Glory Hallelujah

What a weekend we had in Finland.  By coincidence, two big events that could bring some international glory to Finland took place over the weekend.  The first was the Eurovision song contest.  The name Eurovision means nothing to folks in the US, but for many in Europe it’s a legendary pop-culture institution, though just as many people probably also see it as something of a joke. 

Eurovision, a yearly contest pitting the best pop songs European nations have to offer against each other, was around long before Idol was even a glimmer in someone’s eye.  The contest was conceived in the mid-1950s as an entertaining way to unite post-war Europe.  Or rather post-war Western Europe.  Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the only Communist land to take part in Eurovision was Yugoslavia, which joined in 1961, the same year as Finland. 

From its first broadcast, when only seven nations took part, the show has evolved into a gaudy extravaganza expanded to include over 40 countries – especially thanks to the breakup of eastern European countries into smaller states – and watched by an audience of well over 100 million worldwide. 

All competing countries have the same voting rights, even tiny places like San Marino (pop. 30,000 – which incidentally would fit, with room to spare, into the stadium venue of this year’s contest in Dusseldorf).  Even tinier Vatican City, as an active member of the European Broadcasting Union, would qualify to participate, though it never has.  I’d love to see what kind act the Vatican would come up with for Eurovision, though I suspect the Holy See would find the whole thing a little too tacky to ever take part in. 

And often it would be right.  While some song entries are stirring acoustic ballads or operatic solos, most of the acts in recent years tend towards the highly energized, highly choreographed, highly sexualized, and even highly farcical.  In fact, farcical often seems to do quite well.  For example, donning giant gnome hats, as the Moldavian entry did this year, might help an act stand out among all the cookie-cutter boy bands and clones of Céline Dion and Shakira strutting across the stage. 

Even the winning acts don’t typically stand out for very long after the show ends.  Céline Dion is one who actually did.  Canadian vocalist and future Las Vegas attraction, Dion won the contest in 1988, representing Switzerland.  That goes to show that when it comes to the Eurovision song contest, nationality is fungible.  Another well-known alumnus is ABBA, which launched its international career after winning the 1974 contest with “Waterloo”.  These two are the exceptions, however, with most winners usually fading from global view rather quickly. 

And doing well in the contest doesn’t even always come down to having a decent song, as very often the voting is based on cultural and geographical politics.  Countries tend to give most of their votes to their closest neighbors, or at least to songs they can understand.  This has historically worked against Finland, especially earlier when contest rules called for songs to be sung only in the national language.  This made it difficult for Finland to garner many votes, even from like-minded Nordic countries, because no one outside the country could understand the lyrics.  (To be honest, for some Eurovision songs, not understanding the lyrics can be an advantage.) 

Finland’s peculiar language might help to explain its tradition of always doing badly.  In nine out of 45 Eurovision contests, the country has come in last place, three times receiving no points at all.  This is why the 2006 contest was a seismic event, with Finland blowing everyone away to win the top spot with “Hard Rock Hallelujah”, a monster hit by a thematic band called Lordi.  I guess you could say it was a freakish win. 

This year, Finland’s entry was Lordi’s polar opposite, a fresh-face singer-songwriter of 20 named Paradise Oskar, who sang “Da Da Dam”, a song about an idealistic young boy setting out to save the world from ecological disaster.  (Disclosure: Paradise Oskar is a friend of one of my sons.)

The song was a breath of fresh air, I thought, with a clean, positive (though perhaps slightly naive) message.  Almost unheard of for today’s Eurovision, the song was written by the singer himself and, bucking the trend even further, performed without the aid of pyrotechnics or impossibly leggy dancers.  Not even (gasp) a wind machine.  And it was certainly catchy enough, I thought, to do fairly well in the contest. 

We were encouraged when Paradise Oskar came in third-place in the semifinal earlier in the week.  Still, like most everyone watching the show on Saturday, we were realistic enough not to expect a repeat of 2006, though an outcome near the top ten seemed possible.  Sadly, it was not to be.  “Da Da Dam” came in 21^st place behind the winning entry from relative newcomer, and seriously peripheral European, Azerbaijan. 

It was a result that I think doesn’t do real justice to Finland’s entry.  To be fair, the Azerbaijani number wasn’t too bad and more typical of Eurovision fare.  (It was bought from Sweden, where there is something of a cottage industry in Eurovision songwriting.)  And it came in first place in the semifinal, just 30 points ahead of Paradise Oskar, which makes the Finn’s poor showing in the final even more disappointing.  I chalk it up to Eurovision politics. 

