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Joel Pettersson (1892-1937) |
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"Van Gogh of the Åland Islands" – one of the most original artists
and Finnish authors writing in Swedish. Joel Pettersson depicted the
people and life in a small Åland village in a humorous or sublime
light. During his lifetime, Pettersson had no wider literary
reputation. Some of his short stories appeared in the magazine Åländsk Odling. It was not until in the 1970s, when his first books appeared in his native language "Jag känner jag har huvudet fullt av historier och små historier som ska stuvas ihop till Den Stora Berättelsen. Du undrar storligen varför jag alls ids taga alla dessa småhistorier med som på intet sätt ha något med den riktiga historien att skaffa. De förvirrar ju läsaren. Ja, mig själv, berättaren, förvirra de. Ty många gånger har jag så förlorat mej i berättandet av dessa små historier att jag icke alls vetat var jag hamnat och vart jag skall taga mig. Och den riktiga historien jag börjat med har jag glömt." (Eltänge by Joel Pettersson, edited by Valdermar Nyman, Stockholm: LTs förlag, 1973, p. 9) Joel Pettersson was born in Norrby, Lemland, the son of poor peasant parents. At the Grelsby asylum, where Pettersson died 44 years later, they were described in the medical records as "feeble-minded". Pettersson's father, Daniel, earned extra income by working as a driver and a self-taught vet. While at school, Pettersson began to write and draw. "Ah, how I feel lonely. There is nothing but me and my weep and the spring night... And I weep... How much I weep." (Måndagsmorgon by Joel Pettersson, Mariehamn: PQR-kultur, 2004) Although his early paintings were amateurish, his artistic aspirations were noted in the community. In 1913 Pettersson entered the drawing school in Turku to become an artist. The director of the school was Victor Westerholm (1860-1919), the founder of the Önningsby artists' colony on Lemland. Westerholm had troubles understanding his unsophisticated student, who detested the old master, calling him a "cow painter". (One of Westerholm's most famous paintings from 1885 portrayed cows in an autumn landscape.) During this period, Pettersson developed significantly as a writer and artist, although he felt uncomfortable in the city. He wrote stories for native regional festivals and his prose piece 'Att jag icke får det jag vill' showed that he had read Nietzsche. In 1915 Pettersson dropped out of school and returned to Lemland. Because his parents were relatively old – his father was over 70 – he had to help them at the farm. Moreover, his half-brother had moved to America, and his younger brother died by drowning at sea. Pettersson's plans to marry and have a family were ruined when the girl with whom he was engaged left Åland for a new life – this blow was recorded in a lament entitled 'The Earth is Freezing'. He fell also in love with her brother, who broke up the relationship, which was doomed from the beginning. The bulk of his literary output Pettersson produced between the years 1915 and 1925. Åländsk Odling bought
his writings; Pettersson illustrated them sometimes. "Tia pänna e budi.
Tia pänna e budi. Tiä, tiä. Grytan fina och granna går bort för tiäo
pänna. Si på gossar å bjud! — Å grytan går för tiäo pänna." ('En gammal spruckin gryta ' by Joel Pettersson, Tidskrift för Åländsk Odling, No. 4, August 1920, pp. 38-40) 'An
Old Cauldron' (1920) tells of a vagabond, Vandrar-Kallä, free from any
bond, who abandons his true calling. He gets an old
cauldron, which leads to building a cook stove and a house around it.
Eventually he has a demanding wife with all the societal constraints.
"Men invärtes ligger Kallä å förbannar gryton, som han fastna ve. Han
förbannar gryton — förbannar allt va han orkar och kan." Many of the stories were set in Lemland, with which he was stuck. His characters Pettersson tended to view with irony. Active in many fields, and driven by his desire to make a breakthrough as a writer and an artist, Petterson wrote newspaper articles, poems, prose pieces, and plays or dialogues for the amateur theater of Lemland's Youth Organization. He also painted sets for his own plays and for other theatrical performances as well. In 1918 Mikko Carlstedt and Ilmari Vuori arrived in Lemland to paint, and met Pettersson in Norrby. "People consider him crazy, but we like him a lot," summarized Carlstedt in letter. Later Pettersson went to see Carlstedt in Sääksmäki; they kept contact throughout the years. In 1924 Pettersson entered into a correspondence with Birger Bondestam, who studied medicine in Helsinki and had contributed reviews to the newspaper Åland. However, in the 1920s Pettersson did not have much spare time to literature, everyday work on the farm in harsh conditions took its toll. His parents died in 1928. For a period, Pettersson supported himself as a beef farmer, but was then forced to sell the animals and a huge part of the land to cope with the debts. After a disastrous fire, he build a two-storey henhouse. Following a gruesome experiment in chicken farming, concerns about his mental condition were
raised – Pettersson managed to kill all his poultry through a radical treatment for lice.
Economical problems and difficulties in gaining acceptance as an artist led finally to Pettersson's
breakdown. After recovering from a suicide attempt, Petterson started to paint
feverishly in the empty henhouse, which he had turned
into an atelier. While visiting Mariehamn, he collapsed physically
and mentally. In 1936 some of Pettersson's works were displayed in an exhibition in Mariehamn. He was hailed as a born painter by the Swedish artist Rikard Lindström: "Utställingens största begåvning är säkert den sinnesjuke Joel Pettersson, bondpojke från Lemland. Han är född målare, mustig, stark, flytande. Han målar så friskt och livsbejakande som om inga tunga tankar funnes till på Guds gröna jord." ('Rikard Lindström on Å. V:s konstutställning,' in Åland, No. 69, 22.08, 1936, p. 2) At that time he was already seriously ill. Joel Pettersson was taken to the Grelsby hospital, where he died on January 5, 1937. A renewed interest in Pettersson's work arose in the 1970s, 35 years after his death. In 1972 there appeared Jag har ju sett, a prose selection edited by Valdemar Nyman. It was followed by Eldtände (1973), Frifågel (1974), and Hallonskogen (1975). These works, written mostly in the third person, described Pettersson's strained relationship to his parents, and his artistic aspirations. Maanantaiaamu, his first work translated into Finnish, is a collection of semi-autobiographical texts, which deal with the writer's childhood. The short story 'Jalomielinen kreivi' Pettersson tells of a count, who is thrown into prison, because he wants to fight against ignorance and spiritual backwardness. When he is offered a chance to return amongst people, he chooses imprisonment and continues his dreaming and writing poetry. Pettersson's style, characterized as "naive expressionism", was a mixture of realism, folktales, archaisms, and vernacular language. His painting have similarities with the work of Tyko Sallinen and Jalmari Ruokokoski. An opera based on Pettersson's life and writings, composed by Nikolo Kotzev, premiered in July 2009. The libretto was made by the Finland-Swedish writer Lars Huldén.
Selected works:
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