#8 - Grand tour
Old clichés die hard. In prehistoric times, the area that is now Finland was inhabited by a mosaic of tribes whose distinctive way of life persisted over the centuries. But modernity dulls peculiarities. So much so that the writer Ville-Juhani Sutinen whom we follow today is first skeptical of local identities, of any claims to personality traits explained by geographical belonging to specific Finnish territories. (Sutinen, 2022)
Suomen heimot tuntuvat kuuluvan menneeseen maailmaan.
The Finnish tribes seem to belong to a bygone world.
Let's once more match the Finnish to its translation piece by piece - just the way language machines do.
Does heimo seem mysteriously acquainted with home? Or maybe to the German das Heim? (Das Zuhause, the at-home, the home sweet home where you feel rooted and sheltered from a harsh universe.) Norwegian Bokmål hjem? Hjem is home, but also place of origin, just like the German die Heimat. (The latter connotes even further national belonging. Heimat is the motherland.) Or even the French hameau? (Not even a village, a remote thorp, a hamlet of a few souls.) All of those Indo-European siblings descend somehow from a reconstructed common Germanic ancestor *haimaz, itself from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóymos, village, home, household. And it is from the Baltic descendant of *ḱóymos that Proto-Finnic borrows, yielding heimo.
We have lost count of the instances of lexical theft we have come across so far. To recall a few, ritarit ja aateliset for the German Ritter und Adelige (knights and nobles) ; peili for the German der Spiegel (the mirror) ; kauppa means the deal, the trade (or the supermarket) and borrows via Old Norse from Proto-Germanic *kaupōną, to buy, to trade (German kaufen, to buy) ; malli is related to model as it borrows from Swedish mall, ultimately all from Latin modulus, measure. This age-old habit of borrowing gives full rein to intuition. The resemblances are not merely coincidental. Frontiers between peoples and languages alike, even the most foreign ones, are fluid and porous. Reading Finnish, we can thereby let our mind run wild, above all, without dismissing spontaneous associations on the grounds that Indo-European and Finnish languages would have absolutely zero in common. They did live in the neighborhood for ages, frontiers blurred, and hunches have a fair chance of holding true.
So, heimo is tribe. But it’s more than just the generic concept. It also denotes the Finnic tribes in particular, the cultural and historical subgroups of the Finnic people, autochthonous to specific regions across today’s Finland and beyond. All this makes our eyebrows rise. And somehow rings a bell too. Do you think of tribes of a specific nation, people or geography when hearing the generic tribe? French speakers do not mean their ancestors, the Gauls, nor are they embarking on a tour of France and its regional variations when they say tribu - or clan, or peuplade. The Estonian counterpart to heimo, hõim, is not - the dictionary confirms it - meant to connote the various indigenous tribes whose set union would make up the Estonian native inhabitants. It blankly means tribe, just as tribe means just tribe, tribu just tribu, and Volk just Volk. With that, heimo is reminiscent of the English Native. Natives with a capital N are not just natives from anywhere. This is the well-known shorthand for Native Americans. (Or Aborigines if the utterance comes from Australia or New Zealand.) Just as the French indigènes has a colonial feel. Not the settlers, but those whom the settlers had the burden of enlightening. And there is no smoke without fire. Linguists, psychologists and other entertainers in the human sciences aisle keep rehashing this age-old fact neighboring mythology, that the Inuits have more than fifty words for snow. Well, because in the frozen expanses they are native to, fields of vision are constantly saturated with snow, a retinal persistence that makes a plethora of infinitesimal variations apparent, each reclaiming its entry into the lexicon. Americans or the French: it is history that is burned into their retinas, so much so that their natives and indigènes quickly overflow the generic register. In short, words tell something about what’s important, what weighs on a people’s mind.
So, maybe, there is something about the historical Finnic folks, the differences that delineate them, the peculiarities of their respective temperaments, that is important to the Finnish people. Do they really belong to a bygone world?
It just seems so, at first and hasty sight. Tuntua means to seem, to feel like
Suomen heimot tuntuvat kuuluvan menneeseen maailmaan.
