Mannerheim, the epic movie man

The past week Finns have been arguing what kind of movie adaption is ok when talking about C.G.E. Mannerheim, the marshal of Finland.

So who is this Mannerheim guy anyway? He was the leader of the Finnish army in the second world war. Tiny Finland fought against the great red army of Russia - technically Finland lost the war, but that's a minor detail, since Finland was able to maintain its formal independence, unlike Estonia, for example.

So Mannerheim is seen as a national hero in Finland. He has been voted as the greatest Finn of all times. If one could become a saint in Finland, he'd be the most sacred of them all. The following examples tell something about his position in our culture:

In the end of 1990's the construction site of Kiasma (the museum of contemporary art) took place right next to Mannerheim statue. The wall/fence of the construction site was pink - quite suitable for museum of contemporary art. But. The wall closest to Mannerheim statue had to be painted grey - since pink wasn't honorable enough for his statue.

Finnish movie director Renny Harlin (you may remember him directing Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger) and producer Markus Selin have been planning a massive movie production about Mannerheim. The planned movie has been showing off pre-marketing actions in a way that has never seen before in Finland. Too bad that the guys run out of money on the way, and the plans were first put on hold and eventually dumped. So no epic movie about Mannerheim, at least not from Harlin&Selin.

Couple of years back there was a puppet animation about Mannerheim, which of course caused a fuss. As a background, there are rumors about Mannerheim's sexual orientation, and in the animation there's an unconventional love scene. Which caused a storm in a tea kettle. And nobody didn't seem to notice that the animation itself was simply poor, it doesn't deserve even a half-a-star-rating.

And now, in 2012, there's been huge fuss about (yet another) Mannerheim movie: The Finnish broadcasting company has produced a short film about Mannerheim. The movie is made in Kenya and the role of Mannerheim is played by a Kenyan. And that's too much for most. Well, eventually it turned out that the film was a side product of a reality show, not a real movie. I wonder what kind of a fuss is on when the reality airs.

What next? There are still lots of genres left to be tried out...

     (C) Erik

Smoke on the water

One of the finest invention in the Finnish building history is the chimney. It may not be a Finnish invention but sure has had huge effect on the residents of Finland: I remember reading somewhere that the amount of eye infections and blindness were dropped enormously after the chimney started to gain popularity in the houses and the smoke from the ovens was led outside the house. Despite the total extinction of savupirtti, smoke houses, there is one historical remaining still left from the pre-chimney-era: savusauna, smoke sauna - a sauna with stove but without chimney.

Warming up savusauna is a whole day operation, it takes hours. Why? Because you need to keep the door open during the heating process - of course most of the heat runs away from the door. Smoke on the water, that's what you get when you're warming up a savusauna by the lake. But you must not close the door to speed up the heating, or else you'll just end up burning the whole sauna down or killing yourself with carbon monoxide. Something like 4 to 5 hours is enough to warm up the pile of stones on the stove and also the walls and ceiling.



You need to wait until the flames have burnt out from the very last piece of fire wood - only then you can hop in. But it's all worth the effort and waiting: the heat in the savusauna is unbelievably smooth. The smell can be a bit intrusive first and it takes a while until your eyes get used to the darkness and the remaining smoke - but the löyly, heat is like velvet, you cannot achieve it in any other type of sauna. The heat is mild and firm at the same time. You can actually stay much longer in savusauna, compared to the normal sauna. Just relax and lean back.

After bathing in savusauna you'll clearly notice that you have relaxed. And that you've leant back.

National traumas

Yesterday I attended a cultural awareness training. This particular lesson handled the (United States of) American culture, and the trainer was native American. I've attended cultural trainings also earlier, but this was the first one that didn't focus on comparing the American and Finnish cultures - which I found very positive. Why so positive? Well, firstly I think it was thoughtful, since not everybody in the audience were Finns. Secondly, we Finns are very eager to know what others think about us, so a comparison will eventually just strengthen our own self-image, and we forget to focus on the culture we came to learn about.

There was a quiz in the training, we had to do it in groups. One of the questions handled the US history: the trainer asked, what are the two biggest traumas in American history (according some official source, I didn't write down which one). The correct answer was the civil war and the great depression. Our group suggested 9/11 and Vietnam war. The trainer kindly advised us to hush about Vietnam.

I began to think what would be the two biggest traumas in the Finnish history. I guess part of the official answer would be the civil war in 1918, but honestly, how much does it affect on the life in 2012. Then there's of course the second world war, but in my opinion the second world war wasn't a national trauma, it created our national identity; individual level traumas are a whole different story then.

I think Finland's relationship to Russia over the times could be named as one of our national traumas. But what would be the other big national trauma? Self-evaluation is quite difficult. It's much easier to point out other cultures' traumas.

Road trip to Karelia

About a year ago I did a road trip back to my roots, to Karelia, to the places that used to be part of Finland but got under the Soviet reign after WW2.


We crossed the border at Imatra / Enso, stopped by at Kirvu (my family from dad's side is from Kirvu) drove by Lake Ladoga, stopped for the night at Sortavala, then went to see Kollaa, one of the most intense fighting fronts of the war between Finland and Russia. Eventually we got back to our side of the border at Värtsilä.


It was amazing to see how the time had almost stopped there. Most of the houses had not been touched since the Finns were evacuated in the mid-1940's.


I don't know if it was the weather, but it was somehow misty, nostalgic and a bit spooky there. For example the forests in the old Karelia were really wild and wanton. In Finland the forests are clean and like economic pine fields.


Yes, the nature was wild indeed. A lamb joined us when we were having picnic in Kirvu.


Roads and other infrastructure were really bad from time to time.


Quite many churches were demolished on the soviet times.


But the pearls of the soviet architecture were still standing tall.


