Finnish Love

There is an old saying here that only on two occasions will a Finnish husband and wife actually say aloud the words “Minä rakastan sinua”. (“I love you”). One is on their wedding day. The other is on their deathbed.  

Okay, it’s a joke. I think. It does illustrate, though, how Finns are not widely considered to be the most expressive people in the world, even when it comes to matters of the heart. It’s not that Finns aren’t romantic, in their own way. It’s more that they don’t make a big deal about it. Or a public spectacle. This isn’t Paris, after all.

It's not as if here, like anywhere else, love isn't the most consuming human emotion there is. The airwaves (or, more likely nowadays, the broadband streams) are full of a never-ending string of romantic pop songs. A current Finnish favorite is titled “Kolme pientä sanaa” (“Three Little Words”). No prize for guessing what those three little words are. No, it’s not “Missä on olutta?” (“Where’s the beer?”). 

Another well-worn Finnish joke marries romance with a certain politician’s awkwardness with the English language. Supposedly, Ahti Karjalainen, foreign minister back in the 60s and 70s, became smitten, so the joke goes, with an English girl he met in London. On a romantic evening out, he was leading her gracefully around the dance floor when he mustered up the courage to glaze into her eyes and tell her in his uncomfortable English, “I love you.”

Without hesitation, the girl softly whispered, “I love you, too.”

Ahti, not to be outdone, excitedly blurted out, “I love you three!”

Maybe it’s folk humor like that that makes Finns keep their more amorous feelings to themselves.

Kidding aside, Finns really do do some things differently. That was impressed upon me a few years ago when I had a minor cross-cultural insight at the big transnational company where I worked. For years, I had been the only American in a team of eight or so colleagues, mostly Finnish. My “sole Yank” status changed, however, when we got a new boss, a fellow American, and I was reminded how free Americans can be with the L-word.

Rooted all day in our tight cluster of cubicles tucked away in one corner of the office, we couldn’t help overhearing each other’s various phone conversations, including personal calls with husbands, wives, and kids.

What I noticed very quickly after our new American boss arrived was how he ended his brief phone calls with family members in a way that no one else in our team ever did. He always signed off with a “Love you”. Every single time, no matter how mundane the call.

I’d forgotten how very typical this is in the States, and it made me realize how assimilated to Finnish customs I’ve apparently become, in one small way at least. Or maybe I’m by nature just a hopeless unromantic. In any case, I have probably never finished a call to my wife with a “Love you”. Not even once.

It’s not that I don’t love my wife, but it’s not something she would expect me to remind her of after discussing which one of us was picking up the kids from daycare or whether we still had milk at home. It’s not how they do it here.

In fact, I’m sure that if I ever did end one of our phone calls with the words “I love you”, my very Finnish wife would think something was very wrong indeed. 

Gun Culture

When I was in high school, I spent a part of every summer backpacking with my brother and our friends on trips of up a week in length. Often we hiked on the Appalachian Trail, the famous footpath that snakes its way some 3500 kilometers (2200 miles) from up near the Canadian border in Maine southward to a mountaintop deep in Dixie (in fact on the edge of my home county in Georgia).

I remember on one such trip meeting a solitary hiker as we approached Tesnatee Gap, a shallow pass where the AT dips down to a scenic two-lane highway crossing the Blue Ridge mountains of Georgia. The hiker we met was from New Jersey, probably a “through hiker”, those hardy souls who hike the entire length of the AT, usually from north to south. I still remember this encounter decades later mainly because this hiker from the Garden State was a little rattled by something he had seen just before we met him.

He explained that in the little parking lot back at Tesnatee Gap there had been someone in a pickup truck – with two rifles prominently displayed in a gun-rack inside the cab’s rear window. The presence of the guns had clearly unnerved him. As I recall, upon hearing the “Yankee” hiker’s concerns, most of my hiking companions, all local Georgians, just shrugged our shoulders.

Typical pro-gun Facebook photo.

We couldn’t see what the big deal was. As Southerners, we were fairly used to having guns around, and hunting rifles in a gun-rack in a pickup truck, well, it’s practically a fashion statement in some places, though nowadays it might be more of a political statement.

