Matti grows up in a tiny town in the remote north of Sweden in the 1960s and 70s. The chapters in this book are more like little short stories about different aspects of his childhood and adolescence, chronicled with humour and the occasional forays into strange, magical realism-inspired fantasy sequences. The inhabitants of his town and the surrounding areas seem to be either deeply puritanically religious or Communists, not caring for the trappings of religion at all. The gruff and peculiar inhabitants are set in their ways and far too prone to alcoholism. 

 

There's the story of Matti's near-mute best friend Niila, whose father, a lapsed preacher, is so domineering and abusive that neither of the many children of the family speak much, and Niila first learns to speak in Esperanto, through lessons he overhears on the radio in Matti's house. We hear about Matti and Niila's childhood discoveries of rock music, with the hits of Elvis Presley and the Beatles making a huge impact on their lives, inspiring them to form a band. There's the friendly rivalry of adolescent boys, and the organised warfare with airguns that the teens orchestrate in the neighbourhood. There's the summer when Matti is trying to make enough money for a guitar of his own, and engages in devious and gory rat extermination to keep the cabin of a visiting German author vermin free. 

 

Because the book is occasionally a straight-forward coming of age narrative about boys in a rural area in the 60s and 70s, but then all of a sudden veers into some dreamlike sequence where a boy gets trapped in a furnace for a winter and starts growing roots, or there is a cross-dressing witch in the woods who can exorcise ghosts, it's hard to pinpoint what the book is actually trying to be. As such, I found the book more frustrating than satisfying. The jumps in narrative, where the story will in one chapter talk about Matti's childhood, then his teens, then back again to earlier in his life, in very strange, seemingly unconnected episodes (all with the common denomination that they're set in Vittula, where he comes from) made the book confusing and while I appreciate the writer's skill, this book just didn't really work for me. 

A nice list put together by the nice people at the official "portal to Sweden" site. I've read about half of these, and it's a nice range from very recent YA through some very (very!) funny humour to classic Swedish literature by a handful of Nobel winners. Sure to be at least something on this list you'll enjoy, so have at it:

 

http://sweden.se/culture/10-swedish-must-read-books/

Fallvann - Mikael Niemi Ekstremt lettlest, tragisk og morsom. Mange herlig uspiselige personligheter. Tok meg selv i å tenke på svensk av og
til, kanskje fordi oversettelsen virket litt kjapp. Rom for flere og lengre historier om mange av personene.

Matti is a regular teen in 60s Pajala up in the extreme north of Sweden, where they think of themselves as Finns and speak Finnish by preference. These are guys who know how to hold their liquor, laugh at temperatures that go down to forty below zero, handle a gun, an axe or a snowmobile, build a house, butcher a reindeer and treat women the way they really want to be treated. Though it's true, Matti has also discovered rock 'n' roll. Maybe that makes him knapsu (gay), but he doesn't care. A real Finn can take care of himself if anyone's dumb enough to call him knapsu.

He also turns out to be a natural writer: his voice is sort of like Huck Finn crossed with a Viking saga. Out of consideration to the guys further south, he's been kind enough to write his book in Swedish, which at least is a half-respectable language. I understand that there's an English translation too, though I'm not sure I can recommend it. Here's what Matti thinks of English:

Engelska, detta språk med alldeles för svagt tuggmotstånd för hårda finska käftar, så sladdrigt att bara flickor kunde få femmor i det, denna snigelaktiga rotvälska, dallrande och fuktig, uppfunnen av gyttjetrampande kustlänningar som aldrig behövt kämpa, som aldrig svultit eller frusit, ett språk för lättingar, gräsätare, soffpruttare, så helt utan spänst att tungan sladdrade som en avskuren förhud i munnen.

[English, a language which doesn't offer enough resistance to hard Finnish jaws, so slippery that only girls can get As in it, this damp, wobbly, snail-like gobbledegook, invented by muddy southerners who've never needed to fight, never been frozen or hungry, a language for lazy vegetarians who fart on their sofas, so completely lacking in texture that you feel your tongue sliding around in your mouth like a cut-off foreskin.]

Unfortunately, we can't all be Finns. Girls, the quickest way to Pajala is fly to Kiruna via Stockholm, then take the bus north. But don't get your hopes up.
________________________

Consulting the Swedish wikipedia page about this book, I'm pleased to see that it's been translated into both the dialect of Finnish spoken here and standard Finnish, "together with some other languages". It also correctly describes the book as a skröna (roughly, bragging or lying as an art-form) masquerading as an autobiography. I'm afraid to say that some other reviewers have called it "magical realist". They are so knapsu that they probably enjoy the taste of wine.

Ich weiß nicht genau, wie ich dieses Buch beschreiben soll. Ich wollte es schon lange mal lesen, nachdem meine Eltern, von denen ich es ausgeliehen hatte und eine liebe Freundin mir wärmstens ans Herz gelegt haben. Aufgrund des Titels dachte ich, es gehe hauptsächlich um Popmusik aus Schweden, aber das tat es gar nicht.

Es geht um die Kindheit von Matti, den der Leser kennenlernt, als er gerade dabei ist, einen Pass in Nepal zu erklimmen und der dort oben schließlich mit der Zunge an einer tibetanischen Gebetsplatte hängen bleibt und Angst hat, dort oben zu erfrieren, weil er nie wieder wegkommt.

Das ganze Buch ist mit solchen Skurrilitäten gespickt. Es ist praktisch eine Aneinanderreihung seltsamer Begebenheiten – und ich mochte es! Manche Dinge, die Matti aus seiner Jugendzeit erzählt, können gar nicht wahr sein, da driftet die Erzählung sehr ins Phantastische hinüber, zum Beispiel, als er als Junge in einen Geräteschuppen kriecht und sich dann dort im Kanonenofen vor dem Hausmeister der Mädchenschule, auf deren Gelände, der Geräteschuppen liegt, verstecken muss. Matti bekommt die Tür des Kanonenofens nicht mehr auf und muss so im Ofen bleiben, bis er so groß geworden ist, dass er nicht mehr in den Ofen hineinpasst und diesen sprengt. Diese kleine Geschichte fand ich schon sehr skurril.

Aber es gibt in diesem Buch wirklich alles, was wahrscheinlich zu einer finnisch-schwedischen Jugend dazugehört: Sehr seltsame Nebenjobs (Ratten töten. Viele Ratten töten.), Saunabesuche mit der Familie, Familienfeiern, die eigentlich immer in Besäufnisse und manchmal auch Schlägereien ausarten und schließlich gründen Mattis und seine Kumpels auch noch eine Rockband und werden dafür nicht etwa ausgebuht, sondern teilweise sogar angehimmelt.

Ich weiß nicht so genau, ob ich die Hauptfigur jetzt sympathisch fand oder nicht. Ich komme einfach aus einem völlig anderen Umfeld wie das, das der Erzähler des Romans hier schildert, aber nichtsdestotrotz hat es einen sehr großen Spaß gemacht, von Mattis wilden Erlebnissen zu lesen und ich musste wirklich oft in mich hineingrinsen, wenn ich mir die Geschehnisse bildlich vorgestellt habe.
Dieses Buch kann ich weiterempfehlen!