Talk:Under the North Star trilogy

External link
Why isn't that first external link working properly? I can't figure out what went wrong. --TD Mak 06:19, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.195.31.211 (talk) 06:19, 3 June 2005 (UTC)
 * There was a line break inside the brackets. It's fixed now. Isomorphic 06:22, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Opening sentence of the book
The article states that the opening sentence of the book is In the beginning there were the marsh, the hoe - and Jussi, which is what it is in Richard Impola's translation. My wife insists that this is an incorrect translation and that the tool Jussi is using is a pickaxe. This makes more sense to me as no one would use a hoe to clear a swamp, surely. Can anyone shed some light on this? Alun 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It is a hoe. Pickaxe is hakku. --Vuo 09:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * As said above, pickaxe means hakku . As the article pickaxe desrcibes, pickaxe "is most often used to break up rocky surfaces or other hard surfaces". Contrary to that, marsh is "is a type of wetland", and hoe (Finnish kuokka) is used in soft soil. In Swedish both pickaxe and hoe are usually called "hacka". If the book is first read in Swedish, it might confuse the reader, although I never read the book in Swedish (and therefore I don't know if they used the word hacka or less common gräfta). --Gwydda (talk) 17:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Does it depand on the type of hoe?? A Dutch hoe or a draw hoe for example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.244.188 (talk) 06:55, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Title of the Book
Surely we should change teh wikipedia article title as the translation is incomplete.

The correct title woudl be "There Under a Northern Star" - as finnish has no article it could be the Northern Star, but its more poetic with a. Dunno what Linna thought himself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.244.188 (talk) 06:55, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

"Pohjantähti" is a specific star, i.e. Polaris or the North Star, it's not just a "Northern" star. So "Under the North Star" is certainly the adequate translation, including the article. However, if we were to translate the title literally, we'd have to add "here" (täällä). 178.195.178.16 (talk) 18:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * There seem to me to be several linguistic issues here. In Finnish, while there are no EXPLICIT articles ("the", "a", etc), all Finnish nouns are declined so as to make these redundant.  My understanding is that the partitive case would be been used if the sense required was "any old northern star" as oppsed to "the North Star" (capitalisation is also not used in Finnish in the same way it is in English).  The word for north (pohja/pohjoinen) and the word for star (tähti) are concatenated in the title.  This is significant and forms a distinct and unique noun.  The word "pohja" is in the genitive form so further specifying that the star concerned is indeed the SPECIFIC star OF the north.  With respect to the rest of the translation: the word "täällä" means (literally-ish) "on/at HERE", as opposed to "siellä" which would mean "on/at THERE".  For the sake of completeness here I'll just add that "alla" means "under" and takes the genitive hence "tähden".  The best translation for the title I can envisage therefore would be: "Here, under the North Star." (commas are also used differently in Finnish to English, and are not used for emphasis). --LookingGlass (talk) 13:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Sources for impact and outcome statements
Could anyone provide any references for the statements made in the article regarding the impact and outcomes of the book?

What evidence is there that it "generated a considerable controversy"? If it did how big or significant was it, and how can this be illustrated?

In terms of the outcomes: what role did it have in starting a discussion? Who had this discussion and how visible was it? For instance: was it a general disgruntlement in some parts of town or something that was aired nationally by public figures or media? What impact if any can be shown to have resulted?

What evidence is there for any healing that it had? For instance: is silence being viewed as evidence of this or is something else? If so what? Silence wasn't evidence of healing in Yogoslavia; and the Finnish Civil War had a killing rate in Finland nearly 20x that of Germany in WW2.

Does the book have and legacy in these matters that can be illustrated tangibly in some way? I'd really like to find this.

LookingGlass (talk) 10:26, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Delete proposal: - section:- Footnotes
The section entitled "Footnotes" appears entirely un-noteworthy and imo should be deleted. Most obviously it is trivial in that I suspect the overwhelming majority if not all publications contain some typographic and/or editorial errors. This is a fact of life of publishing which does not merit a reference in respect of any particular book. In any case such errors may be reduced in later printings. If such errors impacted in some material or significant way with a publication then they would imo merit reference. Judging from the entry made of them in this case that would not appear to be so. The evidence for noteworthiness given is that: an asterix appears without a footnote; dots appear on page(s) and might possibly be mistaken for fullstops; one sentence (in a trilogy!) might have been repeated in error; and the occasional character appears out of place. These are significant matters only in that they are entriely without any significance whatsoever to a wikipedia article. Unless some substance is provided I therefore propose to delete the section. LookingGlass (talk) 12:43, 16 December 2013 (UTC)