The Hummingbird (Anna Fekete)

Travel Guide

Finland is a dark and chilling place in the Hummingbird. The landscape as well as the atmosphere is dark and raw and even as winter gives way to summer, the chills keep coming.
Even the weather arrives in the city in dramatic fashion

“Darkness hadn’t come rushing into the city, brash as a troubadour,but still it had taken everyone by surprise”

And then when it does get sunny –

“Raouno Forsman was driving to Saloinen through the landscape of a reborn summer.”

The investigation in to a serial killer in this northern region is a dark read and alongside this is the fact that Anna is troubled due to her background of having returned to Finland despite her mother returning to her native land. She tries to integrate into life in Finland and her experiences reflect the plight of many –

“The whole place was a forest built of dirty concrete, a thicket of trees as far as the eye could see, a place with trolls grunting on the pathways and creatures lurking in the corners, a place where the glimmer of a fairy tale shone only in the glazed eyes of the drug addicts.”

As well as a unique insight into the lives of immigrants in general, the racist taunts are also painfully yet realistically evoked. Darkness in some society’s comes from those who experience its darkness moments.

A Finnish environment with snippets of life in Yugoslavia and immigrants from  a range of countries who have come to Finland to find peace.