That short chat with a stranger randomly met on a ribbon of worn dirt, almost swallowed in the lush vegetation of summer and stretching all the way back to Maine, was perhaps my first inkling that, when it comes to guns, the South is different.

At least, it used to be different from much of the rest of the US. Maybe it was just ahead of its time. And that, in my mind, is not something to be proud of.

America as a whole has always had some kind of gun culture, born as the nation was out of armed revolt against Britain and the violent conquest of Native Americans. Though I’m no authority on other parts of the US, the “culture” of guns has always seemed to run deeper in the South, where the history of armed revolt didn’t stop with the Revolutionary War and the tradition of hunting seems more ingrained than in other, less rural and impoverished, regions of the US.

Many Southerners like to hunt. And they like guns. They, in a sense, have a close personal relationship with them.

I recall hearing how during the Vietnam War commanders would often tap a platoon’s ever-present Southerner to be the “point man” when going out on patrol, because they were supposed to be better hunters and shooters. Maybe that’s a myth, though it’s one happily fostered by Hollywood in such movies as “Saving Private Ryan”, where the expert sniper in the band of brothers led by Tom Hanks was an unmistakable Southerner.

While the shooting skills of Southerners wasn’t enough to ultimately give them in the upper hand in the Civil War – since they lost – they were presumably better than those of the other side. An army commander from New York was so dismayed by the poor marksmanship of the Union infantry, which managed to hit only one Confederate soldier out of 1000 shots fired, that after the war he helped create an organization to improve the aim of Americans. That group, the National Rifle Association, nowadays seems dedicated more to ensuring that disgruntled secessionists can fight against the United States.

When I was growing up, we always had guns in the house, since my father was a serious hunter. He hunted everything from grouse to rabbits to squirrels to, later in life, turkeys. But his big passion was deer hunting, and I still have fond memories of being with him on some ridge top watching the sun rise on a cold winter day, staying deadly quiet so we could hear any tiny sound of a deer approaching through the woods.

Another photo proudly shared on Facebook.

If I remember correctly, we had at least three deer rifles, a couple of smaller-caliber rifles, at least one shotgun, and a revolver. We had a gun rack in our truck. My father often carried .22 shells around in his pocket, just out of habit. Guns were just a fixture in the house. And, all of our guns, except the revolver, were strictly for hunting. I don’t recall my father ever explicitly mentioning self-defense as a reason to have any of our guns, though maybe that just went without saying.

So, I do understand how “normal” it feels for many Americans to have guns. I understand the “benign” use of guns by hunters, though I long ago stopped hunting myself and have no plans to start again. I understand that some people want guns for personal security, though I think that's often exaggerated. I might even understand shooting for sport, especially if it’s for target practice and not just for the “thrill” of it.

What I don’t understand is the fetishism surrounding guns, or the pervasive fear of “tyrannical” governments that apparently grips so many supporters of “gun rights”. Many gun advocates say that guns are merely “tools”, but it seems to me that for far too many of them, guns have become more than that. Guns have almost taken on a mystical quality, becoming practically an object of worship for some people.

If that sounds like I’m going too far, then you can’t deny that some people have ascribed guns with an importance that goes far beyond their actual use in everyday life (which hopefully is rare). They have become emotionally invested in guns in a way that to me seems irrational, or unhealthy, or just silly. Why else would anyone dream up a new holiday, “Gun Appreciation Day” (which happens to be today) if they weren’t, um, a little too attached to their firearms?

The same goes for the delusional notion that privately held guns are all that’s holding back  those menacing black helicopters full of “jack-booted government thugs” (to use the elegant phrasing of Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA) that are ready to swoop in and oppress Constitution-loving Americans. That is a long way from shooting contests or rabbit hunting. It’s a long way down into one very strange rabbit-hole.

Finland itself is a country with a strong hunting culture and one of the highest levels of gun ownership of any nation in Europe (reportedly something like 32 to 45 guns per 100 people, compared to America’s 86). But I know no one here who obsesses over firearms the way I see many Americans doing. None of my Finnish friends ever shares gun-related memes on Facebook (it’s not a political issue here). And I can’t imagine anyone here posting a video on Youtube openly threatening a killing spree if even the smallest measures are taken to restrict access to guns.