The other big contest of the weekend was a much more serious one for ice-hockey obsessed Finland.  For two weeks every spring, the Ice Hockey World Championship brings out the ardent fan in almost every Finn.  I admit I’m only a fair-weather hockey fan, and certainly no expert on the sport.  To be honest, I only get interested when the high-stakes championships games roll around and the international rivalries heat up. 

Finland has long been a hockey powerhouse, though this isn’t always reflected in its performance in the world championship finals.  While the Lions – as the country’s team is called – have won a total of 11 medals over the years, it has won gold only once, a distinction it shares with – wait for it – Great Britain, a country probably associated more with hockey of the “field” variety. 

Though Finland has reached the finals in almost half of the last 20 championships, the gold medal always eluded it until 1995, and has continued to do so in the ensuing 16 years since that first taste of gold glory.  Some have attributed the long dry spell to a tendency of the Finnish team to choke under pressure, especially when playing archrivals (and neighbors) Sweden and Russia.  Whether that’s true I’ll leave to be debated by others who know the game better than I do.  What I do know is that this serial disappointment has left a serious bruise in Finland’s national sporting pride. 

So, it was with huge anticipation that we sat down on Sunday night to watch the Lions face off against eight-time championship winner Sweden.  The history of grudge matches goes way back for these two.  The play was fiercely even in the first period, which ended scoreless.  Only about halfway through the second period did the puck find the net, deftly delivered by a Swedish player who ironically has a Finnish surname.  In such a tightly contested match, the goal could have been a psychological blow for Finland.  Then, with only seven seconds left in the period, Finland evened the score, setting up the third period to be a tense all-or-nothing battle. 

It didn’t take long to see which way it would go.  Less than three minutes into the period, Finland took the lead after scoring in a spirited two-man attack.  Then almost without a beat, a lone Finn broke away half a minute later to charge the Swedish goal and narrowly miss scoring.  A mere 47 seconds after that a scuffle in front of the Swedish net produced Finland’s third goal, essentially sealing Sweden’s fate.  The Finns didn’t let up, pummeling Sweden with three more goals.  It was impossible to sit still for the rest of the game. 

Winning the gold, and doing it by giving Sweden such a thrashing, unleashed wild scenes of spontaneous partying the streets of Helsinki have rarely seen.  The next afternoon over 100,000 exuberant fans gathered in front of a hastily erected stage at South Harbor’s market square to welcome the team home, cheering as the jubilant – in some cases perhaps a bit too “jubilant” – Lions celebrated on stage with President Halonen.  A visiting colleague of my wife’s, who witnessed the throngs in the streets and stayed at the same hotel as the Lions, reported that the party was still going strong, and loud, at four the next morning.  Being from Canada (winner of 24 gold medals), he might wonder at such celebration over just one long-awaited, but absolutely glorious, victory.  Or maybe he understands it completely.

Thin Ice

When my children were small, they religiously watched Pikku Kakkonen (“Little Two”), a TV program that I dare say enjoys the undivided attention of the entire Finnish-speaking population of preschoolers every afternoon around five-thirty.  (Swedish-speaking youngsters are probably likewise riveted to Pikku Kakkonen’s linguistic counterpart, BUU-klubben.)  Pikku Kakkonen has been an institution on Finland's channel two for over thirty years now and – like most shows aimed at very young viewers who don’t mind predictable programming at all – the show has an amazing timelessness to it. 

For decades, one sure sign of the changing season is the little public-service announcement added at the end of Pikku Kakkonen for a few weeks at the beginning of spring.  The short animated spot stars a boy and teddy bear – who, along with a moon, fish, ghost and a TV-shaped bird, form the mosaic of the show’s logo.  As the spot opens, the bear and the boy are playing in the snow across a lake from the TV studio and are interrupted when the bird summons them to hurry back.  Presumably, they need to take their places in the logo before the show signs off. 

While the boy does the prudent thing and walks around the lake, the impetuous bear decides to cut straight across to the studio, as he’s probably done dozens of times during the winter when the ice was thick.  But now it’s spring and the ice is thin.  Near the other shore, he falls through to the frigid water underneath and is saved only by the quick action of his friend.  The boy demonstrates the correct rescue technique by flattening himself on the ice to reach the floundering bear and extend his scarf as a lifeline.  The bear pulls himself onto the fragile ice and, lying flat to distribute his weight, carefully rolls safely to shore. 