The Finnish tribes seem to belong to a bygone world.
and admits a rather singular construction. Indeed, kuuluvan is a present participle in the active voice and in the genitive case. Literally,
*The Finnish tribes seem belonging to …
One might argue it’s not such a big leap from the improper belonging to the expected to belong. Well, more than it seems. For belonging in our literal translation is not a grammatical typo by a foreign speaker who would have had troubles with the regimen of to seem. It is not a form of verb, unlike the gerund-participle required by the active verb in
They stopped fighting for bagatelles.
or expressing the progressive aspect in
The Finnish tribes are entertaining the scholar.
but a gerund-participle functioning as a predicative adjective. How do we know? Simply, the literal translation is ours, we chose it! We chose a participial adjective to render kuuluvan because kuuluvan is a Finnish participle, and Finnish participles, our reference grammar informs us, « are infinitive forms that inflect like nouns and function in roles typical of adjectives. » But how do we feel from looking at your
*The Finnish tribes seem belonging to …
that belonging here works as an adjective? English conflates the gerund and present participle forms, which makes their functional disambiguation, and therewith spotting the improperness of our literal translation, uneasy. Some recipes come to our aid. According to our best Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, « verbs such as seem, appear, look, remain take participial adjectives as complement, but not participial clauses ». So much that belonging in our literal translation is unambiguously adjective-like. But, our grammar goes on, participial adjectives cannot admit noun phrase complements (while some verbs can), and can be modified by very or too. (Huddleston, 2002, p.78-79) We can substitute by the gerund-participle of a transitive verb to better feel the improperness.
The Finnish tribes seem very entertaining. (very + participial adjective)
The Finnish tribes are entertaining the scholar. (verb form + noun phrase complement)
*The Finnish tribes are very entertaining the scholar. (improper very + verb form)
*The Finnish tribes seem entertaining the scholar. (improper participial adjective + noun phrase complement)
The very test is most eloquent here since to belong only admits prepositional complements anyway:
*The Finnish tribes seem very belonging to a bygone world.
tells now clearly how peculiar a construction our Finnish present participle kuuluvan triggers.
In a nutshell, attempts to literally render the Finnish sentence yield improper English, highlighting the syntactical mismatch between both grammars. The translation into literal (improper) English helps us, hopefully, to get a feel for « how Finnish syntax thinks ». (And this, of course, recalls the training technique we recently dwelt on: blind the English cues and slowly break down the Finnish sentence into broken, literal, if need be improper English that mimics Finnish syntax.)
We can grasp the same if we paraphrase. We fall back on something apparently proper by expanding into
It seems that the Finnish tribes are belonging to a bygone world.
Yet that is proper English if belonging reads as a verb form. What the Finnish construct is equivalent to actually reads as
*It seems that the Finnish tribes are (very) {belonging to a bygone world}.
Between brackets is what the Finnish tribes ‘are’ - just as they could be victorious or entertaining.
Even more peculiar a construction that said present participle is in the genitive case. An even closer literal translation would in fact be something like
*The Finnish tribes seem {of (them) belonging to a bygone world}.
where the personal pronoun, and functional subject of belonging, them, is implicit in the Finnish sentence, the subject of the main clause being tacitly understood to propagate to the participial construct.
Welcome to the world of clause equivalents.
You find them everywhere. They are odd constructions - where the Finnish logic often departs from the English one. And from the outset, we suspect them to be, in a way, the key to Finnish - the main harshness that, once tamed, switches on clarity.
A clause equivalent is, quite simply, a syntactic construction that is not a clause and serves as a substitute for a clause. A Finnish grammar refers to structure, construction - rakenne. And in the specific case at hand, to referatiivirakenne, referative structure - or with the wording of an English Grammar of Finnish, referative clause equivalent. (Korpela, 2026)
A referatiivirakenne, our Grammar tells us, is a « non-finite phrase formed by a participial-based form containing the bundle suffix -vAn, -neen, or -tUn » whose « alternative in the same context is a että-clause (that-clause). » -vAn interests us here, which is the suffix of the present participle. The referative form then denotes an action that is incomplete with respect to the main clause. (The other two suffixes form the past participle.) The subject of the referatiivirakenne in its active form - it has a passive one too - is in the genitive. The referatiivirakenne functions most of the time as an object - just like the että-clause it stands for. But sometimes, it works as a subject. And with the main verb to seem, we are dealing with such a corner case.
Much could be said about referative clause equivalents accompanying to seem - or to appear, to turn out, and other so-called evidential verbs of perception (our Finnish grammar’s jargon: evidentiaalinen vaikutelmaverbi, sic). First, the että-clause they invite does not work as a direct object. Just as in English: compare
The witness declared that the troublemakers are noisy.