In short, Finland doesn’t have “gun culture”, and I wish America didn’t either. I for one won’t be wishing anyone a Happy Gun Day today.

Hesari

Back in 1986, after living in Finland for four years, I returned to the States to study journalism at the University of Georgia. One of the courses I took on my way to a non-existent future job in the Fourth Estate was “International Communications”, a course that surveyed what passes for journalism in different corners of the globe.

Part of the coursework for this class involved each student giving a presentation about the media of some foreign country. Naturally, I chose Finland.

Luckily, I happened to have a prop I could use for my presentation, an actual copy of a Finnish newspaper, in fact the country’s premier paper, the Helsingin Sanomat.

Hesari, as Finns like to call it, is something of an institution here, a 124-year-old broadsheet that is practically revered by a nation that is one of the most voraciously literate in the world. Looking at it in an American context, Hesari enjoys the gravitas and pedigree of The New York Times, but with 15 times the readership on a per capita basis).

The paper is said to have the biggest circulation of any in the Nordic countries, amazing when you consider that, population-wise, Finland is smaller than Denmark and roughly half the size of Nordic heavyweight Sweden. Another way to look at it is that Hesari enjoys a near-monopoly status not matched by say, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s biggest broadsheet daily.

In Finland, some 400,000 (or 8% of the population) subscribe to Hesari, which supposedly reaches 75% of households in the home market of Greater Helsinki. That’s something I’m sure the Times could never even aspire to. In short, it’s damn near ubiquitous.   

So, it’s no surprise that it was a big deal this week when the Helsingin Sanomat switched from a broadsheet format to tabloid size. I’m sure there was some trepidation about what the change would mean for this icon of Finnish media. TV news crews were on hand at the factory as the last broadsheet copies came off the presses, and the nation had to wait a full day without Hesari in any format before it, reborn as a not-so-broadsheet, again hit the streets early Tuesday morning.

From what I’ve heard, mostly second-hand, the Finnish public has adjusted well enough to having its printed news squeezed into a narrower space. I haven’t seen the new version myself, since we took the opportunity to move completely from paper to an on-line subscription (with the bonus of giving us an excuse to finally buy an iPad).

Even with its new size, Hesari still follows a policy that's unique when it comes to deciding what goes the front page. Basically, it comes down to money. Page One content is always determined by who’s willing to pay for it.

I still remember how, when I made my little presentation in Athens almost thirty years ago, even the professor was somewhat surprised when I held up my copy of Hesari. The reason is that the front page was covered with nothing but advertisements (and costly ones, too). That’s how Hesari does it. Journalistic content starts only on page two, making this paper probably the only national daily anywhere to take this, um, “up front” approach to advertizing.

And so, in keeping with this tradition, the front page of the very last broadsheet edition, issued on Sunday, featured an appropriately traditional ad, one for an 80-year-old brand of cheese called “Koskenlaskija” (which translates roughly as “rapids skier”).

The full-page ad, with its vintage graphic of a rather determined-looking blond-headed log driver navigating through whitewater rapids, seems like a perfect way to evoke the long history of a venerable newspaper willing to rock the boat a little by making a big change -- and sell a little cheese at the same time. 

Sandy Hook

Last summer, after the shooting death of a dozen people in a Colorado movie theater, I decided that such senseless killings on a sickening scale are perfectly “acceptable” to the American people.

There seemed no other explanation for the lack of serious response by the public and politicians. Almost no one dared speak out in favor of restricting access to the type of so-called assault rifle used in the Colorado massacre. Apparently, even that killing spree, and the one at a Sikh temple two weeks later, was too routine to spark any real outrage. It was shrugged off. I found this extremely frustrating and wrote at the time:

“There must be a frequency and scale of gun deaths at which public opinion finally turns vigorously against the gun lobby. What would be that tipping point be?”

Now maybe we know.

The tipping point seems to be the cold-blooded murder of twenty innocent children in a ten-minute rampage in a first-grade classroom in Connecticut. The horror was unimaginable. The grief has been overpowering. And the response – this time – may be different.

