Stories from music

Silja Sillanpää 2016: Tenho ja Ryske
illustrated by Kati Vuorento

Tenho is a seven year old boy who wanted an instrument for his birthday. He gets a mp3 player (soitin in Finnish means a player or an instrument). Luckily Ryske an elk comes along and takes him to nature to see the instruments people used to make: The shepards clarinet, Liru
Jouhikko
Kannel
Pitkähuilu (from 1 minute on)
Bag pipe
Munniharpu
luikku (at 1:43 minute)




Most of the instruments were used to scare bears and wolves when shepherding in the woods.  This book had new information to me: I did not know that we had a kind of bag pipe already in the Middle Ages.  What I do not understand is, why all the old songs are so sad.  The Swedish traditional songs are much more up beat and cheerful. I wonder, why that cheerfulness never landed on our side of the Gulf of Bothnia? Is it the Finnish stubborness, since the rulers are so happy, we will never be just to spite them?

Kantele was made of Pike's jaw bone according to Kalevala

If you yet haven't heard enough sad Finnish music, here is one more Alhaal' on Allin mieli.

Finnish melancholy at best, even the
long tailed duck (alli in Finish) is felling low.

How the elk got its antlers

Sari Kanala: Kuinka hirvi sai sarvensa
photos by Hannu Ahonen
water color illustrations Iida Pihl

Story about elk, bear and a fairy.

Elk and bear are good friends. One day a fairy comes with large antlers and offers them to the elk and the bear. The bear wants them. He is the king of the forest after all. The elk doesn't mind.

Summer passes along and the antlers give bear a lot of trouble: he cannot eat berries or catch fish with them. He is almost starving and he calls for the elk and offers the antlers to him. The fairy takes the antlers off the bear and gives them to the elk.

The lesson of this story is that you don't have to have everything. Sometimes you are better off without gigantic antlers. Let the elk have them.

The book is illustrated by photographs and watercolors. The photos have be "photoshopped" so that the elk, the girl (ie the fairy) and the bear can all be peacefully side by side. This book also has the text both in Finnish and in English.