What brings a playwright from Finland to live on an island off Ireland’s west coast? “I fell in love with Ireland,” says Jenni Nikinmaa. “I really love the place and the sea, the west coast, and Aran specifically.”
Nikinmaa, a playwright, poet, theatre producer and performer, came in 2019 for an MA in playwriting and dramaturgy at University of Galway: “I knew Beckett. Everyone knows Beckett.” And on the Master’s she enjoyed “digging into the nuances of Irish writing”.
In 2020, after graduating during the pandemic, she says, “I decided it was as good time as any to move to Inis Mór. To be an unemployed theatre artist living on an island in a foreign country was as smart a career move as any, and I got an offer to rent a place during the winter.”
Since then she has worked quite a bit in theatre, and showcased her new play, Sheep!, at Dublin’s Scene+Heard new work festival last weekend.
She was inspired by the sheep on Clare Island. “I was really curious about the different qualities of sheep.” The play is in English “and in sheep!”, and she has applied to bring it to Dublin Fringe. Her work is metaphorical and contemporary. “It’s also a story about a sexual assault and how we belong to a flock or don’t belong to a flock, and things that separate us from each other, when you don’t trust anyone.
“I think we have this tendency in human society to value independence. Not so much in Ireland. In Finland there is this tendency to be, ‘I can make it on my own, I don’t need others’. That’s partly what’s wrong in the world at the moment. I wanted to explore the nuances of that through sheep, which we look down on because they are a flock, that they just do what they’re told. But it’s great: sheep are a flock; they do things together. They instantly belong in this group. I think we should learn from sheep.”
On Inis Mór, “there is way more community. I know if I’m ever in trouble on the island, somebody will help me. In Ireland in general people are more connected to each other and there is a more of community than in Finland.”
The Aran connection began years ago. Nikinmaa comes from Espoo, a city next to Finland’s capital, Helsinki. “While I was in lukio [secondary school], one of my friends wanted to visit Ireland” and she went too. “I don’t think she ever returned but I kept visiting after that first trip with my mom, when we did a day trip to Aran. I returned to the island a year or two later travelling on my own, as two friends were working at a hostel. I stayed much longer than I planned, and kept returning, sometimes five times a year.” She planned to do an undergrad in Ireland, “but then life, depression and a bad relationship got in the way”.
I feel like I fit in well. I even love that everyone knows everyone’s business, which is not a favourite thing for everybody
On those trips alone, “everyone’s saying hello, waving, especially in small places. You don’t do that to strangers in Finland. You just ignore everyone you don’t know. Even people you know sometimes. The islands kept pulling me in. It’s ridiculous to say, but I just stepped off the boat and I felt at home.”
While doing her master’s she lived in Headford, 25km from Galway city, and “visited the island whenever I could. It never felt sensible. Thinking about your life, how you are going to organise it ... moving to an island when I want to be a theatre-maker doesn’t make any sense. Then the pandemic happened and nothing was making any sense.” She moved in November 2020, “one of the best places to be during the lockdown”.
She has made friends with women she swims with daily, with people who have long lived on Aran and with “other blow-ins”.
“I feel like I fit in well. I even love that everyone knows everyone’s business, which is not a favourite thing for everybody. But I’m like, oh, it’s great.”
She says if she was in London her mother might worry about bombs, murderers, traffic accidents, “but when I’m on the island, well, nothing really happens”.
She no longer flies, because of fear but mainly climate change. Slow travel suits her, visiting Finland less often but for longer, working on her laptop en route, and wrapping stops to visit friends into the long trip by train and ferry. For example, she left Helsinki on Thursday at 3pm, travelling via Stockholm, Berlin, Paris (arriving 8pm on Saturday for a couple of days with a friend), then on the Eurostar and via Holyhead, arriving in Dublin at 6am on Tuesday. It costs about €800 return.
“I find Ireland quite relaxed compared to Finland. We seem to love following rules, whereas in Ireland they’re more of a guideline.” For example, “Finnish people often stand and wait for the red light to cross as pedestrians, even if there are no cars in sight. It’s been really useful for me as an artist. I don’t think I would have had the courage to find my own voice in Finland. I would have kept doing the sensible thing instead of jumping.”
In Finland closing-time is strict (“when the pub closes, it closes”), whereas she’s enjoyed plenty of lock-ins in Ireland.
Also, “it’s customary to say things like, ‘See you soon’, or ‘Let’s do that’, without actually meaning it. As a Finn, I’m sometimes quite literal, and it took me a while to accept I have no idea whether we’ll see each other soon or not.” She sees this as Irish people being kind or generally friendly, whereas if Finns “say something, we really mean it and we’ll do it”.
For work, too, sometimes she feels there’s an agreement on something but she has learned it might in fact be a vague aspiration rather than a commitment. “Irish people really struggle saying no, and a lot of times, when it’s fuzzy, it’s surrounding the word ‘no’. It just can’t be said. I’ve learned to take it, ‘Okay, it’s fuzzy, so that probably means no.’ I’ll just take a back seat and they’ll come to me if they want.”
There are plenty of similarities between the countries, too. “I think we should do more collaboration in TV, theatre, film, because we share a similar sense of humour.” Some Irish plays in translation have been very popular in Finland. She mentions Deirdre Kinahan’s These Halcyon Days; Martin McDonagh in the 1990s; Enda Walsh’s Once; Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones, “selling out since 2002″. She reckons smaller plays by less established makers could make great co-productions. “We enjoy really dark humour and in Ireland you can laugh at things that are really serious and bleak.”
Though working in the arts can be hard, “I feel supported on the island, and in life. There’s this generosity in Ireland, where you’re welcome to try. In Finland, especially if you do something silly like writing plays, it’s like, that’s not a real profession, would you not consider something that actually pays your bills?”
She’s been “lucky, finding people and projects I like to work with, and getting my own projects through”, and she supplements her income working in coffee shops and bars during the summer. She got Arts Council support a couple of years ago.
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland. Email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com
