English Translation
Once upon a time, there lived an old man.
Isn’t something missing here? If ‘olipa kerran’ means ‘once upon a time’ then a verb should be added to the second half of the sentence.
Well, literally it means “There was once an old man”. “Olipa kerran” is just the way fairy tales start in finnish.
German, for example, does basically the same: “Es war einmal ein alter Mann”.
So “olipa” corresponds to “there lived”, and “kerran” is “once upon a time” reduced to just “once”.