Finland is known for its classical music—especially its conductors—as well as for architects such as Alvar Aalto and Eliel Saarinen. In the field of literature, our most internationally recognized figure is Tove Jansson, best known for the Moomins. Among contemporary authors, Sofi Oksanen is perhaps the most internationally well-known Finnish writer.
Recently, several rising stars have emerged across various genres. In fiction, names such as Iida Turpeinen, Satu Rämö, Max Seeck, and Pajtim Statovci are gaining international attention. In children’s and young adult literature, authors like Timo Parvela and Linda Bondestam are making waves. Finnish comic-book and graphic-novel artists like Ville Ranta and Tommi Musturi are also performing strongly, especially in France.
Describe the structure of your organization and its goal(s). How many staff members does it employ and what are their main activities?
Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI) is a non-governmental organization and part of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS). Our core mission is to support and promote Finnish literature abroad.
We currently have four full-time staff members and one intern. One of our program managers oversees all our grant programs and translator-related activities, such as residencies, fellowships, and book circles. This person also serves as our children’s literature expert.
Our communications manager is responsible for all communication activities, including social media and press trips.
Another program manager is in charge of publisher networks, book fairs, and fellowships for publishers. This person is also our non-fiction literature expert.
We have two interns per year, each working for six months. Their responsibilities include managing office tasks, leading book circles for translators, assisting with social media, and supporting all our other activities.
Finland is a bilingual country, with Finnish and Swedish as its two official languages. Original publishing also takes place in Swedish in Finland, and there are some books published in Sámi languages as well. Everything originally published in Finland in any of these languages is eligible for our grants and included in our activities.
How much funding does your organization disburse in a year and where does the funding come from?
The majority of our funding—approximately 80%—comes from the Ministry of Education and Culture. Around 10% is provided by private foundations, which may vary from year to year depending on our projects. The remaining share comes from SKS.
Part of our translation grant funding is provided by the Nordic Council of Ministers. This funding is specifically directed to Nordic publishers acquiring the translation rights for Finnish books.
Our total annual budget, including all activities and grants, is approximately €1.2 million.
As many as four Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to writers working in English in the past decade alone. Translation into English has also been a crucial factor for many of the other winners to receive consideration in the first place. In light of this linguistic hegemony, I imagine that there is an increased focus on translation into English, the costs of which can’t be met by market demand alone. Given your own institution’s limited resources, what criteria do you use to choose which authors to fund, and, given the sources of your funding, are there certain considerations factored into your selection?
Our number one export market is Germany, followed by France and Estonia. English-speaking markets do not purchase a large number of titles from Finland, but on the other hand, the income from these markets is the second largest in terms of Finnish literary exports.
We fund translations to all markets equally, provided that the application meets all the criteria.
A literary ecosystem includes not only writers and translators but also editors, reviewers, publishers, literary agents, and booksellers, all of whom play a role in fostering a vibrant literary scene. Bearing this in mind, how would you describe the state of the literary ecosystem in your country (e.g., is it healthy, in your opinion)? Does any part of your funding go toward supporting the wider literary infrastructure (as opposed to just writers and translators)? If there were a local equivalent of a magazine with a global focus like Asymptote, would it receive any ongoing support from your organization, for example?
We do not have any funding or mandate to support literary infrastructure within Finland. Our role is solely focused on international markets. However, we do offer translation grants to Finnish publishers for publishing literature translated into Finnish.
Funding decisions can sometimes be controversial. Tell us about a funding decision by your institute in the past ten years or so that elicited controversy, describing the fallout and explaining both sides.
I can’t recall a situation like this. I would say that all our grant decisions are very well reasoned, and we have a good understanding of most of our applicants.
The sitcom Seinfeld was notably a flop in Germany. Similarly, authors who encounter success in one culture sometimes do not receive the same reception in another. What are some surprising crossover successes or failures you have encountered in your tenure with this institution and what do you think might have led to these outcomes?
Well, one thing that doesn’t travel easily is humor. Finnish humor is quite particular and laconic, I would say, but it seems to work well in the UK and France—less so in the other Nordic countries.
Sometimes books are interpreted differently depending on the literary context, as in the case of author Arto Paasilinna. He was a bestselling writer in Finland, but his books were not considered particularly literary. In France, however, Paasilinna was regarded as a much more literary author than he was in his home country.
What are some recent challenges you have faced when advocating for your country’s literature and how has your institution adapted to meet these challenges?
One of our biggest challenges has always been the balance between the supply and demand of translators, especially from Finnish into other languages. Swedish is an easier source language to translate from. This is something we work on continuously—for example, by reaching out to universities that offer Finnish language programs.
Tell us about your proudest accomplishments as an institution in the past ten years. I’d be particularly interested to hear about any campaigns that your institution conceived to advocate for your country’s literature.
The single biggest and most important game changer for Finnish literature exports was Finland’s role as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2014. FILI was the project owner for this program. That year resulted in long-term success from which we are still benefiting.
The sale of translation rights rose to a permanently higher level, we entered new markets such as the UK and the US, the literary infrastructure in Finland became more professional, and the overall visibility of Finnish literature reached a completely new and significantly higher level than before.
In his Nobel Lecture, Kazuo Ishiguro exhorted us to “widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first-world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from literary cultures that remain unknown today, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities.” Yet, in one crucial respect, this ideal of an inclusive world literature shares the same problem as the climate crisis or even the COVID-19 vaccine crisis: countries that have the means to do something about a global situation often end up looking out for their own interests. How do you think institutional advocates of a country’s literature might be better allies for world literature, if they might even play a role at all?
I’m not sure I agree. Of course, there has historically been an overly strong focus on literature and culture from the US, but this has started to change. Coming from a small and challenging language like Finnish, we understand what it’s like to try to break through in markets dominated by larger and more widely known literary traditions. However, we clearly see a shift compared to ten or fifteen years ago. There is now more curiosity towards literature in smaller languages than ever before.
Institutions like ours play a crucial role as ambassadors—not only for our literature and culture, but also for our values and societies. By participating in international book fairs, festivals, and cultural events, we help our culture engage with others. Every time Finnish writers, agents, or publishers travel and meet their international counterparts, they bring back invaluable insights and contacts that enrich our culture, language, literature, and society.
