hänhekertoja

Hänhekertoja is a term used in Finnish literary studies to denote narrators who tell a story from the third person, typically employing the pronoun hän to refer to characters. The concept sits within the broader category of kertojat (narrators) and is often contrasted with minä-kertoja (first-person narrator) and, less commonly, sinä-kertoja (second-person narrator). In practice, hänhekertoja describes a narrative voice that situates events outside the narrator's own speaker and usually presents characters and actions through external description or through limited internal access.

A hallmarks of hänhekertoja are its focalization options. The narrator can function as an external observer with an objective or at least distanced reportage of events, or it can adopt a restricted internal viewpoint, offering glimpses into a character’s thoughts without full access. This flexibility allows authors to vary reader alignment, create irony, or sustain ambiguity about motives and emotions.

Linguistically, the use of the pronoun hän—the gender-neutral Finnish third-person pronoun—shapes how gender and identity are conveyed in such narration. This can contribute to a sense of universality or to the deliberate suspension of gendered readings within a narrative, depending on the author’s stylistic choices.

Hänhekertoja appears across Finnish prose, including novels and short stories, and is one of several narrative voice configurations available to writers. It is often discussed in relation to other pronoun-based narration modes and to how narrative distance, reliability, and perspective influence reader experience.