Vanha mies linja-autopysäkillä. AI kuva © (2025) Toivo Miettinen.

Hatti Jahunen – the man who came from somewhere and never left for anywhere

Hatti Jahunen was born sometime before mobile phones, but undoubtedly during a rainstorm. His birth wasn't recorded in the church registry because the parish village was flooded that day, and the sexton was absent. However, rumour has it that the sexton himself caused the flood. As a child, Hatti spoke more to crows than to people, and a little later, he began to hear things from the stones others only sat on during smoke breaks.

Hatti never reported moving house, yet he would now appear at the crossroads of Rötikkö, at a bend on Mökönpelto's milk road. There he stood, pipe in mouth, and declared:

"If you intend to go somewhere, you must first know where you've never come from."

The villagers weren't sure whether Hatti was more of a saint or a madman, but they left him be. Maybe because he once cured the constipation of a cow in Huuhkomäki by singing a Tuusniemi folk song backwards – and sober.

Hatti Jahunen and the sources of life's wisdom

Hatti has never been to school – or if he did, the teachers occasionally became his pupils. He has read books that no one has ever written and has quietly conversed with stones and the wind. Hatti says:

"I learn more when I understand nothing. Then there's room for insight."

His life philosophy is simple, but not easy:

"If you don't know where you're going, you might end up exactly where you're meant to be."

Hatti Jahunen's homesteads

Hatti has no address. He might have a rickety barn somewhere in Panuma, a lean-to at the edge of a bog, and a soul-inherited house in a dream. Hatti often sleeps wherever sleep overtakes him – under the lean-to, sheltered by a fallen spruce, or in the porch of some kind-hearted person's cottage.

"Home is not a place, but a state. And sometimes a state is stateless."

Hatti's relationship with time and the world

Hatti doesn't move with time – time passes him by. He doesn't wear a watch, except sometimes as a compass, and even then upside down.

"My time doesn't run – it occasionally sits down to rest."

He remembers the future and predicts the past. In this way, he mixes calendar and destiny into a suitable stew.

What is Hatti afraid of?

Nothing. Except that no one stops to listen to silence anymore.

"Sometimes the greatest fear is that everything starts to make sense."

Why does Hatti speak in riddles?

Hatti doesn't speak to be understood, but to make others pause. He sows aphorisms like others sow oat fields: raggedly and to his own rhythm.

"Words are paths, but the best paths lead astray."

Hatti Jahunen today

Hatti was last seen carrying a wind-fallen tree along the village road, muttering:

"This isn't firewood – it's a former secret."

After that, he sat at the end of the dock and gave a speech to the waves. One seagull nodded.

Finally: Who is Hatti Jahunen?

Maybe he's just a figment of the imagination. Or maybe there's a little Hatti in all of us – that part which dares to ask what happens if we stop rushing and begin to listen.

"I am not me. I am we, who didn't yet know we existed."

© (2025) Toivo Miettinen.