Kristina från Duvemåla

Yesterday I went to see musical called Kristina från Duvemåla (Kristina from Duvemåla) in the recently renovated Swedish Theater.

The story is based on Swedish epic about immigrants who moved from Sweden to America in the late 19th century. The musical is written by the ABBA guys Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus - but the music was not exactly Waterloo or Dancing Queen type of songs. But I liked the it. However, it wasn't the compositions or the story that made the musical good; the key was the leading actress Maria Ylipää and her beautiful, beautiful voice. She didn't sound like a traditional "singing actress", and she wasn't "acting singer" either (although her role was mostly to sing, not to act), but her voice was simply clear, flawless and beautiful.

Unfortunately you can't use words "flawless" or "beautiful" to describe her wig. It was a clear wig, a clumsy one. She had to be transformed into a blond, as Swedes do, but the wig was horrible. Another negative side of the musical was the duration: it lasted for 4 hours. I know it's difficult to be compact, and therefore I respect it so highly - but I'm sure they could have squeezed it into 3 hours.

All in all, great music, smart stage design and jolly good actors. If you want to go and see a musical in Finland, I recommend you to take the Swedish option. Last year I went to see Les Miserables in Turku Swedish Theater, and that was excellent too - better than the Finnish version in the Helsinki City Theater some years ago.

Some advice if you go and check Kristina:

• The musical is sold out for many months on, but it's definitely worth asking for cancellation tickets if you're ready for short notice.
• If you're booking tickets right now and considering the balcony seats, book your seats on the left balcony. The actors are spending quite a lot of time at the right side of the stage, so you'll have better view on the left.
• Wear a light jacket. They have a weird, small, semi-unattended wardrobe, so you might want to take your jacket with you into hall.
• The break is 30 minutes, in case you want to optimize the toilet business. After 20 minutes of the break the queue in the ladies room was gone.

Hurraa!

Yes, it's a royal tea bag.

My best imaginary friend crown princess Victoria of Sweden and prince Daniel got their first child yesterday. Today the palace announced that the baby princess is called Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary. Good names. Too bad that the names of the royals are no longer translated into Finnish. For example Victoria's dad, king Carl Gustaf is Kaarle Kustaa in Finnish. Queen Elizabeth is called Elisabet and all the king Georges are called as Yrjö in Finnish. Kate Middleton's full name is Catherine Elizabeth, and I must say I'm truly sorry for the future queen of England not having her name translated into Finnish (the fact that my full name is Katri Elisa has nothing to do with this issue).

Let's see if the popularity of Estelle picks up - since 2010 six little girls have been given the name Estelle in Finland.

Swedish, a sweet dish?

Finland is a bilingual country, the official languages being Finnish and Swedish. About 90% of the population speaks Finnish and about 5% Swedish as their mother tongue. In most of the schools Finnish speaking kids start studying Swedish on the seventh grade. And if you're living in 100% Finnish speaking area (such as my home town Lappeenranta), you're in the worst phase of your teenage life and you're having a Swedish teacher who has the least possible amount of charisma and teaching skills... well, that's why many people feel they are forced to study Swedish.

I never felt like I was forced to study Swedish. I've always thought it's pretty natural to study other languages, at least couple of them, if your mother tongue is used by only 5 million other people. On the other hand, I must admit that nowadays it would more useful to study Russian, Chinese or Spanish rather than Swedish. But the bottom line is that learning almost any language is good for you.

In general these articles written by Ilkka Malmberg are a cliche, but the graph is quite to the point. Yellow color represents the area where Swedish can be considered more useful than Russian language, whereas in the orange area it's quite the opposite. The striped area is somewhere in between.

And you never know when you really need your second language. You may end up being married to a person from another language background. Today I'm quite happy I was awake in the Swedish class, and because of that I'm able to understand what my in-laws are speaking. My own Swedish output may not be super fluent - but a schnapps (or four) of akvavit usually helps.