This article was written by Toma Kavonius
Reading Arto Paasilinna's The Year of the Hare once again made me yearn for a proper Finnish winter. I have always relished the Helsinki summer with its constant daylight and thawing temperatures. Therefore when Vatanen, the protagonist in The Year of the Hare, begins his journey through the wilderness during Finnish summer, I cannot help but wish that summer would come quicker. But when winter arrived and Vatanen was living in a small cottage and skiing on frozen lakes and swamps amidst the forest of Lapland, I realized that I did not hope for early summer only because of the luxurious warmth and sunshine, but in actuality, because past winters in Finland have been so bleak. I open my curtains routinely to darkness as the sun does not rise before ten in the morning. The greyness and rain dull my memories of childhood winters, skiing with my mother in the dense forest on top of gleaming white snow, juxtaposing the bleariness. Instead, just recently I walked past the soccer field where my sisters and I used to ice skate each winter; today it forms a large rectangular pile of wet sand. Winter has changed quickly, indeed.
The Year of the Hare is a story of man's, Vatanen's, yearning back to nature and about his struggles of trying to free himself from the chains of modern day civilization. Written more than 30 years ago the book is now more topical than ever. Nevertheless I doubt if the character of Vatanen would have heard nature's call so strongly if he had to doze on a wet hammock under dripping spruce braches--and without a campfire because the logs would be too wet. There may still be snow during the winters in Kittila Lapland where Paasilinna is from, but nowadays residing in Espoo, near Helsinki, I am sure the author has noticed the changes in climate. I cannot help but wonder how The Year of the Hare would have turned out had it been written today. Or if it would have been written at all.
In the novel Vatanen is exasperated with his life, and with the help of an injured hare, leaves it behind to find his inner peace. Taking some carpentry jobs away from the normal population, he ensures a modest income and receives blissful tranquility until other people or some obnoxious inhabitant of nature come to spoil it all and he must relocate. Vatanen's passion to return to the natural world takes him from south eastern Finland to Lapland, the most northern part of the country, and even into the Soviet area of Karelia, all in the company of his beloved hare. On his humorous quest Vatanen discovers some peculiar facts about the Finnish president's cranium, risks losing the hare to the clutches of a diplomat's wife, and even becomes involved in simulated war games, training for the Finnish army.
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