we have a problem it’s not that we live
in the era of alternative facts and
political turmoil it’s not that we
barely have recovered from recession
know that the society is getting more
and more divided the real problem we are
facing is that as a nation we Finn’s are
doomed we’re doomed to fail it’s not
because we are somehow incapable of
succeeding quite the opposite actually
you know all the piece of studies and
education welfare and technology we are
so famous for we are doomed because our
stories essay because Finland’s national
collective story is a story of losers
and failures I myself I’m a storyteller
and for the past decade or so I’ve been
working as a scriptwriter for television
and film and all the time I’ve been
puzzled by one topic only our national
identity the great story of an imagined
community that tells who we are and
where we came from and how that story is
present in our everyday lives so a few
years back I wanted to dig to the core
of this national identity I wanted to
make a TV series about Finland’s
national epic Kalevala in short Kalevala
is a compilation of oral ancient
folklore it’s considered to be one of
the most significant pieces of Finnish
literature and it did play a huge role
in the development of the Finnish
national identity in the mid 19th
century I wanted to make a modern
adaptation of it I wanted to make a TV
series where modern heroes would repeat
the stories of
our ancestors of course I’m not the only
one or the first one who’s been
interested in this topic the first one
was Elias landlord the rider of Kalevala
he can be called the father of the
Finnish identity he could also be called
an aspiring scriptwriter and to my
opinion not a very good one
Elias Land Road was a 37 year old doctor
when he decided to compile Finn’s
a national epic back in the days in the
mid 19th century Finland was under the
regime of Russia and had been part of
Sweden centuries before that but Finland
wanted to be independent finns wanted to
be seen as a nation and what a true
nation needs is a good story to prove
its origins to make everyone else
understand that we are unique and
special so Leonard he packed his
backpack and traveled to Karelia in
eastern finland to collect material for
this story and during his trips he did
collect a massive amount of oral
folklore poems about adventurous
historical events poems about love
creation of the universe how finn
settled finland how they then got along
with each other or sometimes they didn’t
and how christianity eventually took
over the old gods and rituals like us
all writers Landreth wanted to make and
create something special out of this
unique material he now had he wanted to
do something Homer dead with Iliad and
Odyssey he wanted to create an epic that
would resonate in people’s minds
centuries afterwards and he kind of did
unfortunately learn dirt road his epic
wrong and I know why
when wrote edited the poems he had he
even added a few of his own to the mix
he created one big narrative out of
poems that were not meant to be told in
or us of one comprehensive story man
wrote left out female protagonists
Landreth left out all normal
relationships between men and women
Landreth left out pretty much everything
that would even slightly suggest that
friends were enjoying their lives
learned wrote left out love and that’s
why we have a problem
obviously Len wrote had never heard of
the hero’s journey hero’s journey is one
of the most influential structures in
the storytelling business identified by
the American scholar Joseph Campbell in
his book called a hero with a thousand
faces from 1949 hero’s journeys are
taught a pattern that describes the
typical adventure of the archetype known
as the hero the hero is the person who
goes out to have an adventure on behalf
of his tribe or nation or family
overcome some obstacles and then comes
back with the elixir reborn he has
learned something he has grown as a
person even though the idea of the
hero’s journey is ancient what Joseph
Campbell discovered in his study was
that all the world hero myths they are
basically the same story just retold in
different variations so all storytelling
unconsciously or not follows the pattern
of a myth and all stories can be
understood in terms of the hero myth you
can find the same pattern everywhere in
novels in journalism in in the Bible in
rituals and of course in
industry many TED talks tend to have the
same structure and this is the point of
the talk where I take you with me to the
special world and introduce you a few of
the characters from Kalevala those
heroes I so badly wanted to write about
Kalevala heroes are people with magical
powers
a bit like Avengers if you may
väinämöinen is the protagonist of
Kalevala his old his wise and he has a
magical singing voice the whole epic
begins with him being born and ends with
his departure he’s the ultimate leader
who always knows what to do except he
fails to find a wife tries to force a
very young girl to marry him and the
girl drowns herself väinämöinen ends
