We are used to thinking of literature as words on a page. This perception is changing because of audiobooks, which were originally created for the needs of the visually impaired. Nowadays, audiobooks are a big business – with stunningly poor compensation for the author – but that’s not why we’re here today. Instead, let’s talk about a type of literature that’s far less known: sign language literature.
There is no established way to write sign language, although there have been attempts to do so it in different ways. Sign language is based on visual elements – gestures, facial expressions, body movements – and that makes it very difficult to express in writing. That is why literature in sign language primarily exists as recorded videos. It is therefore consistent in structure and expressive in content, a unique style in the field of literature. Signers plan, structure and rehearse their performances in advance while refining the details and highlights. A sign language narrator can express something with a single sign that would take an entire page of a book to describe. Riitta Vivolin-Karén, producer for The Sign Language Library, has compared fairy tales read in different languages. What she’s found is that fairy tales told in sign language are by far deeper in tone than ones told in spoken languages.
The Sign Language Library fosters sign language literature
Vivolin-Karén is a protector of many things. The Sign Language Library that she leads was founded ten years ago to be a part of the Finnish Association of the Deaf. It receives funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture. The tasks of the Sign Language Library include the recording of sign language literature. In the early days of the library’s existence, the definition of sign language literature sparked debate. What the prevailing way of thinking was that since sign language is not written, literature in sign language cannot exist. Today, that has changed and material in sign language is understood as literature.
The Sign Language Library is internationally unique. Because the material is precisely categorised and goes back decades, it provides an unprecedented opportunity to observe sign language by text type. The library does not only store literature in sign language, it also produces its own content, which aims to take different text genres into account as much as possible. The Sign Language Library plays a particularly important role as a publisher and compiling institution for the production of sign language authors.
School of the Deaf – the cradle of sign language
Sign language literature has not been thought of as a separate type of literature until the last few decades. Particular thanks are due to the literature research carried out by American linguist Clayton Valli. Valli himself was deaf and became known particularly for his poetry in sign language. Poems and songs are also the most beautiful and impressive forms of sign language expression in Finland. What is also on the rise is Visual Vernacular, a stunning form visual recitation that combines sign language, pantomime and cinematic narrative. In it, one signer can play multiple roles and even transform into different objects.
The performance of Visual vernacular artist Lee Robertson is full of expression:
There has been literature in sign language for as long as there have been sign languages. What the birth of sign language has required is for the deaf to find each other. In Finland, this happened in 1846, when young Carl Oscar Malm, who had studied in Sweden, founded Finland’s first school of the deaf on Porvoo’s Kankurinkuja, at his father’s house. The tradition of sign language literature in Finland began with that moment in 1846. At the end of the century, we witnessed the founding of several deaf clubs. They were a haven for the deaf and sign language, a place where they could use their own language in peace. After all, what spread concurrently in Finland at the time was the speech teaching method, which resulted in a ban on the use of sign language in public schools for the deaf. There was an attempt to eradicate sign language completely and to force the Deaf to speak. The associations held up the traditions of sign language literature and storytelling – and at the same time the sign language culture – alive after a hundred years of turmoil.
Excerpts from the collection of the Sign Language Library (in Finnish and Finnish Sign Language):
Links direct you to the website of the Sign Language Library
Tale of the Meriyksisarvinen in Finnish Sign Language. The same tale has also been translated into Finnish-Swedish sign language.
Visual Vernacular performances
Salla Fagerström 
The author is a sign language user, non-fiction writer and journalist who has written numerous sign language programmes for both the Sign Language Library and television.
Article picture in the beginning of the text: Poet Satu Kankaanpää’s Kapinaruno (“Rebellion poem”), recorded at the national sign language culture days in Helsinki 2024.