In the North Finnish countryside, the statuesque Gunnar Huttunen comes as a stranger to an insular village and buys the nearby mill which has stood idle since the 1930s. Once powered by the rapids of the Kemijoki river that flows alongside, the mill no longer turns and no grains can be ground—people prefer to send their crops to the factories out of town. Such an investment is deemed laughable, and the townsfolk sneer at Huttunen behind his back.
His distinctive features, towering height, and dubious history make him an object of suspicion among the provincial villagers, but their children adore Huttunen and flock to visit his mill, where he entertains them with his strange impressions of woodland animals… and somewhat ungenerous (but accurate) impressions of their parents.
Clowning aside, everyone can tell there is a darkness in Huttunen’s heart. He sometimes falls into black moods, drifting away mid-sentence to a place from which he cannot be beckoned. He swoops from giddy laughter to total numbness at the drop of the hat—spoiling the children’s fun. Unqualified rumours that his wife died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Hutunnen with PTSD, only add to his mystique.
One day, when a broken dam puts the mill’s water wheel at risk, Huttunen rushes to the shop to get some stump bombs (without a license) to clear the ice floe that now threatens his home. The village gathers to watch his heroic efforts. He clears the ice and then fells a tall spruce tree by the riverside so that it lands perfectly alongside the mill, protecting it from ice, but allowing the river’s water to continue flowing. The villagers are impressed—maybe the miller isn’t so bad. But then he recklessly sets off the remaining stump bomb to scare them all away and leave him alone. The villagers leave with their misgivings confirmed. To make matters worse, the miller has a strange habit. Every so often he will venture into the nearby woods and howl at the top of his lungs, like a wolf for hours on end, waking up everyone in the village and exciting their dogs (who inevitably howl back). No one can explain why the miller does what he does—least of all Huttunen himself—but the villagers are soon sick of Huttunen and will find any way to get rid of him.
If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization. The Howling Miller is a dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world.
