On my birthday, February 26, I was in three different countries over the course of the day. One of them was Finland. My class went on a “learning trip” (i.e. grown-up field trip) for a week. One of the results was an essay I had to write for class. I’m posting it here because, well, people might be interested in Finland. Or my time there. The tone is much less conversational than I usually use here, but I’m going with it:
Opiskelija. That is what I am, I learned in Finland. A student. At the bookstore in Hanken University in Helsinki, I bought a patch that said, “Opiskelijoiden tukikeskus.” I asked the cashier what that meant. He answered me in English. He said he had no idea. He was Norwegian. During one of our coffee breaks, I asked one of our fellow students, I think he was Finnish, at least he spoke Finnish, what the phrase meant. He told me, “Students’ Support Center.” He told me that the singular form is “opiskelija.” And voila, I had a Finnish name.
What surprised me about Finland? The language. Helsinki is a bilingual city, which means that each sign is written in Finnish and in Swedish. Hanken is a Swedish University in the capital of Helsinki. Apparently, many Finns speak Swedish but very few Swedes speak Finnish. A clear imbalance of power. A clear indication that Swedes, who speak the most grammatically correct English in the world, do not believe learning the language of a sister Nordic country is worth their time. I also learned that Nordic is different than Scandinavian and that both Finns and Swedes note, and value, this difference. Language is power, but knowing Finnish does not bequeath power: knowing Swedish and English does.
The power of English never seems fair to me, but I take full advantage of it. Perhaps this paradox inspires me to learn at least a few local words of any country I visit. One of my favorite words, because I can actually pronounce it, is “kiitos,” which means “thank you.” I began throwing this word around as though it meant “hello” or “good-bye” or “please” or “you’re welcome” or “how are you.” Along with provoking quizzical glances, “kiitos” caused people to (often) smile, which made me feel good. Although, I also experienced the slight surprise at my friendliness I often experience in all European cities. Americans are friendly and I am among one of the chattiest, which can make people uncomfortable. I would say, while not a source of a conflict, my friendliness at times caused tension between the Finns and me. Usually, though, after I consistently showed genuine interest in a person, s/he became more comfortable.
A true source of conflict, however, was the public drunkenness we witnessed in Finland. When we stayed in Oulu, we visited the karaoke bar on the ground floor of our Best Western. The only time I did so was on Sunday night, my birthday. I was so excited to do this because when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, my friends and I used to karaoke at the Best Western every other Friday. I was shocked, truly, that I could have exactly the same experience in Finland. In Oulu, no less, a city I had never even heard of until this trip.
Once we were there, however, I noticed significant differences between Tucson karaoke and Oulu karaoke. Namely, many of the locals there were falling down drunk. At home, if you even put your head down on a table (drunk or not) you will be asked to leave a bar. In Oulu, someone fell off a barstool and no one even went over to help him. Also, the poor boys in our group kept getting grabbed at by an incredibly drunk woman. We put Benoit in a booth and blocked both sides of him, but she leaned over the table and tried desperately to touch him. A lovesick teenager in a drunken, middle-aged woman’s body. It was so sad. But, we laughed. We really shouldn’t have.
Later, when I asked a professor about the drinking habits of the Finns, he did not answer the question. Perhaps it was not the place to ask such a question. Anyway, their drinking reminded me of people I saw in Russia when I lived in St. Petersburg for a summer over a decade ago. Is it the weather? The gray nights? The isolation? Or were these people simply not representative of the general Finnish character?
Another incident, though, stands out in my mind. I was sitting at the table when an older Finnish man, dressed like a lumber jack, came over, took my hands and escorted me to the dance floor, for all the world as though we were at a proper ball. He began to waltz with me and also to yell at me. I didn’t know why he was yelling at me. I thought, at first, it was because I was looking at my friends and laughing. Eventually, I realized it was because, when I wasn’t looking at my friends, I was looking at my feet. When I finally figured that out and stopped, he calmed down. He held me so that I had no choice but to follow his movements. At first, I could not relax and be led. But he told me to close my eyes and after a while, I felt that I was gliding across the floor. We finished in a swirl of grace. He thanked me. I thanked him. I sat down. He never once smiled at me. I later learned his name was Rape, pronounced Rah-pay.
The silence. We were supposed to notice the social silence of the Finns. Several professors remarked upon this aspect of the Finnish character. In addition, they said that Finns were blunt. Are they, though? When in Helsinki, I met two American men, both of whom are married to Finnish women. One is a bouncer at a bar/restaurant complex called Baker’s. The other, I believe, is a spy for the American government. The latter man, we met on the boat to Suomenlinna Island. He claimed that the Finns are passive-aggressive. Of course, he did not elaborate on this with examples, but he was very certain of this observation. He also said that Nokia demonstrated how nepotism and network wield an inordinate amount of power in this country. If one of the people who “ruined” Nokia is still in power because his the son of a former president, does this not belie “bluntness”? Would a blunt culture that values integrity more highly than almost anything else, as one of the professors claimed, stand for this behavior? Or would it elect 39 people of the “True Finn” party to its government? Why would none say, “This is bull shit. I do not accept this” and take action? Claims about cultures and cultural personalities are so inexact and contradictory, why do we bother making them?
But we do. We categorize, we generalize and we experience the world in the shadow of these decisions.
The first time I “saw” Finland, I was on the grounds of a Tsar’s palace in Russia. I was told to look out across gray water. I was told it was there, just past the horizon.
When I was in Finland, I hopped on a snow mobile and set off, over a frozen ocean, towards Sweden, which was over there, just past the horizon.
I zigged and zagged. Ice chips create flew up from the slats of the snow mobile, skittered across the snow, and glowed orange in the light of the setting sun.
