How I Ended Up in a Sauna in Africa Speaking about Mauri Kunnas in Finnish
Nil Deniz Çidanlı is the translator of Finnish literature from authors such as Mauri Kunnas and Johanna Sinisalo. She has shared her story about how her journey to Finland began and where it took her.
It all started when I was a small girl in Istanbul, probably no taller than a stack of library books, watching a documentary that was way too serious for my age. There were reindeer. Snow. Forests so quiet they made our Istanbul apartment seem like a concert hall. I didn’t know anything about Finland, not even where to find it on a map. But something clicked. Little me looked at that screen and thought: “Yep. That’s it. That’s where I’m going.” Maybe that early spark is why I love translating children’s literature the most, and why I still read almost every new Finnish children’s book the moment it’s published.
Back in the early 2000s, growing up in Turkey, I hunted down whatever I could find about Finland. I read every translated novel, every scrap of magazine or internet article I could get my hands on. I picked up a Finnish dictionary and started teaching myself the language on the Üsküdar–Kadıköy bus. The grammar made sense to me. Agglutinative like Turkish, structured yet musical. It felt like the language had been waiting for me.
In 2010, after graduating from high school, I moved to Espoo as an au pair. It was there that Finnish moved from the page into real life. Words I’d learned from radio, books, and song lyrics became part of everyday conversations. I was so eager to practice that I roamed Helsinki with a bright pink badge that read: Puhu minulle suomea (Speak Finnish with me). Strangers would smile and strike up conversations about the weather, the city, or just to share a laugh.
My connection to Finland deepened over the years. I studied at avoin yliopisto (open university) in Helsinki, took advanced Finnish literature courses during my BA in Estonia, and joined an Erasmus semester in Helsinki. An internship in Oulu brought it full circle: I taught global issues in high schools and worked with NGOs.
Now I live in Kenya, and I speak Finnish daily. My partner and some of my closest friends are Finnish, and the language is part of our home life. From grocery debates to book chats, everything happens in Finnish. I sometimes escape to a quiet cottage near a national park to translate Finnish literature, with giraffes and zebras occasionally passing by my window. Every summer I return to Finland like a migratory bird following an inner compass. But wherever I go, I seem to find the familiar: Finns who’ve built a sauna (I’ve been to authentic Finnish saunas in Uganda, Morocco, Portugal, Kenya and more), or friends meeting at Finnish cultural events from Nairobi to Barcelona. Through it all, language has been both my anchor and my bridge.
When I began translating for the Finnish Embassy in Ankara in 2014, I realized this wasn’t just a job. Translation is cultural work. A sentence carries more than its literal meaning, it carries a worldview.
That realization became the foundation of my life’s work. Today I translate Finnish literature into Turkish for publishers like Can Yayınları, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, Ayrıntı, and many boutique houses that care about Nordic stories. The very first book I translated was by Mauri Kunnas, a beloved children’s author who has shaped the imaginations of multiple Finnish generations. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of bringing some of Finland’s most beloved literary voices to Turkish readers like Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun or Timo Parvela’s Kepler Series or Tomi Kontio’s A Dog Called Cat.
Mine is a journey that began with reindeer on a screen and led to birch trees in books. When I speak about Finland, it’s not just a country to me. It’s part of how I think, feel and live. It's shaped the work I do, the relationships I cherish, and the places I call home even from thousands of kilometers away.
Nil Deniz Çidanlı — March 19, 2025, Nairobi