7 posts tagged “finland”

Over at Ellie's blog I recently mentioned the Helsinki scene from Jim Jarmusch's film Night on Earth, and, thanks to YouTube, I thought I'd share it more broadly.  He's one of my favourite directors and, at the risk of sounding like a complete wanker, I'll say that he's the only non-Finn I've ever seen who "gets it" about them. 

Now I should also say that while the whole thing is sprinkled with a wonderfully touching sense of pathos, part 2 has a particularly sad story that is quite affecting, especially if you're at all sensitive about premature births.  Stay with it if you can though.  Enjoy.

Must admit I'm feeling a bit taken aback by the news of the shooting in the western Finland town of Kauhajoki.  It was only about 10 months ago that there was a similar incident in the small town of Jokela, and it looks like this latest incident has prompted the Finnish Parliament to start examining existing gun laws.

In the wake of the Jokela shooting, the Helsingin Sanomat (the main broadsheet newspaper in Helsinki) had an article about how it was easier to get a gun licence (albeit for a restricted type of firearm) than a driver's licence -

It is easier to get a gun permit in Finland than a driving licence, for which driving lessons and a doctor's certificate are needed.  A directive on firearms is in the making in the European Union, which would raise the age limits for getting a firearm permit. Finland is the only member state opposed to the change.  The European Parliament feels that those 18 and over would be allowed to use guns only for hunting or sports shooting, and that adult supervision would be required in such cases. Finland does not want to accept these restrictions.

I heard on the radio this morning that Finland has the third highest rate of gun ownership in the world, but it doesn't really have a "gun culture" akin to that considered to exist in the US.  Gun ownership isn't a big deal as an everyday political issue.  Guns are simply a hunting tool or a legitimate piece of sporting equipment.  See this recent article about bear hunting -  

What do a newspaper delivery man and a bear hunter have in common? The same working hours. 

At 4 a.m., six hunters are tilting their cups at the laavu [a kind of forest lean-to] of a local sports club in Vuonislahti, near Joensuu. The cups contain strong coffee, but absolutely nothing stronger.  Hunting, particularly bear hunting, is a sport for the clear-headed only. Yet accidents do happen. A wounded brown bear could attack the hunters. This is what happened some weeks ago in Kajaani.  However, unfortunate incidents like this are rare, as the hunters are an experienced bunch. Very few people start their hunting hobby at the deep end, shooting bear. 

You have to ask why, after Matti Saari (the gunman) had been questioned by local police after the YouTube video was posted (with much more attention paid to this sort of thing following the Jokela shootings), they didn't at least take his firearm away.  Though perhaps the actual letter of the law doesn't allow for the police to take this sort of action, which means the proposed Parliamentary review will have a few starting points to consider.

Kauhajoki (translated literally it means "ladle river") is just a small town in the Pohjanmaa region, which is the Swedish-Finnish part of the country.  From what I understand the area is sort of the base for the main right-wing political party, but I'm certainly not drawing any links by noting this.  It's an everyday small town with everyday people. 

The gunman's surname, Saari (a common enough one) means "island".  Why did Matti feel so isolated?  Was it a specific problem with a mental illness, or a horrible escalation of the Finnish tendency to experience bouts of melancholia?  I can't help wondering if this incident, and last year's, highlights a nasty undercurrent in the Finnish collective psyche.  Will be keeping my eyes open for further articles on the subject.

I've mentioned previously (in a terribly long winded post, my apologies) that I was trying my hand at baking for the first time.  Not a big deal, I know, but try to picture a tall, slightly clumsy and inept man getting covered in flour in the kitchen and you get the idea.  Happy to report that the first attempt at plain old bread turned out really well, good crust and all, followed by similarly successful efforts at foccaccia and naan bread - so I've got meal accompianments sorted.

Having had some luck with those, and now being familiar with the techniques involved, I thought I'd finally have a go at traditional finnish coffee (as in having with coffee) bread, pulla.  More accurately, a type of korvapuusti as I've added dried fruit and spices.  After a quick consultative phone call with mum I was ready to go, here are the photos:

Make the dough and, thanks to the cooler weather and a cool house, put outside in the sun for about 4 hours to rise.  Bring it back in and start to knead it again.

At this point, "someone" decides they'd rather like my attention please (note the Meg and Mog book left artfully on the floor to press the issue).  That taken care of, dough gets rolled out, then the good stuff is added on top.

Rolled in before cutting into rounds, then check that The Boy is still happily distracted (thank you Play School! - not something I ever make a habit of, mind), leave it to rise again for a while before it's ready to go in.

