Gummitummen and Kalevala

Yet another factoid that the internet has not provided until now: there is a link between Gummitummen and Kalevala.

Gummitummen is a nonsense book by the Swedish comedian Hasse Alfredson. It got a lukewarm reception when it was first published in 1966, and it is still not considered any of his best works. However, when I discovered it in my teens, I loved it, and I still think it in many parts is a masterpiece.

Kalevala is a Finnish national epic. It was compiled from older tales by Elias Lönnrot in 1835.

At the end of Gummitummen, the narrator describes how someone has written something on the wall of his house. The currently available epub version of the book incorrectly renders this as:

mäster ilma kom med gäd hu 

smeden rinen igen vud.

However, the original text in the paper version makes it clearer:

Mästersmeden Ilmarinen kom igen med gäddans huvud.

This is a reference to a giant pike (gädda) which the blacksmith Ilmarinen and the wise old bard Väinämöinen encounter in the epic Kalevala. Ilmarinen hands the head of the pike to his friend, who uses its jaw to make a kantele, a musical instrument that is similar to a zither.

Why Hasse Alfredson makes this reference is anyone's guess. The book is after all nonsense from beginning to end.

Why I took the time to write a blog post about this may also seem strange. The reason is simply that nobody has done it before.

Väinämöinen playing his kantele. Painting by Robert Ekman.

Maritime scene from Gummitummen.

Annoying Music of the New Generation

In the last decade of the eighteen hundreds ragtime took the world with storm. The elderly were outraged at this horrible music, but the young loved it.

Around 1910 came the new Dixieland and enraged the older people, who barely had got used to ragtime.

In the 1920s, boogie-woogie and it’s challenging new rhythms gripped the young, and the older people were upset.

Swing annoyed the elderly in the decade leading up to the Second World War, and after the war be-bop vexed the people who had learnt to appreciate swing.

In the 1950s, the young got enthusiastic with the new Rock ‘n Roll, which irritated the previous generation.

The Beatles and their ilk had a new sound that scarred the older people in the 1960s.

The 1970s gave mankind all kinds of new music like punk, heavy metal, hip hop, disco and rap, and it gave the elderly headache.

In the 1980s came acid and we were all eagerly waiting to see what other novelties might bring music forward.

Then came the 1990s.

That was followed by a new millennium.

We are now 2020.

I’m still waiting for that new kind of music, that is supposed to annoy the elderly at this time. All I hear in the music of the last decades is repetitions of what was written before.

Are the new musicians of today trying to bore us to death?

Music from a time when they could be innovative and appropriately annoying.

Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin

Fiction for a Viral Time

I took a day trip abroad yesterday, and when I got back and switched on the news, the country I had visited just reported their first case of Covid-19. This inspired me to compiling a list of things to do when you have viruses buzzing around in the air.

Books to read:

• Decamerone (The Decameron) by Giovanni Boccaccio. (Film by Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1971.)
• La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
• Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) by Thomas Mann. (Film by Luchino Visconti from 1971.)

Books to read select sections from:

• I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni
• De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius
• Diary of Samuel Pepys
• El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Music to listen to:

• The Plague by Neely Bruce

Charles Allan Gilbert - All is vanity