The animation ends with the teddy bear, recovered from his ordeal, joining his friends in the logo and solemnly intoning:  "Varokaa heikkoa jäätä."  ("Beware of weak ice.") 

The animation is quaint, but the message is deadly serious.  Throughout the long winter, the ice of countless lakes and rivers is usually more than strong enough to bear the weight of anyone who ventures out on those inviting, flat expanses of white.  Skiers and the heaviest of ice fishermen can safely travel across the ice in many places, even on the sea in certain spots near shore.  In some places the ice is strong enough even for cars and buses.  But once the days turn longer and milder, it’s only a matter of time before – although the snow on the surface might look unchanged – the ice becomes treacherously thin.    

Every year, the spring thaw brings tragedy to some Finnish family, a sad reminder that despite the welcome sight of emerging crocuses and tender leafs spouting on the birches, the coming of warm weather also has a deceptively dangerous side.  

Reds

The first time I saw Helsinki, the city I've ended up spending half my life in, wasn’t from a plane overhead or from one of the ferries from Sweden that dock at South Harbor.  Instead, my first glimpse of the Finnish capital was inside a movie theater in Athens, Georgia.  On the big screen, as it were.  It was at a showing of the newly released movie Reds, which my Finnish girlfriend had been especially eager to see. 

This epic film from 1981 chronicles the career of journalist and devoted communist, John Reed, apparently the only American to be entombed in the Kremlin in Moscow.  Directed by and starring Warren Beatty, along with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, Reds is based on the book “Ten Days that Shook the World”, Reed’s firsthand account of the Russian Revolution of 1917. 

"V.I. Lenin lived in this house in 1917", plaque in Hakaniemi.

To report on the happenings in Russia, Reed traveled through Finland, which was still part of the Russian Empire, on his way to Petrograd, the former St. Petersburg, arriving just in time to witness the tumultuous events that led to the takeover by Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.  The title of the book Reed wrote about his time in Petrograd is no exaggeration.  The course of history was indeed radically changed in those few weeks, though in this post-Soviet era it all begins to feel like ancient history. 

(By the way, it’s funny how in the States the color red – the “brand” of socialists and communists throughout the world – has recently come to symbolize the conservative Republican Party.  A small example of American exceptionalism, if you will.  If you think about it, it gives a whole new meaning to the “Red Scare” of the 1950s and Republican Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts.) 

At the time Reds was made, almost a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union, filming behind the Iron Curtain was apparently no easy matter to arrange.  Beatty’s film was just one of several Hollywood productions over the years that used Helsinki as a more accessible stand-in for St. Petersburg, Moscow or some other place in the USSR. 

Helsinki doesn’t make its appearance until about halfway through the three-hour movie, as Beatty and Keaton, in the roles of Reed and his companion Louise Bryant, finally make it to Petrograd and are driven through its magnificent Palace Square (played here by Helsinki’s Senate Square).  With an Empire Style architecture that mimics the look of its Russian counterpart, Senate Square does a well enough as a cinematic substitute for St. Petersburg. 

On his way to the real Petrograd, Reed followed in the footsteps of Lenin who had passed through Helsinki a few months earlier on his return from exile in Switzerland.  When the revolutionary government in Russia cracked down on the Bolsheviks, Lenin retreated to Helsinki to lay low for a few months.  There is a plaque on the corner of Hakaniemi Square marking the building where he stayed as a covert guest of the Helsinki chief of police, a fellow Bolshevik. 

The "capping" of Havis Amanda, May Day Eve.

Hakaniemi has long enjoyed a reputation as a leftist stronghold.  It has been the traditional home of Finland’s Social Democratic and Communist parties, as well as all the major trade unions.  I recall when I first came here, even the large advertisements on the buildings overlooking the square added to the leftist atmosphere.  There were the corporate logos of Interflug (the state airline of a former country called East Germany), Intourist (a travel agency founded by Joseph Stalin), and Pepsi (the cola of choice in the Warsaw pact, not that there was really any choice about it.).  Of these, only the Pepsi logo remains high above the cobblestones of Hakaniemi.    

Despite those changes, Hakaniemi Square is still the traditional site for leftist rallies and gatherings, especially at May Day, the international workers’ day.  (In the US, May Day is ignored entirely, in favor of the all-American non-socialistic Labor Day in September – another bit of expectionalism.)  Hakaniemi serves as the starting point for the May Day Parade, where supporters of labor unions, leftist organizations, and assorted socialist and communists parties march a couple of kilometers to Senate Square to listen to speeches made from the steps of the Cathedral.  Nowadays, the number of marchers has been greatly diminished from the early 80s when almost a quarter of the Finnish electorate voted communist. 

