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cimoreneI asked my friend Ella if her mom or aunt, both murder mystery fans, knew of any historical Finnish mystery writers, but she said they both thought there aren't any. (There are murder mysteries written and set in the 1950s from Sweden, such as Maria Lang's series with the heroine Puck, filmed in 2013 and picked up by international Netflix under the title "Crimes of Passion".)
So I was quite surprised to find Kulkeva Varjo (The Moving Shadow), a murder mystery set in 1900 Finland, on the public tv streaming site!
But it turns out that it's actually a dramatization of Vandrande Skugga, by well-known Finland Swedish literary light Bo Carpelan, a hereditary baron known for poetry and for fiction for both children and adults. This novel just happens to concern a murder in a small coastal town (it's set in Nådendal/Naantali, a historical spa resort quite close to us here in Turku/Åbo and the site of the Finnish president's summer estate, Kultaranta, as well as Moomin World). He's not a mystery writer, and wrote in Swedish besides (Nådendal, like much of the Åbo region, was majority Swedish-speaking at the time). It's also filmed in Swedish (1980s), so watching it was completely useless from a Finnish practice perspective, but it was still interesting (the setting, not the mystery. The mystery was eh, which is fair enough because the book isn't really a murder mystery, just a literary novel about the aftermath of a murder).
For instance, here's the volunteer fire department on their way to put out a fire: a horse and cart and a handful of men and flock of barefoot boys on foot! (The production only appeared to have one horse, so maybe the actual 1900 Nådendal volunteer fire department would have had a multiple-horse carriage or two but they couldn't afford it.)
Next is the town's single policeman in his uniform. HIS HAT!
Here's a lady of quality dressed in the de rigeur all-white cotton and linen. Given that summers are getting warmer in Finland, I would guess that she's wearing those gloves because it's cold.
The policeman again, talking over the case in a picturesque gazebo with his friend.
And last we have the policeman's friend Nils Nilsson, who had the best name of the bunch.
So I was quite surprised to find Kulkeva Varjo (The Moving Shadow), a murder mystery set in 1900 Finland, on the public tv streaming site!
But it turns out that it's actually a dramatization of Vandrande Skugga, by well-known Finland Swedish literary light Bo Carpelan, a hereditary baron known for poetry and for fiction for both children and adults. This novel just happens to concern a murder in a small coastal town (it's set in Nådendal/Naantali, a historical spa resort quite close to us here in Turku/Åbo and the site of the Finnish president's summer estate, Kultaranta, as well as Moomin World). He's not a mystery writer, and wrote in Swedish besides (Nådendal, like much of the Åbo region, was majority Swedish-speaking at the time). It's also filmed in Swedish (1980s), so watching it was completely useless from a Finnish practice perspective, but it was still interesting (the setting, not the mystery. The mystery was eh, which is fair enough because the book isn't really a murder mystery, just a literary novel about the aftermath of a murder).
For instance, here's the volunteer fire department on their way to put out a fire: a horse and cart and a handful of men and flock of barefoot boys on foot! (The production only appeared to have one horse, so maybe the actual 1900 Nådendal volunteer fire department would have had a multiple-horse carriage or two but they couldn't afford it.)
Next is the town's single policeman in his uniform. HIS HAT!
Here's a lady of quality dressed in the de rigeur all-white cotton and linen. Given that summers are getting warmer in Finland, I would guess that she's wearing those gloves because it's cold.
The policeman again, talking over the case in a picturesque gazebo with his friend.
And last we have the policeman's friend Nils Nilsson, who had the best name of the bunch.
