
