WHAT IS SATUMETSÄ
(THE FAIRYTALE FOREST)?
Satumetsä is a Fairytale Magazine for children and grown-ups where traditional and modern fairytales and contemporary fairytales which draw from these traditions are published. Satumetsä also publishes tales about flora and fauna, translations from international fairytales and children’s poetry and nursery rhymes. Satumetsä continues Finnish and Nordic storytelling tradition, bringing the stories to this day which enhances the quality time spent with family, imagination for both adults and children and last but not least World Peace. While reading Satumetsä fairytale magazine you are doing favour for your eyes and eyes of closest ones in our digital age and also for children’s cognitive development.
There are two hundred professional and amateur authors and illustrators who are creating Satumetsä and bringing the stories of Satumetsä to life. Satumetsä Fairytale Magazine takes its creators and readers to a new era of blossoming imagination. Satumetsä’s paragon is Children's magazine Pääskynen which was published in Finland during 1871—1881 and 1906—1935 and Satumetsä continues the tradition of Pääskynen Magazine as a high-class magazine both story- and art-wise and which also joins for the newest trends in the children’s culture. Because of this, the target group of Satumetsä is all the children and adults in Finland. Satumetsä editorial office is located next to Lallukka Artist Home where there has also lived the family of Tove Jansson (1914—2001), the creator of Moomin stories.
Satumetsä is issued every home in Finland quarterly (Spring issue, Summer issue, Autumn issue and Christmas issue). Every issue of Satumetsä is an A4-size publication including 35-60 pages and every issue of Satumetsä principally includes two old fairytales as somewhat modernized and edited versions which will be suitable especially readers and listeners of Fairytales from 5- to 10-year-old. Satumetsä also publishes two new Fairytales in every issue which are created by Satumetsä’s own authors and illustrators and playpages for children. Satumetsä is printed to strong paper, which will endure time and which is nice to browse, colour and cut with a craft scissors with children’s little hands! Satumetsä also publishes children’s poetry, nursery rhymes, comics for children, newest innovations in children’s culture and art and stories that children have created themselves. It is possible to send children’s stories and art to Satumetsä editorial staff via e-mail or via snail mail.
Every volume of Satumetsä includes one special issue, which is international or has some kind of a specific theme. It is possible to subscribe Satumetsä alongside with the ordinary subscription as a special subscription, in which the old fairytales will be published as old original versions, which are suitable especially for adults and bigger children. The special subscription of Satumetsä is recommended if you are more keenly interested in literature than average.
Satumetsä is published by Elina Huttunen (s. 1986) as a sole trader. Elina Huttunen is Master of Social Sciences with very strong literary skills from University of Jyväskylä with sociology as main subject. She is a former board member of Helsinki Poetry Connection ry. where she served as a treasurer and she has also been a member of the Working Committee on International Relations at Nuoren Voiman Liitto which is one of the oldest literary organizations in Finland. As a lot-around-the-globe-travelled backpacker, Elina wishes one day to be also a research scientist.
“I have founded Satumetsä to be close to the world of stories which have always been close to my heart and soul. While making my dreams come true — I also believe that it is possible to make the world better place with the power of fairytales and what could be more convenient than share a new and spectacular world of fairytales — those that are not yet told and those which are waiting to be discovered again — with you.”
Satumetsä is dedicated to my mother and poetry of Jim Morrison.
photo: Pia Petterson, Helsinki Book Fair 2021
FOUNDER'S LETTER FOR SATUMETSÄ READERS
Here imagination bud to its glory. Satumetsä is like the time passing by which we are spending together, all things fun, birthday parties, a bonfire under fair clouds or starry night, friends — old and new — and the magical world, which will fold around the loneliest of us too.
Satumetsä has been founded to offer a traditional alternative to spend time with children and to support the development of children’s imagination, and why not adults too. Alongside all the other elation that stems from the magazine, in Satumetsä it is possible to learn to love old and new fairytales, nature and environment and to listen to the wisdom of the world forgotten — these all are the things which makes possible to build a better future on our shared planet.
Satumetsä is the own Fairytale Magazine of all the children and adults in Finland.
Satumetsä was born from the love of stories and I hope that you will enjoy your time with Satumetsä Fairytale Magazine!
5.6.2021
Founder of Satumetsä
Elina Huttunen
POWER OF FAIRYTALES
poetry in the form of of sociological thought
Fairytales are memories from the time we were children. They are shortcuts for the pen which wrote history earlier in the path long forgotten, in the paradise of beauty and marvel like no other, and which for some reason we lost a long long time ago. Fascinating charm of fairytales comes true while they tell stories from the world of untamed imagination, which are not real, but we would like them to be. Because in that world everything is like it ought to be.
Why wouldn’t we read more fairytales instead of the news? While reading news our mind is filled with an endless stream of violence, treacherousness and greed. The inner essence of the hidden treasure creates a shelter around us. That shelter is created by words of love, warmth and beauty, from all that we tell the children at night. From happy endings. From eternal wisdom. From all that which is important in life. Or should be?
