Review: Finnish Nightmares, by Karoliina Korhonen

[Russ Allbery]

Finnish Nightmares
by Karoliina Korhonen

Publisher: Atena
Copyright: 2018
ISBN:      952-300-222-8
Format:    Hardcover
Pages:     87

  Meet Matti. A typical Finn who appreciates peace, quiet and personal
  space. If you feel somewhat uncomfortable when reading this book,
  you just might have a tiny Matti living in you.

Finnish Nightmares is a hardcover collection of mostly single-panel
strips from the on-line comic of the same name. They're simple line
drawings, mostly in black and white with small, strategic use of color,
portraying various situations that make Matti, a stereotypical Finn,
uncomfortable (and a few at the end, in the Finnish Daydreams chapter,
that make him happy).

This is partly about Finnish culture and a lot about introversion and
shyness. Many of these cartoons will be ruefully familiar to those of
us who are made uncomfortable by social interactions with strangers. A
few made me curious enough about Finnish customs to do a bit of Google
research, particularly the heippalappu, an anonymous note left in an
apartment hallway for the neighbors, which has no name in English and
is generally decried as "passive aggressive." A Google search for
heippalappu returns tons of photographs of notes, all in Finnish that I
can't read, and now I'm fascinated.

I have seen US jokes and cartoons along similar lines, but in US
culture I think it's more common for those to either poke some fun at
the introverted person or to represent introverted people trying to
navigate a world that's not designed for them. Finnish Nightmares
instead presents the introverted position as the social norm that other
people may be violating, which is a subtle but important shift. Matti's
feelings are supported and shown as typical, and the things that make
him uncomfortable are things that maybe the other person should not be
doing. Speaking as someone who likes lots of quiet and personal space,
it makes Finland seem very attractive.

I am very much the target audience for this book. "When you want to
leave your apartment but your neighbor is in the hallway" is something
I have actually done, but I've never heard anyone else mention.
Likewise "when the weather is horrible, but the only shelter is
occupied" (and I appreciated the long list of public transport
awkwardness). I think my favorite in the whole book is "when someone's
doing something 'wrong' and staring at them intensely won't make them
stop."

This was a gift from a friend (who, yes, is a Finn), so I read the
English version published in Finland. That edition doesn't appear to be
available at the moment from US Amazon, but it looks like it will be
coming out in both hardcover and Kindle in August of 2019 from Ten
Speed Press. It's a thin and short collection, just an hour or two of
browsing at most, but it put a smile on my face and was an excellent
gift.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-05-27

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/952-300-222-8.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>