Not quite half my life in Finland..?17 12 7 (23) 25 1 30

17 12 7

Just a short blog today to reflect on Finland's 100 years of Independence which she celebrated yesterday..?

I first came to this country as a young man on a whim 1960 7 17 after traveling north on Norway's only highway for 2 or 300 km say 200 miles between Trondheim and Hammerfest, one of the most scenic routes imaginable, but instead of reversing it on my way south again I decided instead to take a swing through northern Finland, and then head back to Norway, via Tornio and northern Sweden where I had researched the possibility of getting a summer job in one or other of its Wood Pulp mills.

But that first lift from Skaidi at my cross roads: turn left for Finland, head off right for Trondheim down the Riksvei 50, took me in the direction of Karigasniemi at the foot of the Ailigás mountain in a car that was travelling to a Finnish bus returning home which had run off the road into the ditch: with a cable for a tractor to haul it back onto the road. Well as you might have guessed already, once the bus was back on the road I was offered a lift on the bus which was returning to Helsinki. Not the same day but over several and as time went by I decided to stay first one night in the village of Ailigás, then the next night for 2 nights in Inari and so on as far as Rovaniemi where I also stayed with the people on the bus in the local "Retkeilymaja", "Vandrahjem" = Wanderer's Home in Norwegian and no problem guessing for English speakers..? But the Finnish: an impossible language so all the Norwegians had warned me beforehand, hahaha

As you may also guess I met a lot of very friendly people on that bus and even befriended a young lady who invited me to visit her home near Helsinki because now I was in a hurry to depart the bus in order to come to Helsinki even quicker to seek work in Finland, instead of Norway, and where in the next 5 years I would spend a half of them in these northern latitudes, whilst gainfully employed in its Wood Pulp Mill research and development laboratories studying its chemical processes to go with the paper making processes I had studied back home in UK since leaving school 5 years earlier.

During these years I heard that a British Company was in the process of building a Pulp and Paper Mill in Fort William, Scotland and I wrote off a letter of application to join them, which opened another door to work in their Research and Development Centre in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where amongst other things I founded a Raw Materials laboratory to evaluate the suitability of an array of exotic fibres for paper-making purposes.

It was whilst working there I met my wife to be, a Swedish speaking Finnish girl who was visiting London as a recently qualified Nurse to practice her English and see a bit of the world…

Thereafter we spent one summer vacation with my working for another Finnish Wood Products Co and when I graduated from University we moved countries for 2 years before returning to live and work in England.

Well because of my knowledge of the Finnish language it didn’t take long before my British employers began sending me on business trips to visit Finnish customers for their specialist products, and in the fullness of time one of the Finnish Companies would invite me to join them for one of their top jobs as Joint R and D Director.    

This story then about a young man and his travels worked well all those years both for British industry and also for Finnish industry: so nice when later both countries joined the EU, so now so sad if UK is to pull out of the EU when a majority of its young people would prefer to remain? Have a good day everyone as we continue here to celebrate our 100 years of independence..?