There are encouraging signs. A Democratic Senator has vowed to reinstate the assault weapons ban that was allowed to lapse in 2004, and President Obama, who has been mostly silent on the issue of gun control in his first term, has finally promised to do something. He has announced a commission to find solutions to this “epidemic of gun violence”.

Protests have been held outside the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, the all-powerful gun lobby. The NRA seems to be hunkering down, keeping a low profile in the face of a spike in anti-gun public opinion. It was silent for four days after the shooting, no public statements, no tweets, and its Facebook page temporarily going dark.

At the same time, support for greater gun control is far from universal. The shooting at Sandy Hook hasn’t likely shaken the firm belief of the most ardent gun lovers that the Second Amendment is all that separates them from total annihilation by criminals. Or the Federal government. Or the UN. Or Democrats. Or zombies.

Still, it seems the anguish and outrage over the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary has forced “gun rights” advocates into an even shakier defensive position than ever before.

The takeaway of some religious leaders and conservatives to the tragedy is instructive. Bryan Fischer, who hosts some kind of fundamentalist Christian radio show, blamed the massacre in Connecticut on the fact that prayer was taken out of schools in 1962. I guess the logic here is that God is willing to allow children to die in order to score political points against American liberals. God, how petty can you get.

The notion that God declined to save the children at Sandy Hook because of America’s flirtation with evolution, same sex marriage, secularism, and – I don’t know, maybe even fluoridated water - was echoed by others, including prominent conservative preacher James Dobson, morally bankrupt politician Newt Gingrich, and Erick Erickson, a leading light of the modern conservative movement and CNN contributor.

Erickson in his RedState blog went even further, blaming “the collapse of the American family”, in particular the demise of the two-parent household with “multiple children”. Erickson’s fixation on the presence of “multiple children” in a family (he uses the term repeatedly) as a way of preventing mass killings is odd. Of the nine mass shootings this year (this year alone), only two have been carried out by an only child.

It’s one thing to focus on God’s passive-aggressive behavior or America’s lackadaisical procreation as root causes of gun violence. It’s idiotic, but at least it doesn’t make the situation worse.

That can’t be said for what is emerging as gun supporters’ favorite prescription to the national malaise of mass shootings in public places, namely, we need more guns.

Many conservative commentators, and a few Republican politicians, have reacted to the tragedy last week mainly by agonizing over the fact that teachers at Sandy Hook didn’t have assault rifles of their own.

They seem to be trying to divert attention away from any possible discussion of restricting firearms by doubling down on the idea that while guns don’t kill people, they certainly can be used to kill people who have guns intended for killing people.

A common fantasy among some gun lovers is that when duty calls in a crisis situation a well-armed populace of untrained citizens will turn into natural-born Jack Bauers. I’m skeptical that such a scenario would turn out well.

At a place full of experienced gun users, like an Army base, you might think you could stop a shooter without unintentionally adding more innocent bystanders to the body count. But when an attack occurred at such a place, Fort Hood in Texas, the assailant was able to shoot 42 people, killing thirteen, before he was finally stopped. If that can happen at a place teeming with military, how effective would the armed response of a city street full of overexcited Average Joes be?

In some of the best-known cases where armed civilians were credited with stopping shooting sprees, either the “civilians” were security professionals or the gunman had already stopped shooting.

Another meme on the right is that “gun-free” zones like schools or movie theaters are perfect targets for armed psychopaths precisely because they know no one can shoot back. At least, not before the police arrive.

For this reason, many conservatives are calling for guns to be allowed in schools. Maybe there are countries where it’s normal for math teachers to show up with a sidearm – I’m thinking Yemen or the libertarian paradise of Somalia as good candidates – but I’d hate to think America has come to that. Wait, it already has. At least one school district, in northern Texas, has allowed teachers to carry guns since 2008. If some on the right have their way, many other schools would follow.

What the NRA leadership proposed today, in its rather disjointed and out-of-touch press conference, is that instead of arming teachers themselves, the US should station a police officer in every school, an excellent works program for law enforcement types.

Again, if saturating every public space with firearms would actually deter would-be mass murderers who don’t expect to survive their killing sprees anyway, how do you explain the attack at Fort Hood, which is not exactly a gun-free zone?