The finnished product

You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard that particular pun on "finnish".  Turns out that I put it in for a touch too long at a touch too high a heat considering we have a fan-forced oven, but the outside was "good" crispy and the inside was lovely and soft.  So yeah, it worked out really well.

It also happens that I baked it in time for K and her mum to arrive home to a sugary, cinnamonny-smelling house - extra brownie points for the son-in-law! 

So that's that done, I've made a few adjustments to the recipe which I'll use in future, next one will probably be a straight out braided one without all the fruit added.  Happy to share the recipe upon request, maybe in comments or something.

After I get my confidence up a bit more, I'll look at trying my hand at some dark, chunky rye breads and, much harder but another that I've been wanting to make for ages, karjalan piirakka, a type of pastie from eastern Finland that has all these Proustian-level associations for me. 

Up on one of our walls in the living area is a framed certificate given to my mother on the 10th January 1958, who was then just nine years old, marking her crossing of the equator on the boat bringing her and her family to Australia.  The Australia Day long weekend made it fifty years since they arrived here from Finland, another part of the post-war migration history of this country.

I've often thought what it must have been like for my mother's family, leaving the familiar surrounds of Lappeenranta to make a new life on the other side of the world in a country they'd barely heard of.  It's a beautiful little town.  From what I understand, my grandfather discussed it at length with his neighbours and good friends, the Tarjavaaras, and they made a joint decision to come out here.  Pappa was doing ok for himself as a builder, and I've gotten the impression over the years that a possible political career through the trade union was also in the offing, but along with many other Finns they decided to move on.  I think they considered Canada (similar climate at least) but for whatever reason Australia was the final choice.

So here I am, here we all are, fifty years on.  At last count my grandparents' family of five has grown to include six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, with me as the southern outpost here in Canberra and my uncle, Ossi, the furthest up north in Cairns.  My mother, to her credit, actually organised a reunion of sorts in Sydney for all those who travelled aboard the ship, the Skaupa I think it was.

I'm now thinking about marking the anniversary this year by organising for their names to be added to the Welcome Wall at the Australian National Maritime Museum, but we'll see.  Would be best to run it by the family first, perhaps.   

Friday evening, 18th January, I've trudged up Pitt St from Sydney Central station to Angel Place recital hall after a back-tiring four hour bus trip from Canberra, soaked and sweaty from the rain I changed shirts in the toilet and had a couple of rehydrating beers in the foyer with my companions.

A touch after 9:30pm Pohjonen enters from stage left, in an industrial apron and silvery vest cut off at the arms, teutonic, impassive, he sits down, changes a couple of settings on the desk to his right, hoists his accordion to his chest and we're away.

The following hour is, for me, completely absorbing.  What he does is sets up the rhythmic and underpinning bass sounds, loops them with the effects pedals (ably assisted by his sound engineer Jukka Kaven, who swirls the music around the hall and beefs up the bass as required) and then runs away with his melodic and harmonic themes over the top.  He uses these wonderful traditional finnish folk elements and riffs as the jumping off point for a broader exploration of the capabilities of the instrument.

There were a couple of pieces that really stood out for me.  Song 4 started with the valves off and the bellows moving back and forth, the accordion breathing, like the lungs of the sleeping Kalevala giant, Antero, then the sound is looped and augmented and now it's oceanic, the sea in the harbour, and Pohjonen plays an orchestra of harmony through several movements.  The music finishes but the breathing's still there.  Piece 5 has no accordion at all and is purely vocal, with a percussive clicking from an open mouth that sounds like winter's ice breaking in spring, Pohjonen has a good voice but he uses it for effect and avant-gardeish howls.  Song 6, the final of the set before the obligatory encores, is basically the soundtrack to the end of the world. 

Before the clapping is done Pohjonen comes on for an encore, apologising for bringing the weather with him from Helsinki.  He plays two more pieces, the last of which is the one I've included here - it's poor quality but it comes through.  In a way, it felt like a nod to the old Finns in the audience who would have come perhaps hoping for a more traditional display of his ability, though they wouldn't have been disappointed.  It's a beautiful piece, as melancholic as it needs to be but assuring, too. 

It was a wonderful experience, giving me much to consider from musical and technical points of view.  If I ever manage to get my hands on an accordion I think I've got a pretty good idea of how to proceed, of the bellows as lungs, of the importance of breathing, phrasing, of finding the voice of the instrument.

Few links with further info:

Brief interview with Kimmo in the SMH;

Review of the performance, also in the SMH; and

More YouTube videos.