up being alone and leaving his people to
give his place to baby Jesus end of
story
the most tragic one in the whole cast is
Culebra he’s an orphan raised by people
who killed his family and being sold to
slavery and mocked when he escapes he
finds out his family’s alive only to
lose them again
he eventually accidentally seduces his
own sister and kills himself end of
story
Lemminkainen is good-looking but
bad-tempered his first marriage is a
disaster because he lies to his wife
then he tries to impress another girl
drowns while doing that and needs his
mom to the rescue then he goes to a
wedding uninvited and ends up killing
the host the whole story ends with him
complaining to the other guys why they
don’t want to take him with them end of
story we have yoga Heinen he’s bitter
he’s angry the voice tribal of old by
Anna Mona
yochanan and väinämöinen have a
singing contest Yokohama and Lucy’s and
blechy’s his sister to väinämöinen
and like I told you that end ends up
badly so yoga Heinen shoots via
pneumonia into the river but nothing
really happens end of story
we have Ilmarinen who is the very
talented but very unsocial backs
blacksmith of Kalevala he creates this
magical fortune making machine sample
that brings fortune to his people but
surprise he has women issues he ends up
building himself a woman out of iron to
quote Kalevala
he was an unhappy man end of story
the best thing that ever happens to
these guys is this magical fortune
making machine and they lose it to their
enemies so they go to get it back they
drink their enemies under the table and
escape with the machine but the enemies
wake up and they come after our heroes
and there is a fight sample machine is
broken and scattered all around the
world in tiny tiny pieces end of story
goals obstacles failure and this is
exactly what happened to my TV project
it never got commissioned I worked hard
for it I did a lot of research but I
simply couldn’t write it into a script
it was a failure and only later I
realized why the third act was missing
the Kalevala hero doesn’t have a proper
ending instead of coming back with the
elixir kaalavela hero ends up failing
now I’m going to take you over one more
threshold to explain why this matters
hero’s journey has connections to what
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote about
the archetypes according to him an
archetype or archetypes are repeating
characters that exist in the dreams of
all people and in the myths of all
cultures it means that archetypes
resonate in our minds our personalities
divide themselves into these characters
to play out the drama of our lives it
means that story is built on hero’s
journey our models of her psyche
according to Yoon all these dream
characters all these archetypes they
come from a deeper source this thing
called the collective unconsciousness of
the human race these stories they deal
with very profound questions like Who am
I and where did I come from and most
importantly what will tomorrow be like
we
relate to these stories they are
psychologically valid we believe in them
we relate to them and we unconsciously
act upon them and that’s what I realized
trying to do that TV series our story is
flawed instead of coming back to ther
next year the Kalevala hero and the
modern-day hero very easily it just ends
up whining and feeling sorry for himself
just like the guys do in Colorado there
is no resurrection the same way we keep
having a failure discourse in the
society we love our little failure story
we love underdogs and we relate to
losers
the Kalevala and it’s mythology exist in
our public discussion no matter if it’s
about journalism no matter if it’s about
politics no matter if it’s about
equality or economy there is no
resurrection and there is no coming back
with the ellicsr I mean I sympathize
Elias Lindh wrote here writing is is
hard and you could argue that these
stories in Kalevala they weren’t we’re
not meant to be fulfilling and
satisfying in that sense most of them
were just moral lessons trying to
prevent us from doing stupid things but
the thing is that they might mean us
more than just that from a script
writers point of view stories are more
than just stories we unconsciously act
the way our level heroes act but what if
what if we rewrote this narrative
imagine what would happen if we created
the third act what would happen if we
decided that the thing that makes us
unique and special would be the fact
that we had the best narrative the one
that lets us be successful and happy or
what would happen if we just simply
stopped whining success and Happiness
they are not part of our uncollected and
consciousness collective unconsciousness
but I believe that is exactly the elixir
we are missing the resolution and
solution is there but it’s just
scattered all around us and inside us
just like some boys scattered in
Kalevala
this is not the end of the story this is
not the end of the third act in script
writing terms this is called the call to
adventure thank you
[Applause]
