I just closed the book Myrskyluodon Maija, all 750 pages! What a
book! What a life! Is starts when Maija is 14 and living at home on a
well-populated island in the Åland archipelago and a young man comes to ask her father for her hand in marriage. She is unsure and the boy, 10 years older, dreams of moving to an uninhabited outer island and becoming a fisherman. It becomes a true love story and the story of her life, full of tragedy, love and all the ups and downs that fill life. It ends when she is an old lady and all her children and grandchildren have left.
At the end of her life she teaches herself how to read handwriting, not only printed text, so she can understand her daughter's letters from America and write letters back.
It is a multilayered book with multilayered characters. A TV series was made of the book, and recently a movie, but they don't come
near to the story found in the book. Reading it is one of those life "events" that leave you with much to ponder for a long time. I feel like I have been a fly on the wall throughout a lifetime that I could have never experienced.
It left me pondering about the meaning of a "lifetime" and what is a
successful life. What is interesting is that many Finnish women have
never read the book. When asked most responded, "I saw the TV series and loved it", just like I have said earlier. During the pandemic they rebroadcast the TV series and I watched it twice, then I had to see the movie when it came out. That was my motivation to read it, even though it is available only in Swedish and Finnish.
The book is amazing well written. I feel like I have lived through all of it, a child drowning, a war, my home burning to the ground in the middle of winter, losing my husband walking home on the ice and now know how they made shoes, candles, clothes, harpooned seals, trolled fish, .... and oh, the animals. I never understood the relationship that people had with their domesticated animals and their significance with survival. It's so sad
that people, especially young people, read fewer books these days. What
a loss!