But then there’s the case of Kennesaw. This small city in my home state of Georgia is perhaps unique in the nation. In 1982, Kennesaw passed a law requiring all “heads of households” to own a gun. (This was long before conservatives learned to object to tyrannical governments forcing citizens to buy products like, say, health insurance.) The rationale is that if criminals know that every single family is armed, they will think twice before attempting a home invasion.

As much as I hate to admit it, maybe there is something to this grim calculation. Apparently, Kennesaw has enjoyed one of American’s lowest crime rates since the law was enacted. And, that is a sad thought.

Maybe that’s what it takes in a country like America. In other advanced western nations, people can rely on a peaceful society and rule of law to feel safe, without having to militarize their own homes. But maybe the US is different. Maybe it is already so awash with guns, with fear, with crime and lawlessness, that the “every man for himself” attitude toward personal safety is the only way to feel secure.

I certainly hope that’s not true and that the US won’t go further down that path. How the American people act in the aftermath of Sandy Hook will say a lot about how much of a failed state America really has become.

O Holy Socks

I haven’t been blogging much lately, being too busy with other things that someday might lead to something more lucrative than blogging – which is to say, anything other than blogging. We can always hope.

Now that it’s Christmastime, the season when many people entertain at home, I’m reminded of one of the lesser-known customs of the Finns. Soon after coming to live here, I learned that before leaving the house to visit friends you should always check your socks for holes.

Reinos - classic Finnish footwear.

The reason for this extra attention to hosiery is that Finns, as a rule, do not wear shoes indoors at home. That goes as well for guests, and having a hole in your sock is something you can’t easily hide. Holes in both socks are even worse.

I’m not sure if this custom is shared by other Nordic countries, though I imagine it might be. In the case of Finland, it’s probably due to the Finns’ obsession with cleanliness and good housekeeping. Plus the fact that for at least some good portion of the year, the world outside the front door is a vast sea of mud, or muddy slush, or slushy mud. You get the picture.

So, good manners dictate that in addition to bringing a bottle of red or white, guests should avoid tracking unwelcome grime into the house by leaving their shoes in the eteinen (small entryway) when they arrive.

The more fashionably conscious guests, usually women and especially those of a certain age, often work around this shoeless custom by bringing along a pair of dress shoes to change into once they’re inside.

This particular Finnish habit is so ingrained that whenever my children visited my parents in Georgia, they always immediately removed their shoes and left them in a neat row by the front door, a practice that always impressed my mother.

The shoeless custom is also why the only bones I’ve ever broken have been toe bones. Walk around the house long enough in socking feet, and you’re bound to bang your toe pretty hard against something. Repeatedly. Maybe that’s why a few years ago I adopted another local tradition – the Reino. These are the legendary beige-colored plaid slippers that some Finns do wear at home. Reinos have a certain retro appeal that has made them très chic in the last few years. Or maybe that’s just what those of us who wear them would like to think.

While the custom of going shoeless indoors seems completely sensible in this climate, it can lead to awkward situations. Years ago, I attended an epic Friday-night party at a colleague’s small apartment downtown. He threw great parties, and soon the eteinen was overflowing with shoes. Some details of that night are best not dwelt upon, but by Monday morning I had fully recovered and was dressing for work when I noticed one of my shoes felt different, very roomy. It was identical to the other, only a size or two bigger.

Obviously, leaving the party with my facilities somewhat blunted by judicious servings of alcohol, I had picked up someone else’s shoe from the pile. When I arrived at the office, ready to exchange footwear with my colleague, I found that over the weekend he had left for a weeklong business trip to Singapore, obviously with one shoe that was too tight. When he arrived back in Finland, he was still not too happy, but it did make a great story.

At dinner in a restaurant (where even Finns wear shoes) a few months later, I enjoyed retelling the story to some female colleagues visiting from Dallas. At first, I didn’t understand why a story about a shoe mix-up that I thought was quite funny was met with such awkward, concerned looks from my Texan friends. Then I realized they were trying to work out exactly what kind of party this had been anyway, where guests can mistakenly go home with the wrong article of clothing.

I had neglected to mention the key piece of information that people living here take completely for granted – no partygoer should ever be shy about stripping off their shoes. Unless they have hole-ly socks.