Getting to grips with the Finnish Culture..? 25 4 30
Given that for the 9th year in a row Finland has been proclaimed the happiest ppl it is perhaps high time I wrote a piece about my take on it after interacting with it these past almost 65 years?
This the time of year the Cranes and other migrant birds return home after wintering in far off places to the south. My own arrival similarly that of a summer visitor stepping foot on Finnish soil on the first occasion July 17th but exceptionally approaching from the north in Arctic Norway and not so much returning home as instead perhaps finding a new one. lol
Which is to say as a ppl they couldn't have been more welcoming. As a hitch hiker my first lift I had to chose would I stay for the ride the length of the country from Aligas on the Finnish Norwegian border all the way to Helsinki, a bus which had been hauled back onto the highway after running into the ditch, some miles after hitching a ride in the car carrying the hauling cable a short way after Skaidi. And when I applied for work the first company I approached gave me a job for 6 weeks, and invited me to return if ever I wished to work there again. That I did for the best part, i.e. the summers of the next 4 years, perhaps bears testament to how I settled in to finish off completing the passage of my formative years here?
Then to move on yet again, but only briefly as I met the lady, a Finnish lady half Swedish Finnish, half Finnish Finnish, in my country of origin, when my association with her country of origin, took hold a second time. Learning Finnish would be the key to my success with the Finns I guess for no-one takes Finnish for granted. And when, after several false starts at attempting to settle in the country, but returning to my country of origin with a more profound knowledge of its strengths and failings, it would be through my knowledge of Finnish that was instrumental in opening the door to several invitations to return one more time to a top job that I finally succumbed to giving it one more trial: as a Research and Development Director with a 4 year contract.
The first hurdle was to correct a letter my new MD and CEO had penned to the President of our Agents for the company's biggest export market, that of the USA. And when I cleaned up his text to render it the epitomy of polite English, he chose instead to send his original, probably thinking he had been ill-advised in hiring me, a creature with no backbone. That it would take the best part of my 4 years of contract to run before the occasion presented itself for me to prove his view was mistaken, and it happened as follows: With his runner boy, the Company Buyer, stopping me one day to tell me we would be having a meeeting with the German Paper Company on such and such a date. When I told him: That's okay Stigge, but I won't be there. Then to the MD's shouting my name out from the comfort of his armchair before his business desk in the top office I was bidden with the words: What's this I hear about your taking a holiday in the upcoming week of Easter, do you not know you're not supposed to take holidays in conjunction with Easter?
No-one told me! was my swift reply when he turned instead to bad mouthing his relatively new Personnel Mgr., a minion with the intitials LP-V. As a matter of fact, Bosse, I continued I was accustomed to taking a winter holiday with my wife, E, during the schools' Ski-ing holidays (the third week of February) but this year I had too much Patent work for the company so she had to go to Egypt on her own.
"I didn't know that!" was his lame reply, before the discourse ended and he had Stigge re-schedule the meeting which he did around my comings and goings. No-one in these Paper Supplier meetings ever contributed anything technical to the discourse but instead restricted their input to a discusion of paper prices and delivery details.
At the very first meeting with our American agents when they used to visit during the last week of May each year they explained: "You will never have any difficulties with us E., all your difficulties will be with the Finns!" and so it was to be.
The foregoing betrays two aspects of your average Finn: each is an independent entity, neither normally confrontational nor overly worldly wise. As a country and people they have been subjugated first to Sweden for what 600 years until 1809 when it became a Grand Duchy of Imperial Russia until Independence in 1917 as a follow-on to the Bolshevik Revolution and the founding of the USSR. Mikael Agricola, a Swedish speaker, was attributed with leading the reformation of Finland in 1554 when he became the Bishop of Turku, its then capital.
So an oppressed ppl with two offical languages: the one spoken by say 6-7% of the population a hangover from the 600 years of domination by the Swedish Monarchical Empire, so like many other European countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and Denmark speaking a Germanic language in addition to the UK and the USA. The main language Suomi said to be of Finno Uric origin related to Estonia and more distantly Hungarian an aglutoinous language with 15 case endings which essentially means one cannot open one's mouth in Finnish without having made something of a study of its main language. And as with all peoples of once being oppressed there remains something of an inferiority complex about being from these northern climes on the fringes of more populated and more sophisticated countries to the south.
