Marsh Memories

By Jenni Räinä

A book about important themes of our time, about humans as a part of nature and about how the climate change impacts our lives, and what we can do about it.

The old school of a small municipality in North Finland has long been abandoned. The strangemoore behind the school was already part of the landscape long before humans had drawn the borders of the village. The trenches could not turn the swamp into a forest, yet it has changed. Juho has inherited the old school and bought a workhorse, and starts there an eco-community to restore the marshland.

Hellä has worked as a photograph all over the world and has come back to the same town to clean up the house of her late grandfather. The village is even more deserted than before, but the impact of human activities has grown. The forest of her memories has disappeared.

Their stories intertwine and show in a concrete way how human activities affect the environment – not always as planned. Juho and Hellä are looking for their own place in a changed nature. It pushes them toward one another – and away from one another.

What can a single individual do to impact a global phenomenon? How strong can the desire of doing well be? And is it possible to return to the past?

Jenni Räinä is a journalist interested in nature and environment. Both of her non-fiction books deal with the Finnish nature, especially forests and swamps (Women Wandering the Wild, Like, 2021, and the Finlandia Non-Fiction Prize Winner The Forest After Us together with Pekka Juntti, Anssi Jokiranta and Anna Ruohonen, Like 2019). Her debut fiction novel Marsh Memories reflects the author’s knowledge of these topics.

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Awards & nominations

About the author

Jenni Räinä (b. 1980) is a non-fiction writer and journalist. Räinä’s family roots are in the small hamlet of Hyry (pop. 200) just north of Oulu, where she currently lives.In the 2023 Botnia Prize nominee Marsh Memories (Suo muistaa) she embeds the themes of climate crisis and protection of the environment into the stories of fictional characters, Juho and Hellä. Her previous book Women Wandering the Wild (Kulkijat, 2021) is a break away from the traditional wilderness books and presents the stories of nine women who talk about the wild and their relationship with nature in an era of eco-crisis. The book also features Teija Soini’s photographs.Jenni Räinä is also one of the four authors of The Forest After Us (Metsä meidän jälkemme), which won the Finlandia Non-Fiction Prize in 2019. All of Jenni Räinä’s work deals with Finnish nature, especially forests and swamps, and reflects the author’s deep knowledge of these topics.In 2018, she was a nominee for the Finlandia Non-Fiction Award and for Bonnier’s Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in the Book of the Year category. That same year, she was awarded the Botnia Literature Prize.