About
Biography
Veijo Baltzar, a leading and world-known Finnish Roma author, was born in 1942 near Kuopio in Eastern Finland. He is proud of his ethnicity and identity. He has lived in a close connection with the majority through his human relationships and work. Strong Roma identity and deep knowledge on the culture of the majority have opened strong and critical views on both worlds.
Veijo Baltzar's father was a horse-whisperer, horseman, mother a beggar and a craftswoman. His home was the earth as floor, the sky as roof. He spent his childhood in wagons with his parents, six brothers and five sisters. The nights were spent under the stars, in saunas and sheds. Night and day were the same; wandering from dusk till dawn. The food was obtained by begging or by working for farmhouses. Hunger, coldness, persecution and fear were familiar visitors, like they have been for the Roma for hundreds of years when they traveled as a minority in every country.
Still, life itself, great emotions, safety and love were also in the load. In between enduring, vivid human relationships the children learned their moral and identity, where from Roma culture naturally arises, guiding the continuation of life. Honour was a collective responsibility, the community supervised its members and the siblings held each other in order. Blood revenge was a guarantee for the safety of the community.
The Baltzars' roots are strong in Rautalampi, an old parish, where their ancestors had arrived in the 15th century. (Photo from the 1950s)
Fourteen-year-old Veijo Baltzar left his family and joined one caravan with his brother. He adventured in the Northern-Finland: Kainuu, Kuhmo and Suomussalmi. The big Roma caravan roamed in the arms of rugged fir forests through the dust, wind and storm. Wolves howled, like drunken log-workers, and horses were caught in the deep snow. On the lake, ice broke under the wagons. They camped under the trees in huts made of fir branches. Having experienced the different, Arctic, North-Eastern Finnish mentality during his one year in Kainuu, Baltzar was later inspired to write his novel "Verikihlat" ("Blood Engagement"), that was published in 1969.
In the 1950's, the family with its thirteen members moved to a little red cottage near a railway. In those days he went to the local village school, which he, however, had to quit after two years because of livelihood. That was all the cultivation the society could offer, the rest had to be earned through experience. The road was long.
With his father, Kalle Baltzar
Veijo, Armas and Arvidi Baltzar
Veijo and Miranda Baltzar at school
Baltzar's parents were highly respected inside the Roma society. His father was a patriarch, a philosopher who could not read. Only traditions, culture and the civilisation of soul existed to him.
His mother was a very literate person, who was interested in classical literature. She taught her children to read when they were very small and led them to the world of literature. She even arranged literary matinées in Haminanlahti Court with her friend Liisa Falkenberg (née Peura), the richest woman in Kuopio. Already as a child, Veijo Baltzar listened to these matinées and got strongly influenced by them.
In compulsory military service
The Young Rebel