It seems that the troublemakers are circling around each other.
The that-clause in the first sentence complements declared. Standalone, the subordinate would mean something completely different: the troublemakers are noisy misses the point that this is just what the witness declared. In the second sentence, in the contrary, it is that the troublemakers are circling around each other that seems. The that-clause is the logical subject of seems. If seem weren’t into impersonal constructions, we could set things straight:
*That the troublemakers are circling around each other seems.
So, the referatiivirakenne following seem and other perception verbs function as a subject. There is more. The clause equivalent’s subject is then not in the genitive, but in the nominative. That really doesn’t seem far-fetched. When the että-clause functions as an object, as it would in a translation of
The witness declared that the troublemakers are noisy.
the main clause already has its own nominative subject. Since Finnish does not observe strict word order, two nominatives would collide and cause confusion. A sentence with seem can always be turned around:
The troublemakers seem to be circling around each other.
Here, following our Cambridge grammar of English, the troublemakers is no real subject to seem - but its raised complement. It is indeed clear that the troublemakers are « related both syntactically and semantically to » be circling, not seem. (« Raised » because it is « syntactically [the complement] of an element » (seem) sitting « higher in the constituent structure than the one it is construed with semantically » (be circling).) (Huddleston, 2002, p.226) With that, it is clearly legitimate for the clause equivalent’s subject to be in the nominative: it has no nominative contender if the main clause has no real subject.
As we have already hinted, Finnish and English are congruent in this regard. In this example from our Finnish reference grammar:
Sitten hinnat romahtivat ja nyt ne näyttävät taas kipuavan.
Then the prices collapsed and now they seem to be climbing again.
ne - just like hinnat it refers to - is a nominative plural, the functional subject of näyttävät, and by way of propagation, of the clause equivalent (taas) kipuavan. A loose Finnish counterpart to the notion of raised complement and the structures featuring them, might be seen in verb chains, verbiketju. In a verbiketju, our Finnish grammar tells us, one or several infinitives, or sometimes « participle-based vAn forms », are chained to a modal or otherwise abstract verb. It illustrates with
Sadeviitan alla rupesi olemaan kuumaa ja hiostavaa.
Under the rain cape it started to get hot and stuffy.
and, even closer to our case, tulevan being a present participle:
Serkukset näyttävät tulevan hyvin toimeen keskenään.
The cousins seem to get along very well with each other.
In short, the referative clause equivalents that come with to seem - and other verbs of perception - function as subjects, have their own grammatical subject in the nominative case, and share that subject with the finite verb (seem) of the main clause because they engage with it in a so-called verb chain.
We have learned something new. Something new that is essential. And we feel that the more time we squander laboriously plumbing this paradigm of clause equivalents, the faster we will approach the fluidity we desire in reading interesting things in the original. Interesting things. Here, it seems that their tribes are somehow important to the Finns: that is enough for our interest to be piqued. So we carry on with our investigation - learning Finnish like a machine with our minds on the watch for clause equivalents.
Precisely, Ville-Juhani Sutinen is quick to backtrack from his first misgivings and reach the conclusion that Finnish tribes are not a bygone world after all - not at all. He sets out in Matkalla Suomeen: Tarinoita heimojen maasta for a grand tour of Finland, each of his stops further confirming the reality and persistence, beyond mere imagery, of regional temperaments. Where do those come from? Paradoxically, reality is here diagnosed as stemming from myth. National myth. In the wake of the national awakening of the 19th century, the Finnish national narrative becomes enamored with its indigenous tribes. Those tribes are not entirely imaginary, but their distinctive traits are romanticized: the story magnifies what sets them apart - characters, customs, dialects - to better affirm their fundamental confluence into shared Finnishness.
Käytännössä Suomen heimot kuitenkin syntyivät vasta kansallisen heräämisen myötä 1800-luvulla. Se ei tarkoita, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä olisi ollut omaleimaisia piirteitä sitä ennen.
In practice, however, the Finnish tribes only came into being with the national awakening in the 19th century. That does not mean that groups living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory did not have distinctive characteristics before that.
There is a priori nothing too special here. Nevertheless, the second sentence looks like a perfect piece of synthetic collage.
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
… that groups living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory did not …
Upside down. The head noun at the end.