Today, the worker-related celebration of May Day is more like a minor sideshow to the real focus of the holiday, namely huge crowds of students – past, present and future – having a good time.  May Day Eve is the closest thing to Carnival in Finland.  While you won’t see as much samba dancing as in Rio (in fact, none), the sea of revelers in their white student hats, still generate plenty of gaiety with the help of lots balloon, streamers, noisemakers and, of course, alcohol.  For first-time visitors, it can be alarming to see such crowds of normally reserved and restrained Finns filling the streets and publicly losing all their inhibitions.  The evening’s main event takes place at the Havis Amanda Fountain near South Harbor.  To roaring encouragement from the crowd, university students – often suspended from a construction crane – place a large white student’s hat on the bronze statue of a nude mermaid at the center of the fountain. 

In recent years, we’ve chosen to skip the chaos at Havis Amanda and instead celebrate May Day at home.  And we seldom ever watched the May Day Parade, most recently in 1989 when my very pregnant wife and I decided to follow along as the ranks of leftists decked out in red and carrying red flags and banners marched earnestly to Senate Square.  Though the route of the march isn’t strenuous by any means, the act of walking that far was for my wife physical enough to kick off a labor movement of an entirely different type.  The next morning our first child was born.  Six months later the Berlin Wall came down.  As far as I’m concerned, they were both equally world-changing events.  

A curious American at the May Day rally, Senate Square 1983.

Nuclear options

We’ve been having great weather in Helsinki recently, unseasonable warm for so early in the year.  Highs this past week have been in the mid- to upper-teens (mid 60s Fahrenheit), approaching summer-like weather.  In that respect, it's eerily reminiscent of the pleasant weather we had 25 years ago today.  April 28, 1986 was, like today, nicer than usual for late April, thanks to warm winds blowing from the south.  It was so warm, in fact, that my future wife and I opened the windows of our downtown apartment to enjoy some fresh air, something we wouldn’t usually do until a month or so later. 

Normally, I wouldn’t remember anything so mundane as having a window open on a particular day, especially a quarter of a century ago, but there’s a good reason this detail has stuck in my mind.  After all, that was the day the news broke that elevated levels of radiation had been detected in Finland and Sweden, levels apparently high enough to raise some concern.  Everyone was advised to stay indoors and keep their windows closed.  We promptly shut ours, ending our premature fling with mild springtime air. 

Chernobyl's core on fire.

The announcer on the evening news explained that the source of the radiation was a mystery since officials in both Finland and Sweden had confirmed that their nuclear power plants had suffered no accidents or leaks.  The obvious suspicion was that the radioactive fallout was coming from the Soviet Union, spreading into Scandinavia on the prevailing southerly winds.  The Soviets, naturally enough, were denying knowing anything about it.  But even before the news anchor was able to move on to the next story, he was handed a fresh bulletin with the news that Moscow had indeed owned up to a nuclear mishap having taken place on its territory. 

Over the next few days and weeks, the story behind that alarming spread of radiation slowly emerged, as the horrifying catastrophe at an obscure place called Chernobyl came to light.  The worst nuclear accident in history had begun on the previous Saturday, a full two days before the warm air coming from the south had enticed us to open up our windows.  For two days, no one on this side of the Iron Curtain (except perhaps the CIA) knew that, 1045 kilometers (650 miles) to the south from my apartment, the devastated hulk of a nuclear reactor in the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR was spewing radioactive cesium and iodine into the atmosphere.

Interestingly enough, 650 miles is only slightly further than the distance between Three Mile Island, the site of America’s own worst nuclear accident, and Athens, Georgia, where I was living at the time.  Though both alarming, the difference between that 1979 accident and the one seven years later is that there was only a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and no massive explosion rupturing the plant’s containment structure.  And, oh yes, unlike Chernobyl, TMI actually had a containment structure, which apparently was a small luxury that the Soviet designers, in their wisdom, had decided to forego.  Consequently, the release of radiation from TMI was minuscule by comparison.  

Still, Three Mile Island was scary enough at the time to add a little extra fear factor when I saw the movie China Syndrome soon afterward.  In that movie, Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon go up against the corrupt builders of a nuclear power plant to uncover defects in the reactor that threaten to cause a deadly core meltdown.  Lemmon pays for this with his life.  I recall that, with the reality of TMI fresh in our minds, it was a relief to emerge from the theater and find the streets of Athens still calm and apparently radiation free. 