in the era of alternative facts and
political turmoil it’s not that we
barely have recovered from recession
know that the society is getting more
and more divided the real problem we are
facing is that as a nation we Finn’s are
doomed we’re doomed to fail it’s not
because we are somehow incapable of
succeeding quite the opposite actually
you know all the piece of studies and
education welfare and technology we are
so famous for we are doomed because our
stories essay because Finland’s national
collective story is a story of losers
and failures I myself I’m a storyteller
and for the past decade or so I’ve been
working as a scriptwriter for television
and film and all the time I’ve been
puzzled by one topic only our national
identity the great story of an imagined
community that tells who we are and
where we came from and how that story is
present in our everyday lives so a few
years back I wanted to dig to the core
of this national identity I wanted to
make a TV series about Finland’s
national epic Kalevala in short Kalevala
is a compilation of oral ancient
folklore it’s considered to be one of
the most significant pieces of Finnish
literature and it did play a huge role
in the development of the Finnish
national identity in the mid 19th
century I wanted to make a modern
adaptation of it I wanted to make a TV
series where modern heroes would repeat
the stories of
our ancestors of course I’m not the only
one or the first one who’s been
interested in this topic the first one
was Elias landlord the rider of Kalevala
he can be called the father of the
Finnish identity he could also be called
an aspiring scriptwriter and to my
opinion not a very good one
Elias Land Road was a 37 year old doctor
when he decided to compile Finn’s
a national epic back in the days in the
mid 19th century Finland was under the
regime of Russia and had been part of
Sweden centuries before that but Finland
wanted to be independent finns wanted to
be seen as a nation and what a true
nation needs is a good story to prove
its origins to make everyone else
understand that we are unique and
special so Leonard he packed his
backpack and traveled to Karelia in
eastern finland to collect material for
this story and during his trips he did
collect a massive amount of oral
folklore poems about adventurous
historical events poems about love
creation of the universe how finn
settled finland how they then got along
with each other or sometimes they didn’t
and how christianity eventually took
over the old gods and rituals like us
all writers Landreth wanted to make and
create something special out of this
unique material he now had he wanted to
do something Homer dead with Iliad and
Odyssey he wanted to create an epic that
would resonate in people’s minds
centuries afterwards and he kind of did
unfortunately learn dirt road his epic
wrong and I know why
when wrote edited the poems he had he
even added a few of his own to the mix
he created one big narrative out of
poems that were not meant to be told in
or us of one comprehensive story man
wrote left out female protagonists
Landreth left out all normal
relationships between men and women
Landreth left out pretty much everything
that would even slightly suggest that
friends were enjoying their lives
learned wrote left out love and that’s
why we have a problem
obviously Len wrote had never heard of
the hero’s journey hero’s journey is one
of the most influential structures in
the storytelling business identified by
the American scholar Joseph Campbell in
his book called a hero with a thousand
faces from 1949 hero’s journeys are
taught a pattern that describes the
typical adventure of the archetype known
as the hero the hero is the person who
goes out to have an adventure on behalf
of his tribe or nation or family
overcome some obstacles and then comes
back with the elixir reborn he has
learned something he has grown as a
person even though the idea of the
hero’s journey is ancient what Joseph
Campbell discovered in his study was
that all the world hero myths they are
basically the same story just retold in
different variations so all storytelling
unconsciously or not follows the pattern
of a myth and all stories can be
understood in terms of the hero myth you
can find the same pattern everywhere in
novels in journalism in in the Bible in
rituals and of course in
industry many TED talks tend to have the
same structure and this is the point of
the talk where I take you with me to the
special world and introduce you a few of
the characters from Kalevala those
heroes I so badly wanted to write about
Kalevala heroes are people with magical
powers
a bit like Avengers if you may
väinämöinen is the protagonist of
Kalevala his old his wise and he has a
magical singing voice the whole epic
begins with him being born and ends with
his departure he’s the ultimate leader
who always knows what to do except he
fails to find a wife tries to force a
very young girl to marry him and the
girl drowns herself väinämöinen ends
up being alone and leaving his people to