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
… that groups living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory did not …
And now, a past participle, eläneillä, that rather agrees, number and case, with the noun next to it.
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
… that groups living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory did not …
We recall our epic monologue on gerund-participles and their functions, and go wondering: is living a verb form? Is it an adjective? That’s rather clear. It admits a long adverbial of place, in different parts of what is now Finnish territory, and forms a kind of clause with it. With that, it allows the same kind of dependents as when it partakes in a finite verb form. In particular, the very same dependent as living used with an auxiliary in
Groups were living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory.
(Note that we have here an independent clause that corresponds pretty well to our nominal phrase lead by groups and embedding a participial construct.)
A standalone attribute adjective would not:
A living example of magnanimity
is proper,
*A living off love and water alone bear has been seen yesterday by the gamblers.
is not. However, you can properly say
A bear living off love and water alone invited a fox for dinner.
In the latter example, our Cambridge grammar would analyze living as a head of clause, the clause being the whole of living off love and water alone. (Huddleston, 2002, p.78)
Did you just say the participle heads a clause? A participial clause that can rewrite into another one, that is equivalent and features a finite verb? Do you mean English too has clause equivalents? In its most synthetic moments, it surely does. We can equivalently write
A bear who is living off love and water alone invited a fox for dinner.
And here it all becomes clear: what we have is an equivalent, not to a that-clause as in our earlier referative clause equivalents, but to a relative one. A relative clause equivalent. We will come back to that in a minute.
The adessive (eri) puolilla denotes the static location, in (different) parts. Parts of what? The partitive is visibly resorted to here:
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
… that groups living in different parts of what is now Finnish territory did not …
Why so? In its original locational meaning, the partive denotes the origin: from. And in several of its modern use cases, there a little bit left of this original tint. For instance, in comparisons, the partitive can be used to express what we compare against. He is taller than a tree. From {him and the tree}, he is the tallest. It is further used to refer to a specific share of a mass noun. A sip of brandevin. A sip from (the whole of the) brandevin. (Korpela, 2026) So, the partitive in nykyistä Suomen aluetta comes only at half a surprise: in this case too, we feel that remnant : in different parts from (the whole of) what is now Finnish territory.
Let’s try our best and break this back down into literal, broken English.
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
… that did not / in different parts / from today’s / of Finland / territory / (having) lived / groups …
Why not try and match to German, that we now know is largely capable of synthetic gluing?
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
Amazing! The Germanist really has a head start. The literal script of the German follows that of the Finnish very closely:
…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets lebenden Gruppen …
… that / the / in different parts / of the present day / Finnish / (of) territory / living / groups …
Yet, one major difference catches our eye. German and English are congruent in their use of a present participle, lebenden for living:
… that groups living in …
…, dass die in … lebenden Gruppen …
Using a past particple in the German synthetic qualifier would be blatantly wrong:
*…, dass die in … gelebten Gruppen …
just as there is no way around the gerund-participle (the traditional present participle) in English:
*… that groups lived in different parts of what is now Finnish territory …
The Finnish, for its part, is fully able of synthetic past in that case, and the improper line above gives a hint at how the Finnish thinks in
…, etteikö eri puolilla nykyistä Suomen aluetta eläneillä ryhmillä …
In fact, and more precisely, English grammar is missing a little something to perfectly express synthetically what the Finnish says. Indeed, the English past participle carries, it seems, some inherent passive meaning. If one starts uttering
*There is no doubt, that groups lived in different parts of Finland were far apart …
you go wondering: lived by whom? lived by what? Except that meaning does not take off: an experience can be lived maybe, but not a group or a zebra. In Finnish, the past participle elänyt (of which eläneillä is the adessive plural) bears that very active sense English needs a relative clause to fully render:
… that groups which have lived in different parts of what is now Finnish territory …
German too.
…, dass die Gruppen, die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets gelebt haben …
What English and German might, at a squeeze, consider is a sort of « perfect participle » (our cautious coining): the present participle of an auxiliary followed by the past participle. We could not confirm the full ungrammaticality, but the awkwardness is certain:
*… that groups having lived in different parts of what is now Finnish territory …
*…, dass die in verschiedenen Teilen des heutigen finnischen Staatsgebiets gelebt habenden Gruppen …
In a way, the Finnish active past participle crisply is a one word trick to capture the cumbersome having lived.
