Kolmen Töräpään tarina

Om denne boken

Kolmen Töräpään tarina by Pentti Haanpää is a novel written in the early 20th century. It offers a stark, ironic portrait of a northern farm and its masters, following the fall of the fiery patriarch Timo Taikinamaa and the rise of his austere, feared son Iisakki, known as “Töräpään Iso.” The story probes how weather, want, wealth, and faith shape character, turning thrift into power and conscience into conflict.

The opening of the novel begins in a bleak late-spring blizzard: Timo, driven to despair, butchers almost all his cattle, fails at hanging himself, and dies soon after, charging his son to amass property. A retrospective shows Timo’s wild youth, his scandalous same-night funeral and wedding, the illness that made him sober and miserly, and the hard, pious, work-obsessed upbringing he forced on Iisakki. Taking over, the son becomes a relentless moneylender and land-grabber, living in squalid frugality while buying up neighbors’ farms—pressing Kaukokorpi into a sale and menacing the shoemaker Teppo until Teppo’s wife, Hurra, storms in to denounce him. In a hushed talk with the legal fixer Laki-Matti, he finally faces what all his hoarding is for and hints at a sharp turn toward spending and display, just as the excerpt breaks off.