Release date is 2026-04-07

Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

Salon soittaja by Larin-Kyösti is a collection of narrative poems and ballads written in the early 20th century. Drawing on Finnish folklore, nature mysticism, and village life, the book evokes myths, legends, and moral tales set amid forests, rapids, bogs, and fells. Its likely topic is the tug-of-war between human passion and fate, where nature spirits, Christian grace, and pagan forces shape love, guilt, and retribution.

The poems range from visionary and tragic to wryly comic. A desk-sprite tangles a poet’s lines; a maiden is bewitched by a well-spirit; a Midsummer birch becomes an emblem of jealousy and exile; a giant abducts a girl and lovers drown into legend; Jesus lifts Mary Magdalene from a bog into forgiveness; a Sámi hunter, Laurukainen, exacts shrewd revenge; a fatal seductress meets marshy doom; and at the Imatra rapids a tyrant rides to prophesied ruin as the waters sing of sacrifice and, at last, freedom. Elsewhere a shaman and a pastor clash over life and death, a husband finds his young wife dead at the loom, and the hermit Korpi-Joose burns out in the forest’s fierce stare. Rain-sisters bind heaven to earth in a cosmic hymn; the giant Staalo falls to cunning lovers; and rough village farces—an unruly wife, a castrator’s prank, a soot-black trickster unmasking ecstatic revivalists—puncture hypocrisy. Throughout, desire turns to curse, guilt seeks grace, and the Finnish landscape judges, shelters, and remembers. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Viipuri: Viipurin Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, 1919