Our vigilant hunt for clause equivalents has been fruitful, and we have caught a new specimen: one that is equivalent to a relative clause.
And perhaps that is a bit of the same brew that is cooking in the next sentence in Sutinen’s book:
Vasta Suomen vuoden 1809 autonomian ja sitä seuranneen suomalaisuuden määritelyn rinnalla alueellisista identiteeteistä kuitenkin tultiin korostuneen tietoisiksi ja niitä aletiin pitää ominaisuuksina , jotka erottivat ryhmiä toisista.
Only alongside Finland’s autonomy of 1809 and the subsequent definition of Finnishness did people become markedly conscious of regional identities and begin to regard them as characteristics that distinguished groups from one another.
Seuraneen is the active past participle in the genitive of seurata, to follow. So that
… sitä seuranneen suomalaisuuden määritelyn …
breaks down into
… this / *having followed / of Finnishness / of the definition …
A fair, proper literal equivalent could be
… of the definition of Finnishness that followed (it) …
So, yes, the subsequent is crisper. And we have again - in English and Finnish - a crisp equivalent to a relative clause.
And no, all clause equivalents do not resort to participles. There is a whole range of them! All star some infinitive form. (Finnish has got a lot of them. And strangely enough, in their grammar, participles are said to be infinitive forms. They can call their things the way they wish after all, and they no doubt have their reasons. And how matters are called, and with that, typologized, does not matter that much after all. Grammars are also national myths in their own way.) We will come across some others soon: for now, let’s continue, ever watchful, our exploration of tribes and characters.
Reality arises from the myth and nurtures it. Every society lays claim to its little something that sets it apart. Reality becomes stereotype. The subject animates people of letters, and the portraits don’t hold back. In another speech from the collection we just discovered, psychology professor Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen depicts and champions a Finnish temperament. A great piece of insight for investigators from further afield. And somewhere, amidst a demonstration that national characters are real and exceed mere clichés, an intriguing passage digresses into regional variations in Finland. Which can easily read as a merciless satire.
Kansanluonteeksi kutsuttu ajattelutapojen, arvojen ja toimintamallien samankaltaisuus on siis olemassa, se ei ole pelkkä stereotypia. […] Naapurinani Espoossa asuu sosiologian emeritusprofessori Paavo Seppänen, jonka kanssa olemme usein keskustelleet pohjalaisuuden ja savolaisuuden eroista.
The similarity in ways of thinking, values and patterns of behaviour - called national character - thus exists; it is not mere stereotype. […] My neighbour in Espoo is emeritus professor of sociology Paavo Seppänen, with whom I have often discussed the differences between Ostrobothnian and Savonian character.
Here comes the savorous part.
Hänen kotipitäjässään Sulkavalla oli aikoinaan kunnallisvaalit. Vaaleissa kommunistit eivät saaneet yhtään ääntä, vaikka heidän kannattajiaan tiedettiin kyläläisissä olevan. Erityisesti ihmeteltiin erään sivukylän tulosta, koska pääosa kylän asukkaista tiedettiin vakaumuksellisiksi kommunisteiksi. Syy kuitenkin selvisi. Lossivahti kertoi, että "olihan nuo tulossa äänestämmää, vua en soutanna yli". Äänestäjät olivat tähän tyytyneet ja jääneet keittelemään kahvia rannalle – olisivatkohan pohjalaiset jääneet kahvinuotiolle?
In his home parish of Sulkava, municipal elections were held in former times. In the elections the communists did not receive a single vote, even though it was known that supporters of theirs existed among the villagers. People were particularly puzzled by the result from one outlying village, since most of its inhabitants were known to be committed communists. The reason, however, came to light. The ferry watchman said: “Well, they were coming to vote, but I wouldn't row them across.” The voters had accepted this and stayed on the shore brewing coffee - would Ostrobothnians have stayed behind at the coffee campfire?
Without further details on the Savonians, the Ostrobothnians and the stereotypes associated with them, there is some room for interpretation. Are the people of Savon so sociable and cheerful that they would rather go for coffee than do their duties? Are they quick to give up and averse to effort? Are they timid? Indecisive, gregarious, followers lacking in initiative? The story could read like a punchy joke, were it not, well, an anecdote. Or that’s a very private joke. Or the Savonians are very jovial and full of a notorious self-mockery that others know to put to the test.
