Shylock in Finland: the Jew in the literature of Finland 1900–1970

Författare

• Karmela Bélinki Helsingfors

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30752/nj.69565

Nyckelord:

Finnish literature, Authors, Finnish, Fiction, Antisemitism in literature, Jews -- Finland, Stereotype (Psychology)

Abstract

Political and other ideological fluctuations have, generally speaking, had a peripheral impact on the literary portrayal of the Jews. The traces of Shakespeare’s Shylock, the archetypal literary image, can be followed both backward and forward in time, from the New Testament to contemporary fiction. The introvert Finnish culture has had other interesting implications&&There is practically no specific Finnish-Jewish literary archetype. The very few examples that Finnish literature offers, both in the positive and in the negative sense, have no particular national characteristics or individual personality, which would deviate from the general picture. They follow foreign modes, such as Isak, the Jew, in Sam Sihvo’s musical burlesque Jääkärin morsian (The Wife of the Jäger). Other Finnish authors in this category are Maila Talvio, who sympathized with Germany, and Olavi Paavolainen, who was a member of the Finnish modernist group Tulenkantajat (“torch carriers”). The virtually only lengthier descriptions of Finnish Jews can be traced to a pair of opposites, Hilja Haahti and Ester Ståhlberg. Haahti was a popular religious writer, who saw the conversion of the Jews to Christianity as the only solution to the Jewish problem. Ester Ståhlberg’s solution was a realisation of a Zionist homeland in Palestine. Post-WW II literature in Finland lacks a profound reaction against Hitler’s destruction of the Jews in Europe, but there are especially two writers, both Finland-Swedish women, to whom the Jews became an important theme, Mirjam Tuominen and Marianne Alopaeus.