This was the garrison where my grandpa from mom's side was called right before the war begun.


And the same building from the inside. Houston, we have a moisture problem.


Trenches and dugouts at Kollaa where my grandpa was fighting in 1941 - 1944. There were pieces of metal everywhere - you only needed to kick the ground a bit and you could hit your shoe into a boot of a Russian soldier.


Our hotel in Sortavala. Not exactly five star residence, but it wasn't that bad from the inside.


You could spot this particular shade of blue everywhere: in railings, window frames, doors, benches, cars, bus stops... Didn't feel like leaning on the railing though.

Why did I want to post these pics? Well, I wanted to show that even though some (usually older) people see Karelia as the golden dreamland which they want back and where they want to return to - the current state of affairs is far from romantic. We were actually quite lucky. On the other hand, I also wanted to show that there are exotic resorts right next to you. You don't need to search for adventures too far.

Four classics of Finnish literature

Kalevala. Elias Lönnrot collected traditional poems into national epic. Nowadays there are huge amount of streets, suburbs and companies in Finland named after Kalevala. Nerds, attention: J.R. Tolkien was inspired by Kalevala, and the outcome of his inspiration was the Lord of the Rings.

Plot in a nutshell: An old guy falls in love with a young girl. A younger guy has also his eyes on the girl. The old guy sings the young guy into swamp. A blacksmith makes a money-making machine. A bitch from north tries to steal the machine, and the old guy and his folk try to protect the machine.

Seitsemän veljestä - Seven brothers. Written by Aleksis Kivi. Kick-off for realism in the Finnish literature. Also a kick-off for respecting Finnish language within Finnish literature (until this the Finnish writers were writing mostly in Swedish).
Plot in a nutshell: Seven brothers are trying to learn to read. The youngest of the brothers starts to read first. Heard of bulls are chasing the brothers, the brothers survive barely by climbing on top of a stone. Some of the brothers get married.

Tuntematon sotilas - Unknown soldier. A mediocre war novel about Finnish battles in WW2 written by Väinö Linna. The whole story relies heavily on the stereotypes of Finnish tribes and dialects. Due to the dialects the English translation just doesn't work.

Plot in a nutshell: Finnish men are called into duty in summer 1941. The war starts. Some die. Some are not taking orders. Finns are fighting persistently against the giant foe, but still they loose the war.

Nuorena nukkunut - The maid Silja. Written by F.E. Sillanpää, who's the only Finnish writer awarded with Nobel prize in literature. 

Plot in a nutshell: There is a servant girl named Silja. She gets laid once and misses the guy until her last breath. I've read the novel twice, but I can't remember anything particular about it. Which probably tells something.

If you're planning to tackle a classic piece of Finnish literature - especially translated into English - I can't recommend any of the classics listed above, to be perfectly honest. They are meaningful stories and they have their place in the history, but they may not be the nicest ones to start with. If you want to read fine Finnish novels translated into English, I'd recommend you to grab on The Egyptian by Mika Waltari or Purge by Sofi Oksanen. I'd like to recommend also Vadelmavenepakolainen ("raspberry boat refugee") by Miika Nousiainen, but unfortunately it's not translated to English (yet).

Party animal

Tomorrow, January 13th, is Nuutinpäivä, Knut's day. It's the end of the christmas. I'm not very familiar with the Knut's day tradition, so I decided to educate myself about this matter.

According the old Finnish law, the christmas peace, joulurauha, was declared on the christmas eve and it lasted for 20 days - which means that the peace period ended on Knut's day. That's why Knut's day was quite of a carnival: men were dressed as women, women were dressed as men, some were dressed as goat, Nuuttipukki, wearing a mask and fur coat inside out. People were going around from house to house, making tricks, drinking the leftovers of christmas beer, making noise and causing hassle.

A Nuuttipukki mask from the 19th century. Image by Museovirasto.

I've understood the Knut riots eventually died out around the second world war, and the tradition was more common in the western Finland. The east side was doing the same kind of goat riots on kekri, after the harvesting season; they were dressed as kekripukki. And in fact, joulupukki, "Christmas goat" (the real version of Santa Claus) belongs to the same goat family.

One thing still makes me wonder. Out of all the animals, why pukki, goat has had such a special role? Well, what ever the reason was, pukki seemed to be one hell of a party animal.

Living next door to Alice? Not...

Let's make this clear:

Joulupukki, Santa Claus, Father Christmas - he lives in Finland, in Korvatunturi to be more precise. Not the North Pole. Not Canada. Neither in Sweden.

Jääkarhu, polar bear lives in North Pole. Not in Finland. Ranua Zoo doesn't count.

Lumimies, yeti. You can never tell with the yetis...

The urban history

There are 108 cities or towns in Finland. Most of the cities are nice - in summer. According to the city marketing department, their city is the most unique place with fascinating history, clean nature, and generally, it's the ideal place to live your life and practice your business.

In reality there are three cities in Finland. Each of them have intriguing history. Right.

1) Turku
Former capital. Has always been there, excluding the times it was burnt down. Finnish language was invented in Turku, which is scary because Turku dialect sounds as if lamb was baaing in Finnish.

2) Helsinki
Current capital. Was established by a king of a neighbor country, and he had to force people to move into Helsinki.

3) Other 106 places with the legal status of town
The foundation of the town was established in the end of the last ice age, when the melting ice and snow run into rivers. 11 500 years later someone decided to build a tissue paper factory by the river and set up two concrete block houses. 45 years later someone decided to quit the paper factory and merge the town with the neighbor town.

So there are 108 cities in Finland - in summer. And nearly each of the 108 cities host some sort of a festival during the summer time. But only three of the cities are not sleeping on winter: Helsinki, Turku and Tampere. Tampere is the only town from the third category that has managed to turn into something like city.