We hope our reader is doing their homework. As for us, we have done ours. We have once again practiced piecewise matching on this speech excerpt. And if they did patiently, perhaps they have a prize or two in their creel. Indeed, what about olevan and its retinue in
…, vaikka heidän kannattajiaan tiedettiin kyläläisissä olevan.
…, even though it was known that supporters of theirs existed among the villagers.
Literally,
…, vaikka heidän kannattajiaan tiedettiin kyläläisissä olevan.
…, even though / their supporters / it was known / (with)in the villagers / being
No need to pinch yourself, that’s really how Finnish thinks this through. It was known can be paralleled to it seems, as a verb of perception or evidence. The referative clause equivalent is lead by the present participle olevan. Its logical subject, heidän kannattajiaan, is again carried through the verb chain, and thereby no genitive. But it is no nominative either, for the finite verb, tiedettiin, is in the passive form - and a Finnish passive is always impersonal, with its logical object, well, in (one of) the object case(s), the partitive.
What about the infinitive äänestämmää in the piece of reported speech?
… olihan nuo tulossa äänestämmää …
… well, they were coming to vote …
It should be made clear that this is Savonian. Äänestämmää is a dialectal variation of mainstream äänestämään, an infinitive III in the illative. Infinitive III? Are you serious? There are many, as we said, and they can be inflected to some extent. So there is some interesting infinitive form here, but there is no clause equivalent to declare. It’s just a complement of the finite verb oli tulossa (continuous aspect, were coming) and its flavor - 3rd infinitive illative - is called upon by the regimen of tulla. By the regimen of tulla when it denotes purpose, to come to do something - in the dictionary entry, the closest use case we spot is illustrated by
Tulkaa syömään. Come to eat.
Ville-Juhani Sutinen isn’t holding back either. We read his account of Karelia.
Karelia, an eastern border region - whose turbulent history we explored - is a masochistic land, where people love to play the martyr. Some proposition was made two decades ago to change the gloomy verses of a vernacular poem depicting Karelian misery into more positive ones.
Muutoksen taakse ei kuitenkaan saatu maakunnassa riittävästi tukea, ja lopulta koko positiivisuuskampanja kuivui kasaan ja unohtui.
However, sufficient support for the change could not be gathered in the region, and eventually the entire positivity campaign withered away and was forgotten.
The tone is set, and this is only the beginning. Initially perceived as lazy and narrow-minded, Karelians only achieved their reputation as a cheerful and hospitable people in the mid-19th century, through their depiction by Zacharias Topelius, one of the chief promoters of Finnish identities and folklores. Immediately, a later quote comes to qualify the image. Karelians are cheerful and witty, but volatile, prone to whims, easily swayed by appearances, says poet Odo Reuter. They are whimsical big kids. Their bonhomie is remarkable only in contrast to the trials they endure. A long-suffering people striving to keep a smile on their faces.
… elämä tuoksuu […] kauan vaalituille vanhoille suruille.
… life smells after […] long-cherished old sorrows.
Here vaalituille is the plural allative of passive past participle vaalittu - cherished, nurtured. A simple attribute qualifying sorrows. (You can’t turn it into a relative and claim it forms a relative clause equivalent. All you can paraphrase into is sorrows that are long-cherished, where long-cherished is an attribute adjective. Sorrows don’t cherish anything.)
Now comes the sauna and jacuzzi scene. In a kitschy atmosphere, a stereotypical Karelian laboriously devotes himself to the enjoyment of life, as if to make up for centuries of accumulated toil.
