End Roll no Ato ni wa Saikou no Tabi wo - Vol. 2 Ch. 5 - Gnome Work Experience

[MangaDex]

 

[Baffled]

Another chapter of me praying for Aino to stay alive and this manga not getting a tragedy tag 🙏

Thanks for TL 🙏

 

[dustbird]

ONLY 14 CHAPTERS? I can't say goodbye that soon! Thanks for another translation, also wow those are the most gnomish dwarves I've ever seen.

 

[KitsuKyouno]

Need more bear to be proper gnomos

 

[Madologist]

Those aren't dwarves, those are GNOMES!
Just 9 chapters left, overall, shame about that but not every story is even intended to be that long in the first place. Let's hope our two heroes don't end up as trees like David.


Finnish corner:
Gnome can be translated in two ways to Finnish, menninkäinen and tonttu. These definitely are the latter and not the former.
Menninkäinen is more of a goblin creature usually, which it's more commonly translated as, and not a small humanoid like tonttu is.
In the old lore tonttus are quite archetypal little helpers that you can find commonly throughout European folklore. In Finnish mythology tonttus would be named after their location. A forest dwelling tonttu is a forest tonttu and a sauna dwelling tonttu is a saunatonttu and so on. It was common to leave tribute to the tiny helpers, so they wouldn't get upset. If a tonttu got upset, instead of helping it would turn mischievous or even outright hostile and would then have to be placated through tribute or driven away by a shaman.
In Finnish folklore however there is another kind of tonttu and this is the more modernly thought of one when you mention them: Santa's helpers. Tonttus have long been associated with "Joulupukki" - Christmas Goat - and have worked as his spies, seeing if the kids are behaving and also helping him with making all the presents and delivering them. Modern depictions portray the joulutonttus (christmas tonttus) as human or children sized however, and not tiny little helpers like the more traditional tonttu-spirits are. If you are interested in the Finnish Christmas mythos, I'd recommend Santa Claus and the Magic Drum, though bit out of season. Hilariously, the movie even has a theme song "Working for the Santa", which could be technically be translated as "Working as a gnome", Dwarf Work Experience is our heroines working for the Santa!


There is something inherently funny about "beer" being a word of power. In the national epic Kalevala's (a collection of poetry, songs, folklore, mythology and such collected into one loose narrative) creation mythos part there is a whole chapter dedicated to "creation of beer". Beer is so important that we included it in our genesis. Think about that you milk drinkers, Imma crack me a cold one now!

Ohraa, maltaita, humalaa ja hyvää tahtoa!
Kaikki veteen keitä ja hiivaa heitä!
Olkoon oluesi onnistunut!

Ps.
I had this ringin' in my head the whole chapter...

 

[Bireus]

This was a great chapter. Wasn't expected such cute dwarves designs

 

[Kushikime]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[cryum]

What an adorable chapter

 

[Yukizakurasou]

They got turned into marketable plushies!!!

 

[donpom]

Changelog 30-MAR-2025: We originally called the little guys "dwarves" because the kanji Rikitake used, 小人, "little person," has been used for the dwarves in Snow White, among other things, where as gnome is more often translated from ノーム. However, since feedback was very consistent across our audiences, we discussed our options and decided to update all instances of "dwarf" to "gnome."

@folks who read the chapter "Dwarf Work Experience" please feel free to consider yourselves the elite manga fans who live on the cutting edge of Bright Smiles scanlations and innovations.

@folks who read the chapter "Gnome Work Experience"

 

[Quarterdane]

Beer is so important that we included it in our genesis.

I'd think that was less to do with any specific culture, and more related to how people back in the olden days didn't necessarily have constant access to good, potable water - so it was presumably safer to brew it into alcohol to kill any bacteria and such that might've been hanging around.

 

[donpom]

I'd think that was less to do with any specific culture, and more related to how people back in the olden days didn't necessarily have constant access to good, potable water - so it was presumably safer to brew it into alcohol to kill any bacteria and such that might've been hanging around.

madologist, a finn, shared a trivia dump about beer having a dedicated section in the most important poem in finnish culture, and then included a verse about beer, and then drank a beer, and you're going to tell them that finnish people don't have any cultural connection to the drink 😭 the technical stuff you said might be true but please consider the human experience

 

[rikahime]

I don't mind the series being short but I really hope 14 chapters are because the author intended it to be that long and not because it was cancelled.

 

[Quarterdane]

madologist, a finn, shared a trivia dump about beer having a dedicated section in the most important poem in finnish culture, and then included a verse about beer, and then drank a beer, and you're going to tell them that finnish people don't have any cultural connection to the drink 😭 the technical stuff you said might be true but please consider the human experience

I'm Finnish myself, and I know very well how many Finns love their beer (personally never developed a taste for it, though I do enjoy alcohol in other forms on occasion). I also wasn't claiming a lack of cultural connection to the stuff, only presuming that beer's importance was established/discovered first - due to the reasons I mentioned previously, and in more cultures/regions than just the Finnish one - with the inclusion into the culture (via oral tradition and such) having a more practical reason behind it besides "it tastes good/drinking it makes for a good time".

 

[donpom]

I'm Finnish myself, and I know very well how many Finns love their beer (personally never developed a taste for it, though I do enjoy alcohol in other forms on occasion). I also wasn't claiming a lack of cultural connection to the stuff, only presuming that beer's importance was established/discovered first - due to the reasons I mentioned previously, and in more cultures/regions than just the Finnish one - with the inclusion into the culture (via oral tradition and such) having a more practical reason behind it besides "it tastes good/drinking it makes for a good time".

Thanks for the clarification and additional context 😄 I do think there was definitely a "don't drink water (unsafe), drink alcohol (safe)" type thing that became tradition over time through trial and error for many peoples around the world, but i still don't think it would have become so prevalent and popular if it wasn't so enjoyed.

Regardless of what I think though, thanks for your input.

 

[Madologist]

I'd think that was less to do with any specific culture, and more related to how people back in the olden days didn't necessarily have constant access to good, potable water - so it was presumably safer to brew it into alcohol to kill any bacteria and such that might've been hanging around.