Pentti Linkola interview from Quadrivium #6 (2014): abridged version As of today, 7 Dec 2015, notable Finnish fisherman, deep ecologist and dissident Pentti Linkola turns 83. To honour the occasion, we now digitise a lengthy Linkola interview first published in the final issue of the Finnish magazine Quadrivium in December 2014. The forty-page article relies on Linkola’s oeuvre, which spans six decades, and discussions of several hours recorded at Linkola’s cabin in the village of Ritvala in Sääksmäki, Finland, April 2011. No interview as extensive of the founder of the Nature Heritage Foundation has been released in English before. Speaking strongly for the highest biodiversity of nature and as fiercely against human overpopulation, the interview depicts a difficult and consuming way of life which not only demands a lot from its followers but also goes to show how essential it is at times to voice observations with a clarity that ventures beyond populist politics of the day and the slow-grinding bureaucracy of climate change conferences. Out of respect for the privacy of certain relatives and other individuals not central to the article, the interview online is a slightly abridged version of the article in print. Best of health to you, Pentti. (Illustration: Kalastajat/Fishers by Veera Pitkänen) The Fisher King Interview: Kuronen Thanks to an unfathomable suggestion presented in the dead of night by a smashing person I barely knew twelve months prior, I had the absolutely bewildering opportunity to spend a weekend at the estates of Pentti Linkola in the spring of two thousand and eleven. Now, you might ask yourself why this name means so little to you. Let me try to explain. Born in nineteen thirty-two, Linkola is a radical Finnish fisher, ornithologist and writer responsible for numerous confrontational literary works on nature. To some he is an eco- traditionalist; those who consider his work more fearful or dubious call him eco- fascist. Ever since the nineteen fifties, he has spoken for a number of themes that would conserve life on this planet if people weren’t deaf to them. Linkola’s main qualification to many has been laid out by the fact that he lives very close to how he would like us all to live: in a cabin near the lake Vanajavesi, in what you might call a Haven of Don’ts, with very little high technology to ease his life. He does not have a car, a cell phone, computer or many of the other devices that are so central to modern leisure life. Wikipedia seems to know he lives a "simple and austere" life. Linkola’s poetic bitterness is beautifully unrivalled since it is poetic only in its eloquence—the issues he speaks of are gravely real. Not realistic, not understandable, not "basically agreeable", but real. Linkola has boasted that his observational method is always empirical: what there is no evidence for does not exist. He has never been interested in lucks and likelihoods; he is not a gambler. This rationality gives off his modernity, his cultural background. Being able to explain something that already feels like one of the most unique events of this mortal crawl requires getting there in the first place. We were told that to reach our destination, we needed to pay attention to a dust bin that was in the colour of the terrain. Well, what we find is a bin that is full black. Filling in on the function of a gate next to the bin is an old broken chair holding up a few tall straight branches. We leave our car outside the gate, a car that for those interested is not our own but the trusted Volkswagen Golf 1.4 of my ex- girlfriend’s parents, and continue downhill by foot. For those interested, the "we" constitutes myself, Timo Lampila and a German friend explicating the nuances of a certain Italian philosopher elsewhere in the magazine. We’re here in the village of Ritvala, in the rural municipality of Sääksmäki—in the Southern Finland province of Tavastia—on one of the first very warm days of spring. The first hepatica are starting to accommodate both sides of the hillside path leading to the cabin. The terrain is slightly moist but most of the snow is gone. The courtyard smells of life, all of its aromas uncontrollable and in unison. The temperature is close to fifteen degrees Celsius. After a short walk of a couple of hundred metres, we see a courtyard hosting a woodshed, a guesthouse, an outhouse, a small patch of field for potatoes and vegetables, a clearing for cutting wood, a well, the cabin where Pentti Linkola lives, and next to the cabin, a fallen birch that small birds are running on. This is the famous tree Linkola never wanted to fell even if it started to look possible it could fall on the roof of the cabin. It didn’t. Then comes the usual clatter and clamor of any first encounter; hands met in firm shakes, names and occupations inquired, presents handed over, presents that in our case include a stack of reindeer meat, butter and chocolate chosen by Lampila based on the knowledge of Linkola’s diabetes, famous dislike of margarine and traditional love of game. After the initial clash, some time is released for simple ogling. The first impression of our host culminates in his eyes, which are small yet sharp, joyful yet of that distinct hue of pale grayish blue that has fooled many to think is the very definition of distance, rounded by some contemplative furrows on the forehead, not to mention crow’s feet so sympathetically non-aligned that you would never think glee getting washed out by pessimism within their reach. However, it is particularly the brave vertical lines growing upwards from the bridge of the nose that form the expressiveness of his face, to which the small scar under the nose is a dash of forester chic. Whenever you catch a shy grin from what is under that scar, you will see a set of teeth in a remarkably good shape for a man nearing on his eightieth birthday—and that is in spite of the prosthetic teeth implanted after a bicycle accident sixty years prior. In his speech, the slight impediment is let out in the slight soft fuzz of the letter r, not always the type of coarse fricative Finns are used to hearing. The cabin is about forty square metres in size and has three rooms: a small vestibule, a kitchen-slash-dining-slash-living room and a bedroom. Most of our time in the cabin is spent at the kitchen table next to a small bed, a shelf built upon tiles of brick, a gas stove and a stone oven with an old "Fishermen have bigger rods" sign attached to it. The walls of the room are covered with pictures of birds, fishes, abstract landscape sceneries and then a concession to twentieth- century technology, a wireless telephone. The kitchen cabinets have an enjoyable hue of nature green to them. One of the cabinet doors has a newspaper clipping with the headline, "Siisti koti on ankea asua" ("A clean home is a dreary place to live in"). On the chair Linkola writes on there is a sheep hide and a small pillow. Other singular items include a radio on the window sill, a typewriter sitting next to the table and a considerable amount of books, magazines and newspapers scattered on the table. The bedroom provides three large shelves stacked with more books. And a record player, but we’ll get to that later. The slight stubble on Linkola’s cheeks and the witches’ broom of his hair tell how the requirements of time and space on the country are less harsh than in urban centres. He will say that three months is a sufficient interval for a thorough wash. Having a sauna is a reckless waste of energy, too, so we can start dipping our expectations of having a good session of heat and pressure. Linkola’s hands, probably the most crucial physical feature of his body given his work and philosophy, are fairly but not amazingly big, hardened and thrust on a constant move—here is someone taught to draw on his hands with no sense of expiration. He’s wearing a checkered flannel shirt and a pair of brown cargos with a knife hanging from the waist, which, he warns, he will not hesitate to put to use if one of us should be thoughtless enough to denounce his exquisite delicacy, the roe of a pike-perch. In person, Linkola is highly unlike the bitterness and sorrow radiating from his literary persona. As he has confessed in writing, he is very cowardly about insulting the convictions and persuasions of another person in conversation that happens on an eye-to-eye basis. The typewriter is his therapist. And indeed, throughout our stay, he seems very light-hearted, considerate, attentive and amiable, humorous almost to the point of juvenile, flashing his sardonic edge only if his fellow conversationalist has traversed well beyond fact and common sense. He is very curious and perceptive for his age. When you meet him, the notion he has made in one of his books, of observing people from centre, sideways and above all at once, does not seem so much like a self-congratulatory remark. He might be subdued and defensive at times but never attacks or pulls unneeded punches beyond the magnitude of a dry bottle of "Well…"s. Linkola prides himself in the uncompromising nature of his logic.