Introduction
Written by Sini Tiainen Ala-Malmi Comprehensive School Helsinki, Finland
Literature has been inextricably linked in Finland with the rise of a cultural and economic national identity. Literature has long been held in great esteem in Finland; it is thought to express something important that is common to the whole nation. Literature is the country's interpreter; literature is the nation's mirror. Without literature the nation is like a blind man, like a deaf mute (Eino Leino, poet/1910).
Linguistically, the vital importance of Finnish literature is obvious: it has provided the foundation for the cultivation and development of a small language which differs entirely from its neighbors, raising it to a level of equality with other languages, recording the past and pointing the way to the future.
The Finnish section, listed under the topic of Scandinavia, is dealing with three novelists who all happen to be males. However, they are men who have described the destinies and lives of the people in Finland, and how it does feel to be a human being in the big socio-economic progress and development of this century.
(Kai Lai- tinen: Literature of Finland-An Outline /Otava /Finland /1994)
Three authors that represent Scandinavian Literature are Vaino Linna, Kalle Paatalo, and Mika Waltari.
Click on a book cover below for more information about these authors.