give his place to baby Jesus end of
story
the most tragic one in the whole cast is
Culebra he’s an orphan raised by people
who killed his family and being sold to
slavery and mocked when he escapes he
finds out his family’s alive only to
lose them again
he eventually accidentally seduces his
own sister and kills himself end of
story
Lemminkainen is good-looking but
bad-tempered his first marriage is a
disaster because he lies to his wife
then he tries to impress another girl
drowns while doing that and needs his
mom to the rescue then he goes to a
wedding uninvited and ends up killing
the host the whole story ends with him
complaining to the other guys why they
don’t want to take him with them end of
story we have yoga Heinen he’s bitter
he’s angry the voice tribal of old by
Anna Mona
yochanan and väinämöinen have a
singing contest Yokohama and Lucy’s and
blechy’s his sister to väinämöinen
and like I told you that end ends up
badly so yoga Heinen shoots via
pneumonia into the river but nothing
really happens end of story
we have Ilmarinen who is the very
talented but very unsocial backs
blacksmith of Kalevala he creates this
magical fortune making machine sample
that brings fortune to his people but
surprise he has women issues he ends up
building himself a woman out of iron to
quote Kalevala
he was an unhappy man end of story
the best thing that ever happens to
these guys is this magical fortune
making machine and they lose it to their
enemies so they go to get it back they
drink their enemies under the table and
escape with the machine but the enemies
wake up and they come after our heroes
and there is a fight sample machine is
broken and scattered all around the
world in tiny tiny pieces end of story
goals obstacles failure and this is
exactly what happened to my TV project
it never got commissioned I worked hard
for it I did a lot of research but I
simply couldn’t write it into a script
it was a failure and only later I
realized why the third act was missing
the Kalevala hero doesn’t have a proper
ending instead of coming back with the
elixir kaalavela hero ends up failing
now I’m going to take you over one more
threshold to explain why this matters
hero’s journey has connections to what
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote about
the archetypes according to him an
archetype or archetypes are repeating
characters that exist in the dreams of
all people and in the myths of all
cultures it means that archetypes
resonate in our minds our personalities
divide themselves into these characters
to play out the drama of our lives it
means that story is built on hero’s
journey our models of her psyche
according to Yoon all these dream
characters all these archetypes they
come from a deeper source this thing
called the collective unconsciousness of
the human race these stories they deal
with very profound questions like Who am
I and where did I come from and most
importantly what will tomorrow be like
we
relate to these stories they are
psychologically valid we believe in them
we relate to them and we unconsciously
act upon them and that’s what I realized
trying to do that TV series our story is
flawed instead of coming back to ther
next year the Kalevala hero and the
modern-day hero very easily it just ends
up whining and feeling sorry for himself
just like the guys do in Colorado there
is no resurrection the same way we keep
having a failure discourse in the
society we love our little failure story
we love underdogs and we relate to
losers
the Kalevala and it’s mythology exist in
our public discussion no matter if it’s
about journalism no matter if it’s about
politics no matter if it’s about
equality or economy there is no
resurrection and there is no coming back
with the ellicsr I mean I sympathize
Elias Lindh wrote here writing is is
hard and you could argue that these
stories in Kalevala they weren’t we’re
not meant to be fulfilling and
satisfying in that sense most of them
were just moral lessons trying to
prevent us from doing stupid things but
the thing is that they might mean us
more than just that from a script
writers point of view stories are more
than just stories we unconsciously act
the way our level heroes act but what if
what if we rewrote this narrative
imagine what would happen if we created
the third act what would happen if we
decided that the thing that makes us
unique and special would be the fact
that we had the best narrative the one
that lets us be successful and happy or
what would happen if we just simply
stopped whining success and Happiness
they are not part of our uncollected and
consciousness collective unconsciousness
but I believe that is exactly the elixir
we are missing the resolution and
solution is there but it’s just
scattered all around us and inside us
just like some boys scattered in
Kalevala
this is not the end of the story this is
not the end of the third act in script
writing terms this is called the call to
adventure thank you
[Applause]
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