It may be unexpected, but I have actually been wanting to purchase and learn to play a piano accordion for some time now.  Seriously.  Not for your polka type music or anything (though a few They Might Be Giants covers spring immediately to mind), but more for the idea of being able to play music for tango, of eventually being one of those charming old chaps sitting out in the sun in a suburban market, beret and rumpled shirt, playing old continental european tunes just for the sheer heck of it and the occasional coin for coffee.   

I was reminded of this until-now-relatively-unspoken-desire* this evening when I caught Radio National's Into The Music programme which was about music and fashion, and which had some really interesting stuff about the tango.  And as I thought they might, they touched on the Finnish love of the style -

What we certainly do know is that the tango first became popular in Buenos Aires in the 1880s, really as a dance of the underclasses in the suburban slums. Only after it had travelled to Europe around the turn of the century was it embraced by the whole of Argentine society. Some of the early tangos had words, and the French-born Carlos Gardel in particular developed the tango song, which was passionate and gloomy in more or less equal measure. Perhaps this is why it appealed so much to the Finns. Because, strange as it may seem, the tango remains the unofficial national dance of Finland.

The tango arrived in Finland from Germany where it had collected traces of the military march and so become a little more four-square than the Argentinian version. At the height of its popularity in the 1920s, the tango was a pan-European fashion, but long after it had receded it still retained its popularity in Finland. It's popular there today, especially in vocal music, having become a sort of tragic Nordic form of country and western. If nothing else, I suppose, this explains why Finland always comes last in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Ahem. An old joke, that one.  I was going to get all huffy and indignant but then I noticed that the programme was first broadcast in July 2005, well before monster-rockers Lordi.  I see also that the researcher has a Finnish name, which perhaps explains its inclusion.

But anyway,  I love that line "a sort of tragic Nordic form of country and western".  There are some Finns who maintain, in typically inscrutable fashion (i.e. is he bullshitting me or not?), that it actually originated there and was subsequently exported to Latin America. 

My only trip there actually gave me an opportunity to inherit my great uncle Mikko's piano accordion with his full encouragement and consent (he and I share a common ear for music, much to his pleasure), but I regrettably turned it down at the time as the logistics of lugging it around the rest of the country and then all the way home escaped me.  

*K's been well aware of my desire to have such an instrument, and, while admirably patient and forbearing in the face of my enthusiasm, was able to thwart it by our then living conditions - shared walls with neighbours either side.  But in our new digs I am now looking at The Shed with an ever so slightly renewed sense of hope. 

In what could be one of the most tangential and opportunistic links to International Women's Day you're likely to see, I'd just like to point out that Finland was one of the first modern democracies to give women both the right to vote and to stand for Parliament, with 19 women elected to the first Parliament sitting in 1907. 

Here's a picture of 13 of these women via Wiki:

I'm not quite sure what to say about it - I mean, I don't want to make fun of it as I should really have more of a sense of gravitas about it all, just like they do (uh, or did, rather).  I will, however, note that there are women in the photograph sharing a remarkable resemblance to my mother, my aunt, and both of my sisters.  Bit of a small gene pool that one apparently.

Aaaaanyway, I mention all this as today also happens to be the day I voted for the first time in the Finnish Parliamentary elections.  And after all the research I'd done into the candidates and parties, with lots of trying to translate finnish language web pages into a rudimentary sort of english equivalent, and working out who was the right candidate for my particular set of political beliefs, it was, typically for the democratic experience I'd suggest, a bit of an anti-climax. 

The embassy had a beaten up old ford pickup truck out the front, which I promptly recognised was the type to belong to a beaten up old finnish bloke (and I use the term "bloke" deliberately, as a shared characteristic of Finnish and Australian masculinity), who also happened to be the electoral officer on duty.  After the usual "sorry mate, don't speak much Finnish, know how to order a beer and how to swear, ha ha ha..." routine he was kind enough to take me through the process.  Whole thing from go to whoa took me about 5 minutes.  There was a part of me hoping for a Finnish version of the Australian "schoolkids selling sausages on a roll out the front" voting experience (snowcones? pickled herrings? lots and lots of coffee?) but alas, 'twas not to be. 

Now the whole point of this post was, originally, to refer you to a bit of a puff piece at the Smithsonian Magazine about Helsinki.  Worth visiting - and don't forget to nude up for the sauna -

Two sauna sessions later, we move into the "social room" for beer and open-faced herring-and-egg sandwiches. "Some people believe that sauna began as a prehistoric ritual to celebrate a successful hunt," says Viinikka. Can sauna reduce high blood pressure and tension? Is it good for the lungs and kidneys? Does it clean out pores and rejuvenate the skin? "There really is very little medical evidence to support whether or not sauna is good for the health," he answers, to my surprise. "Most important, sauna feels good—and it is a great way to socialize with friends."