A
couple of months ago, we finally got rid of our old TV – a massive cathode ray
tube model that literally required two people to carry – and replaced it with a
flat-screen smart TV. Modernity!
With
this new technology now bringing Internet connectivity to a screen bigger and
easier to watch than a mere laptop, I’ve been semi-binge watching Netflix now and
then, especially the animated series “BoJack Horseman”. I guess I have a
weakness for down-home stories about the trials and tribulations of the folks
who labor in Hollywood (see “Californication”, “Entourage”).
Anyway,
watching the opening scene of the episode “Escape from L.A.”, I spotted something
in the background that caught my attention. In this scene, BoJack, once again
suffering an existential personal crisis after simultaneously sabotaging both
this movie career and his relationship, shows up in New Mexico searching for the
one person (well, actually, a deer, a female deer) from his past whom he thinks
will make him happy.
The
thing that caught my eye in the scene was a storefront in the small town near
Santa Fe that BoJack finds himself in – or is trying to “find himself” in. Above
the storefront were written the words “Kokopelli Deli”.
I
had to pause the playback to check that wording. And, yes, this is really small-bore
TV watching, but that’s how I roll.
You
see, the word “Kokopelli” looked to me a lot like a Finnish word, not what
you’d expect to see in the desert Southwestern US. What I thought I was seeing
was something like the familiar words koko peli (“full
game” in English). Of course, the word I actually saw on our new flat screen was
slightly different. There is an extra “l” in Kokopelli.
Naturally,
I had to Google it. It turns out that “Kokopelli” is a fertility god worshiped
by the Pueblo peoples, such as the Hopi and Zuni, whose ancestors have
inhabited the Four Corners region of the present-day US for thousands of years. As a dancing, humpbacked flute player who chases away winter and renews life, Kokopelli sounds like one funky deity. Kind of like Ian Anderson – without the hump, that is.
A petroglyph in New Mexico depicting Kokopelli. Photo: Einar Einarsson Kvaran |
This example of an accidental, though completely superficial, similarity in words spoken in Finland and in patches of the American Southwest is of course surprising. Or, for Finns maybe not that surprising – if they’ve ever visited Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa
Verde is the site of ancient cliff dwellings on a high, arid mesa in southern
Colorado. It is an enigmatic place. Clusters of 600 or so rooms, abandoned by
the ancestral Puebloans some 700 years ago, are ingenuously tucked away beneath
overhanging cliffs and other sheltered places on the mesa. Perfect, desolate sanctuaries.
The primitive architecture of tightly packed rooms honeycombed on top of one
another is, to say the least, impressive.
One
type of these rooms stands out by being underground. This is the “kiva”, a
subterranean chamber used for spiritual ceremonies and no doubt an important center
in the lives of the long-departed cliff dwellers.
About
a dozen years ago, my family and I climbed down a ladder through a small hole in the
ground to enter one such kiva at Cliff Palace, one of the biggest dwellings at
Mesa Verde. My kids probably thought this cool and dim ancient cellar in the
American desert was indeed kiva. As in “nice”.
That’s because the Finnish word for “nice” is kiva. Nice.
If
you were so inclined, you could even say Kiva
on kiva, as in “The kiva is nice”. Again, nice.
The way most Finnish words are made up of short syllables, the language to me sometimes feels aboriginal in nature,
like there’s a close kinship between Finns and other small tribal peoples of
the world.
In
the movie “Dances with Wolves” there is a scene where Kevin Costner is trying
to convey to his Indian neighbors, by hand signals, that he had spotted buffalo
nearby. When they finally understood Costner’s somewhat comical pantomime, they
immediately supplied their own Lakota word for buffalo, “tatanka”, which
Costner then started repeating excitedly. Watching that scene, I remember thinking that “tatanka” sounded awfully Finnish.
Actually,
the closest Finnish word I can come up with is tankata, which means “to refuel”. It also happens to be an anagram
of “tatanka”, so hearing a similarity between the two is not so implausible. Another
close one is tanakka, which means “stout”
(the physical description, not the beer).
Of
course, there is no actual connection between Finnish and the languages of the
Lakota and Pueblo Peoples, and it would be weird if there were. The Finnish
language did originate somewhere far to the east of present-day Finland, but
not that far to the east.
Not
long after I moved to Finland in the 1980s, I came upon an odd book in the old communist bookstore that used to be located somewhere on Simonkatu. The entire book was one complicated argument that the Finnish people are supposedly the descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Now, that is a farfetched notion, to say the least.