Erkki idled away the late summer drifting through the woods picking berries like a vagabond.
Lucky Erkki, spending a carefree summer in the forest.
Erkki is actually a bear, this is from an article by Jaakko Julkunen in Helsingin Sanomat (29.8.2000) on radio tracking of bears in Northern Karelia.
Literally: Erkki lived (eleli) the late summer (loppukesän) by picking berries from time to time (marjastellen) and by drifting about (kuljeskellen) like a vagabond (joutomiehenä) through the forests (pitkin metsiä).
I like this sentence because there is so much information packed into the words marjastellen kuljeksellen and joutomiehenä describing the shiftless dilettante berry picker Erkki.
marjastellen ja kuljeksellen
These are both frequentative verbs, implying that the action is occasional or repeated, and not one long hard slog.
| marjastaa | to pick berries | marjastella | to pick berries here and there |
| kuljettaa | to transport | kuljeskella | wander about, drift around |
| elää | to live | elellä | to live, to inhabit |
| juosta | to run | juoksenella | to run about |
| soutaa | to row (a boat) | soudella | to row around |
The verbs are in the second infinitive instructive.The final –a of the infinitive is replaced by –e. (marjastella -> marjastelle-) which may be inflected in either the inessive (-ssa) meaning “during the act of” or, as in this case, instructive (-n) meaning “in a manner of”.
So marjastellen means “by occasionally picking berries” or “in a casual berry picking manner”, or even “casual-berry-pickling-ly” expanding on how he lives.
Presumably, if times were hard and life was one endless search for berries, with no time for Erkki to mooch around among the trees, then we would use marjastaa, so we would have marjastaen, or perhaps marjastamalla (see below).
The same goes for kuljeskellen “in a drifting around manner”.
elellä is the frequentative form of elää.
I think Joutomiehen is a tramp or vagabond. I can’t find it in any of my dictionaries, but joutoaika means “leisure time”, so presumably “idler” or the American “bum” or the English phrase “gentleman of the road” for a tramp may be roundabout translations. This adds to the description of the idle way Erkki is passing his time, and suggests that Erkki is not so much “living” as “bumming around” or “idling”. Joutomiehenä is in the essive case (-na) meaning “a state or function” (Olen täällä turistina: I am here as a tourist).
loppukesä (late summer) is in the genitive (Erkki eleli loppukesän) as it is the object of elellä and is in the accusative (aka the genitive) to imply that he passed the whole of the late summer.
Elää can take a noun in the adessive (-lla) case meaning “to live by” or “to live off”, so perhaps if berry picking was Erkki’s only means of sustinence we would be able to use the third infinitive (marjastama-) and would be able to say:
| Erkki eli marjastamalla | Erkki lived by berry picking |
However, I’m not sure if that would imply that berry picking was his trade, and that maybe he had a roadside stall selling berries.
We could certainly say:
| Erkki eli marjoilla | Erkki lived on berries |
But while that describes his diet, it doesn’t give us anything like the vivid picture of Erkki rootling around contentedly in the late summer sun delicately plucking a berry here and a berry there that marjastellen does.