In the all-too-real drama of Chernobyl, the disaster was far more sinister and the immediate safety of those of us in Europe far from certain.  My mother tried to reach me by phone for a day before finally getting through on the jammed lines.  Despite being the first non-Soviet territory to be raked with Chernobyl’s fallout, shifting winds meant that Scandinavia got off relatively lightly compared to more distant countries like France and Germany.  The parts of Ukraine and Belarus closest to the blast suffered misery that wouldn’t be fully known for years. 

The accident, bad as it was, didn’t seriously dampen Finns’ commitment to nuclear energy (though that’s far from unanimous).  This seems even more remarkable considering that half of the nuclear reactors operating in Finland in 1986 were built by the Soviets and were of the same basic design as Chernobyl.  However, the Finns are not fools, and had insisted on extensive modifications to the reactor design, not least of which was a containment structure. 

After years of living here, I’ve become quite sanguine (or you might say complacent) about nuclear energy.  In a cold country with large demands for electricity and few renewable sources of energy, nuclear power begins to look surprising green compared to the other options.  Finland’s four reactors generate at least 25% of the country’s domestic electricity production, roughly equal to that from coal- and gas-fired power plants.  Though the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima probably gives everyone here pause, plans for a fifth reactor are going forward.  While the prospect of another horrendous meltdown is only one stupid mistake, design flaw or natural disaster away, it helps to think (and hope) that they remain relatively rare.  

Easter in Finland

The great thing about Easter in Finland is that it’s always a four-day weekend, thanks to the fact that, as the most important holy day in the Christian calendar, it’s also an official public holiday.  And it’s not just one holiday.  Besides Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Finland also celebrates Easter Monday, something unheard of in the Baptist church I was raised in. 

Practically everything shuts down here on those days (the Saturday in between being a normal day), especially all the stores – meaning you need to do some strategic grocery shopping if you want to make it from Thursday to the following Tuesday without resorting to an emergency run to the local gas station for milk or ketchup.  Or mämmi. 

Mämmi served with milk.

Mämmi is a dessert eaten only at Easter and most likely only in Finland and Sweden, and it has a distinctly ugly appearance that makes it the butt of quite a few jokes.  A thick, dark, pudding-like concoction made of malt, rye flour and molasses, mämmi is not the most appealing dessert you’ll ever see, but it is fact quite tasty.  Personally, though, I prefer the other Easter dessert, paskha, a white frothy custard introduced to Finland by the Russian Orthodox Church.  Still, the most popular Easter sweet has to be chocolate.  My favorite is the Mignon chocolate egg, produced only at Easter and as far as I know nowhere else than Finland.  The unique thing about this treat is that it’s a real, intact eggshell – filled with chocolate – that you peel as you would any hard-boiled egg. 

Being such a long holiday, Easter is a popular time for Finns to make a quick trip somewhere with the family.  We’ve occasionally used the four-day weekend for trips to Lapland, where there’s often still plenty of snow for some late-season skiing.  I have friends who are doing that right now, though as late (and warm) as Easter is this year, I have to think the skiing might be a little dodgy right now, even that far north. 

The presence of snow on the ground is just another difference between the holiday here the Easters of my youth in Georgia.  When our children were young, they did their Easter egg hunting inside the house for the simple reason that searching for chocolate eggs in the snow outside just isn’t all that fun, or challenging.  They tend to stand out against all that white snow.  Another difference is the trick-or-treating that takes place on Palm Sunday, when children – mostly girls – dress as witches to go door-to-door exchanging decorated pussy-willow switches for candy.  The connection between this and the crucifixion of Jesus still escapes me.  But, then again, you can say the same about the Easter Bunny and dyed hard-boiled eggs. 

Mignon chocolate egg starting to hatch.
Photo by Tiia Monto.

Even in secular Finland, Easter does also have a religious side.  It might be one of the few times during the year that many people actually step into a church, though based on the televised service I saw on Friday, it’s not anything like at capacity crowds.  The Orthodox church – which, to be honest, tends to exhibit a bit more flair than the Lutherans do – makes the celebration more participatory.  Part of the Orthodox Easter ritual is for the entire congregation to chant and bear lit candles as they follow their priest in a procession circling the church several times.  It can be quite a spectacle, though I have to confess I’ve only seen it on TV occasionally.  In my family, we have concentrated only on the cocoa- and sugar-based rituals of what is a thankfully long holiday. 

Happy Easter, everyone!