By Juri Nummelin
[Editor's note: Juri Nummelin, 32, is a Finnish writer and journalist specializing in old pulp fiction, both in literature and film. He has written two reference books on American pulp fiction in Finnish. Pulpografia (2000) deals with the crime and mystery fields, and the recent Six Guns (2004) covers 110 American Western writers. Nummelin has also written two books on rare first names with his wife. He has one daughter of five and will soon have a boy.]
Many western novels and short stories have been written in Finnish by Finnish writers. This may seem an anomaly, but some critics have said that western myth is clearly a European myth. Many European writers were the first ones to write fiction about the American West -- namely Mayne Reid in Britain and Karl May in Germany.
The first Finnish westerns were probably reportage about the Indian wars by correspondent Konni Zilliacus in the late 19th century. The book Intiaanisota (�The Indian Wars�) was published in 1899. Zilliacus wrote also about Finnish emigrants and their lives, but none of his output was fictional.
The first Finnish fictional western was probably the children�s writer Arvid Lydecken�s book Seikkailujen kirja: intiaaneja ja merirosvoja (1916, �The Book of Adventures: Indians and Pirates�). There may have been some earlier stories for children.
The late 1920s and early �30s saw a rise in the amount of Finnish western fiction. One of the most important practitioners in the genre was undoubtdely Simo Penttil�, who later wrote a long and widely read series about Punavy� (Red Belt) that was mainly directed towards young audience. It ran from 1958 to the early 1970s. The Punavy� series is still highly regarded among Finnish aficionados of the genre.
Punavy� is an adventurer who had been a spy during the Civil War for the Confederates and who shares his life with the Finnish-born duo of Pete Menken and Dick Hill. The series is a classic of male-bonding. In some of the books Punavy� is in Tombstone and meets all the household names, from Wyatt Earp to Curly Bill Brocius.
Penttil�s first forays into the western genre were, however, short stories about general-lieutenant T.J.A. Heikkil�, who adventured in Mexico and led a happy life with beautiful donnas. Heikkil� is a typical example of a Finnish western, as it has a Finnish protagonist adventuring in the West, even though it�s set mainly Mexico.
Penttil�s first �real� western was a novel for young boys, called Hyppiv� Huuli (1935). The title translates as �The Jumping Lip,� which refers to the lead Indian in the book. The tone is mildly parodic of the western genre, but the adventure is fresh and fast. Hyppiv� Huuli adventured later in another novel titled Vasenk�tinen kummitus (�The Left-Handed Ghost,� 1936).
Several other western writers in Finland came forward during the 1940s and �50s. One of the most interesting was Erik Dahlberg, who came from the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. He worked as a journalist and a cowboy in the United States and wrote a memoir based on his years there. Later he wrote western novels based on his memoirs; these included the Olli Teerim�ki series, in which a young Finnish boy has many adventures in the Wild West. As Flynn Everett, Dahlberg wrote a series about Oregon Mike in the late 1940s.
Olavi Linnus, who worked mainly in the movie industry, wrote many boys� adventures in the Forties and Fifties. These include his series, as by Gil Dennic, that features a hero called Buxom Bill. The novels about Buxom Bill were published from 1945 to 1946, and they are still fondly remembered. Linnus wrote also about Kid Rover, as by Rex Davis.
The prominent Finnish pulp writer Martti L�fberg, who is best known under his alias, Marton Taiga, wrote many books about South America and its fictional state called La Perla, but his only western novel is called A Flower of Arizona (1945). It was published as by L. Martin, and it was claimed to have been translated. It�s a science fictional story about a lost land in the Arizona deserts.
Tapio Vilpponen, who had earlier worked as a set designer in the Finnish movie industry, turned to writing in the late Fifties. He used the name of Johnston McCulley�s Zorro as a hero in a long series of digest-sized paperbacks, which he published under the pseudo-Mexican pseudonym Juan Batiste Montauban. Vilpponen�s Zorro is actually Don Jaime del Castelrey, who with his sidekick Aurelio Xavier joins battles and fights villains under the Mexican sun. The series consists of more than 200 short novels.
In the Seventies began another success story for Finnish western literature. The phenomenal FinnWest began in 1976 as a digest-sized leaflet containing some 70-80 pages. The stories told about Juho Helap��, who adventured in the Wild West and used his Finnish knife in the harsh places. The stories were published anonymously, but most of the 100 early ones were written by the late pulp author, Juhani Salomaa.
The series continued well into the Nineties, and some of its authors include Tapani Bagge, who is now a renowned author of young adult and hardboiled crime novels; Kari Nenonen, who also wrote almost a hundred romance paperbacks under many aliases; Pentti Pes�, who is better known as a theater director; and Harri Raitis, who has also become known for his religious and historical novels.
The above-mentioned Kari Nenonen dabbled in the western genre also in his paperback series about Valkoinen Navajo (White Navajo) and Hulkkonen. The latter was a Finnish equivalent of the British Piccadilly Cowboys books: tough, relentless and violent. Hulkkonen was, once again, a Finnish hero running amok in the Old West. The Hulkkonen series was published through 1983 to 1992. Nenonen also wrote two books in the series called Luigi Littin saluuna (The Saloon of Luigi Litti), which was almost soft-core porn.
The early Nineties saw the decline of the Finnish western genre. The paperback industry went down at the same time and there was no market for new writers. There has been some interest among young authors -- especially horror writer Sami Myllym�ki -- to use the conventions of the genre, but the Finnish publishers have been reluctant to start the genre going again.
Copyright (c) 2004 Juri Nummelin
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Juri has another article on The Pulp Rack, "The American Westerns in Finland: From Pulps to Paperbacks." You can read it by clicking here.
Posted by ds at July 23, 2004 10:54 AM