With this second pic of a sunrise taken from our nearby beach maybe a good place to end this introduction to a country, its ppl and culture, wherein I have said little as to why I now regard it my irreversible home,and where I hall shortly come to a resting place in its nearby cemetary..? Haha.
Which is to say as a ppl they couldn't have been more welcoming. As a hitch hiker my first lift I had to chose would I stay for the ride the length of the country from Aligas on the Finnish Norwegian border all the way to Helsinki, a bus which had been hauled back onto the highway after running into the ditch, some miles after hitching a ride in the car carrying the hauling cable a short way after Skaidi. And when I applied for work the first company I approached gave me a job for 6 weeks, and invited me to return if ever I wished to work there again. That I did for the best part, i.e. the summers of the next 4 years, perhaps bears testament to how I settled in to finish off completing the passage of my formative years here?
Then to move on yet again, but only briefly as I met the lady, a Finnish lady half Swedish Finnish, half Finnish Finnish, in my country of origin, when my association with her country of origin, took hold a second time. Learning Finnish would be the key to my success with the Finns I guess for no-one takes Finnish for granted. And when, after several false starts at attempting to settle in the country, but returning to my country of origin with a more profound knowledge of its strengths and failings, it would be through my knowledge of Finnish that was instrumental in opening the door to several invitations to return one more time to a top job that I finally succumbed to giving it one more trial: as a Research and Development Director with a 4 year contract.
The first hurdle was to correct a letter my new MD and CEO had penned to the President of our Agents for the company's biggest export market, that of the USA. And when I cleaned up his text to render it the epitomy of polite English, he chose instead to send his original, probably thinking he had been ill-advised in hiring me, a creature with no backbone. That it would take the best part of my 4 years of contract to run before the occasion presented itself for me to prove his view was mistaken, and it happened as follows: With his runner boy, the Company Buyer, stopping me one day to tell me we would be having a meeeting with the German Paper Company on such and such a date. When I told him: That's okay Stigge, but I won't be there. Then to the MD's shouting my name out from the comfort of his armchair before his business desk in the top office I was bidden with the words: What's this I hear about your taking a holiday in the upcoming week of Easter, do you not know you're not supposed to take holidays in conjunction with Easter?
No-one told me! was my swift reply when he turned instead to bad mouthing his relatively new Personnel Mgr., a minion with the intitials LP-V. As a matter of fact, Bosse, I continued I was accustomed to taking a winter holiday with my wife, E, during the schools' Ski-ing holidays (the third week of February) but this year I had too much Patent work for the company so she had to go to Egypt on her own.
"I didn't know that!" was his lame reply, before the discourse ended and he had Stigge re-schedule the meeting which he did around my comings and goings. No-one in these Paper Supplier meetings ever contributed anything technical to the discourse but instead restricted their input to a discusion of paper prices and delivery details.
At the very first meeting with our American agents when they used to visit during the last week of May each year they explained: "You will never have any difficulties with us E., all your difficulties will be with the Finns!" and so it was to be.
The foregoing betrays two aspects of your average Finn: each is an independent entity, neither normally confrontational nor overly worldly wise. As a country and people they have been subjugated first to Sweden for what 600 years until 1809 when it became a Grand Duchy of Imperial Russia until Independence in 1917 as a follow-on to the Bolshevik Revolution and the founding of the USSR. Mikael Agricola, a Swedish speaker, was attributed with leading the reformation of Finland in 1554 when he became the Bishop of Turku, its then capital.
So an oppressed ppl with two offical languages: the one spoken by say 6-7% of the population a hangover from the 600 years of domination by the Swedish Monarchical Empire, so like many other European countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and Denmark speaking a Germanic language in addition to the UK and the USA. The main language Suomi said to be of Finno Uric origin related to Estonia and more distantly Hungarian an aglutoinous language with 15 case endings which essentially means one cannot open one's mouth in Finnish without having made something of a study of its main language. And as with all peoples of once being oppressed there remains something of an inferiority complex about being from these northern climes on the fringes of more populated and more sophisticated countries to the south.
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