**** (4 stars)
“Wonderfully engaging!”
Having just come back from Finland on Monday, and suffering bad withdrawal symptoms, I was very glad to attend one of the Go Local events in the Festival and spend time with Finn Riikka Palonen and her British husband Richard Clarke in the lovely modern event space that’s part of St John’s Church.
I can confidently say that I know more Finnish than the average Brit, but nowhere near enough to comprehend a complicated story: I was very glad that Riikka, like so many Finns, has excellent English. She and Richard sang some hauntingly beautiful Finnish traditional songs, accompanied by a variety of instruments. I could recognise the odd word here and there, and clearly heard the wide open vast Finnish landscape with its dark and cold winters in which the stars blaze above the snowy wastes…
The Finnish version of the creation of the world was completely new to me, and fascinating. There were indeed stars and bears, and also bogs, and trees, and moss. There were maidens, some more buxom than others, and celestial suitors, some more appealing than others. There were cranes, cows, and a duck with a broken wing. There were characters from the great Finnish epic saga, the Kalevala – Väinämöinen, the maker of things, son of Water and Air, the giant Kalevala, and the blacksmith Ilmarinen.
Riikka was a wonderfully engaging storyteller, very down to earth and with a twinkle never far from her eye. From the start, she invited us into her world, telling us of her previous life as a farmer and her encounter one spring with the two cranes who every year would come to nest in the clearing in the forest in which she kept her cows.
She gave us much to think about: not least that our earth and we who live on it are all made out of stardust from a very distant star. Stories are told eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart: so where did the first story come from? It’s heartening to know that even great heroes like Väinämöinen have been known to call on their mothers when they don’t know what to do.
There was joy and sorrow and laughter and lamenting. And there were bears. Bear worship existed more than 30,000 years ago – and unlike other religions was not forced on anyone by missionaries or the sword. Respect for the dead bear was profound, and the haunting two-voice lament which ended the session was a fitting epitaph.
But that wasn’t it – we were treated to an epilogue. A story gifted to Riikka by someone in a remote village in Lapland as thanks for her storytelling visit gave us a wonderful new understanding of what happens to us when we die: a story I will treasure.
Thank you, Riikka and Richard. I hope our paths cross again soon.
Scottish International Storytelling Festival presents Of Stars, Bears and the Beginning of Time, St John’s Church, Edinburgh, RUN ENDED
