6 Nina Goga, “Interspecies Encounters.Human-Plant Encounters in Contemporary Finnish-L (.) 5 Hanna Samola, “Botanics in Dystopian Environments.Every organism is considered extremely important and also spiritually educational for children. For example, in tales such as those of Topelius, the traditional elements of the folktales intertwine with Christian worldview, forming a philosophy of nature based on feeling, intuition, and mysticism 2. Starting from the work of author Zacharias Topelius, Finnish children’s literature has sought to delineate the boundary between human and non-human themes, and treated them from different points of view, that concern, for example, natural history, ecology, and the interaction between animal and human 1. Nature has, likewise, played many roles in children’s and young adults’ literature as early as the nineteenth century.

Since then, the forest has been represented in literature both as a friend and as an enemy, the lost paradise and the wilderness to tame and conquer. Also the seven brothers of the homonymous novel by Aleksis Kivi, the first one to be written in Finnish, flee to the virgin forest far from civilization. Helsinki, Suomalais (.)ġNature has played a significant role in Finnish literary tradition: the setting of traditional Finnish-Karelian oral poetry is the woods, where trees possess voices and can communicate. Luonto suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa 1700-1950. 1 Maria Laakso, Toni Lahtinen and Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen, “Johdatus lasten- ja nuortenkirjallisuude (.).

Leena krohn umbra