When tulip blooms, in the middle of it sits a little girl. Thumbelina who makes her travels in a leaf of a waterlily, whose bed is an empty walnut shell and blanket a purple petal of a violet. When we grow and become grown-ups we start to understand that actually, it is the only thing we would wish to be true. Marvellous rebirth inside the tulip petals. To rest in the empty walnut shell. Under the purple glowing petal of a violet while mysterious Fairy King escorts us to the world of dreams. It is a magical night, after which we might not wake up in the world that is known, but in a world which is new. Far from the leaf of the waterlily, the whole world seems different than usual.
Besides prayer and philosophy, humankind can be saved by Fairytales.
The power of fairytales lies in that magic, that they are able to tell us only those things which are vital.
How about wars? Those blood-stained memories from history, which we have a chance to witness when we are grown-ups. Wars are shortcuts for the pen which wrote fairytales in the path, which should have been hidden forever, and not even be possible to step in because the poison of violence makes the body an object without a will. Cold, devouring truth of wars tells a story about the dark core of humankind and the real world, right in front of our eyes.
Can we be right just adequately? And meet each other half-way just as much as is needed on different occasions? Mutual understanding that we found again and again, every day, or that we do not want to find is only a choice but to the history of humankind that creates small, almost invisible layers, and when the time passes those layers change their form to everlasting spirals of good or evil. Those spirals undeniably intertwine to the core of human beings, clearing everything in its path and penetrating our minds and how we experience reality.
Barrier for progress is a place, where ink dried from the pen that wrote fairytale, prayer lost its power and the great philosopher died. That place is ambiguous history, and the question, where there will be only one right answer. You know very well that it is not even true.
The power of wars is in the unexplainable, cold and barren fear, which brings all that is not vital, in front of our very eyes.
– Elina Huttunen –
I hope you enjoyed my poetry in a form of a sociological thought.
Satumetsä has been created to offer a traditional way to spend time together with children, to fight against experienced loneliness and to support cognitive development of the children of digital generation and to leave them fond memories via fairytale worlds, so that better world and society would be even more possible when they eventually grow up to be grown-ups. There are some great changes happening in our world, but fairytales have brought people and people from different generations together since ages. Fairytales bring us close to something beautiful while touching our inner world, which makes us wonder about questions humankind has always been asking and answers to these questions. Among these questions are love, friendship, good life, environment, and family.
There are two hundred amateur and professional writers and illustrators involved in working on the issues for Satumetsä. The purpose of the magazine is to take those people who are experiencing the stories and the beautiful illustrations of the magazine to a new era of imagination where creators of Satumetsä are able to express themselves and develop their skills the most comprehensive way as artists and the readers and listeners of Satumetsä are able to enjoy fairytales, poetry and illustrations made for children in very high quality. By its basic values and by its content, Satumetsä is a bit of an experimental magazine with high standards, which has the goal to serve all families throughout Finland.
Satumetsä aspires to offer writers and illustrators both from Finland and abroad a way and a steady base to develop, explore and bring forth their skills and expertise, because fairytales, which move our inner world and bring people together do not know boundaries in any form. All the beauty which lies hidden in Fairytales is often universal by its nature, so it is only reasonable that Satumetsä operates not only locally in Finland but also on a global level so that the magazine publishes stories and illustrations from abroad and brings the beautiful international fairytales to Finnish children. Satumetsä publishes one theme issue every year with usually some kind of international theme — through this, Finnish children learn to carry a global sense of responsibility in a world of cultural diversity.
Satumetsä continues a tradition which has started in an era of global openness and teamwork by working with writers and illustrators in the same principle as fairytales work in our world —trying to reach authors and illustrators from every corner of the world without any biases, for the children’s and for our own sake. Fairytales and storytelling can move the deeply engraved universal values inside each of us, despite our age or where we are living. The amazing power of fairytales and poetry does not know boundaries in mind or in map but crosses them like a wild swan in springtime. Now the magazine operates only in Finland but who knows what the future will bring?
Satumetsä has been founded to strengthen the position of Finnish fairytale, poetry, and storytelling tradition in an era of computers, internet, smartphones and (extended) screen time, children are nowadays facing. Printed words, which originally developed to learn new things and collect wisdom centuries ago and connect to the old tradition of storytelling, have undeniable power to bring people and families together, even today. Digital age has brought us many marvellous things, like bringing people together in ways that wasn’t possible before, possibilities for communication without time and place, and that Satumetsä would also reach every corner of the world with its stories in a translated digital format, but I’m convinced that the evolution of digital human would never be so perfectly executed that we could just give up the printed word altogether. This is especially true in children’s case, because our most instant environment where children need to learn to operate too, is not something that can be reached via the digital world.
Satumetsä is a common fairytale treasure for families in Finland. As a publisher of a new fairytale magazine, I have great responsibilities and great authority over what kind of stories children in Finland get to read, listen and what kind of illustrations they will enjoy. However, eventually the fairytale, the poem or the illustration is something that is experienced and that is situated, and this experience always flows through children’s familiar environment which creates a totally unique tone to these most beautiful cultural artefacts humankind has ever known. This way, something that is shared by us all, our common stories, become a part of the child and at the same time makes them unique experiences. Satumetsä is something that is the same to all children in Finland, but still a unique experience for all of them individually — that’s something that all stories do.
If you want to become an author or illustrator for the magazine you can reach us via e-mail at info@satumetsalehti.fi.