Tämän päivän Karjala onkin Suomen spa-osasto, jossa karvamahaäijät kulkevat hienoisesti lysyssä kuin kantaen loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia velvollisuudentuntoisilla hartioillaan ja …
Today's Karelia is indeed Finland's spa department, where pot-bellied fellows walk slightly hunched as if bearing on their dutiful shoulders the burden of decades of toil that earned them this holiday, …
No, this is reaching new heights. It really seems that the Finns and their tribes have a keen sense of self-deprecation. And in passing, amidst this colourful quote, we catch another specimen of a clause equivalent. A brand-new specimen. In
… kuin kantaen loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia velvollisuudentuntoisilla hartioillaan …
… as if bearing on their dutiful shoulders the burden of decades of toil that earned them this holiday …
kantaen is the infinitive II of kantaa, in the instructive case. Instructive for denoting the instrument and method, as with other parts of speech? Not quite. The infinitive II instructive participates in a clause equivalent that we can call contextual, one that expresses simultaneity. (Korpela, 2026) Ultimately, it all breaks down literally into
… kuin kantaen … lastia …
… as if / while carrying / … the burden …
Another strange way of thinking things through. How do they go about the relative clause? Again, a relative clause equivalent with active past participle
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
Step by step:
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
So far, the usual upside-down embedding. Now the participial clause equivalent to a relative one:
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
with loman a commonplace subject in the genitive
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… the burden of decades of toil that earned (them) this holiday …
The whole yields a fancy broken English script
… loman lunastaneiden aherruksen vuosikymmenien lastia …
… holidays / (having) earned (them) / of hard work / of decades / the burden …
And just a little further in the direction of fluency
*… the burden of decades of holidays having earned hard work …
That’s not all. The next morning, our ethnologist stops for coffee at the bar of the spa hotel in Bomba, near Nurmes. The place is the epitome of Karelian kitsch, a Disneyland museumizing clichés. There is only one man in the room, who, bright and early, is downing glass after glass of spirits. After the sixth glass, the waiter expels him, and he grumbles away. Sutinen concludes:
Bomban mainoslause kuuluu: “Käy syvemmellä luontoosi.”
Bomba's slogan reads: “Go deeper into your nature.”
The message is clear, the play in the interpretation rather small. Speaking of character, should one ultimately conclude that the Finns are a teasing bunch of siblings?
In passing, our entomologist’s eye notices a last example of the same contextual clause equivalent. Our Karelian stereotype in the bar’s empty room
… vaan kippailee reippaaseen tahtiin viinaryyppyjä, tilaten uuden aina samalla kertaa, kun tarjoilija tuo edellisen pöytään.
… but instead knocks back shots of spirits at a brisk pace, ordering a new one each time the waiter brings the previous one to the table.
Tilaten is anew our infitive II instructive, expressing simultaneity.
What a trip!
We feel like an anteater that has just lifted a clump of mossy earth near a stump and squints to gradually make out the dark scurrying of an active colony that lived underneath. Three species, however, are difficult to tell apart.
Infinitives and participles in their simplest, most prosaic uses. For example, past and present participles used as simple attributes.
The referatiivirakenne and other structures that an English grammar of Finnish readily refers to as clause equivalents. In short, clauses led by an infinitive of some sort (or a participle) that can be substituted with an equivalent clause that conjugates the same infinitive.
The special government of verbs. A finite or non-finite verb requires from the infinitive (or participle) accompanying it that it takes a specific inflection.
We rule the matter roughly: special regimen is a private semantic affair. It is specific not only of a given verb, but of one of its meanings in the dictionary entry. Clause equivalents are a generic matter of syntax. Their manners are productive: most, if not all, verbs can be bent to forming any variant of these. Attribute participles and plain infinitives are reluctant to such contortions.
We close the anthill carefully, putting the clump of soil back in its place in the forest. After all, the anteater couldn’t care less about species typologies, just as we couldn’t care less about how the Finns and others label the drawers of their grammars à la Linné. Because it is the sheer volume of text processed that gradually makes us familiar with the turns of phrase, without much need to go to the chalkboard to extrapolate lessons. Machines don’t bother with grammar, they chew, they match, they spot patterns.
First encounter, surprise.
*… the burden of decades of {holidays having earned} hard work …
The second time, we struggle a bit, we decipher, we recall, we shrug: well, that’s how they go about it, that’s how they think it through. And, little by little, the shrug and the surprise ebb. Our reading lags a little now and then, less and less so. Calmness. The transparent waters of a fluid spring.
We are now a bit older than when we started writing those lines. But no time has passed. For we were elsewhere, in a distant world where « all is beauty and symmetry, pleasure and calm and luxury. » (Squire, 1909)
References
Sutinen, V.-J. (2022). Matkalla Suomeen: Tarinoita heimojen maasta. Into.
Huddleston, R., & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge University Press.
Korpela, J. K. (2026, February 18). Clause equivalents [Section of Handbook of Finnish, 2nd ed.]. https://jkorpela.fi/finnish/Clause_equivalents.html
Squire, J. C. (1909). Poems and Baudelaire flowers. The New Age Press.