You are never too late!

I have been thinking about the 3 Kings for the past weeks. I sometimes feel that the 3 Kings are my kindred spirits. They were even more dilatory about Christmas than I am. Some biblical scholars speculate that the Wise Men may have arrived at the stable two years after the birth of Christ. I'm not that late, yet.

Even though the 3 Kings were late arrivals to the manger, they are still an important part of the Christmas pageant at our church. The pageant is open to any child from the youngest stars to the middle school students who are expected to handle the more taxing parts: Mary, Joseph, Gabriel. Middle school consists of that funny age when the potential Marys are all much much taller than any possible Joseph.

One Joseph candidate (tall enough middle school student) turned down the role. He informed his mother that this year he would be the Whiskey King. And you may ask where the Whiskey King fits in to the story. Well, in our church one of the 3 kings carries a Crown Royal bottle spray painted gold - hence a new hero is born: Whiskey King.

At the top of the post is a column capital from Autun Cathedral. My friend Inez told me about it. I love the fact that the 3 kings are sleeping together under a blanket and the angel is prodding them to get a move on with one long, angelic finger. "Get up sleepy heads and follow yonder star!"

According to tradition and the church calendar, the Kings will arrive at the manger on Epiphany, January 6. In Finland the Christmas holiday will last until Epiphany or Loppiainen. Here kids return to school on January 3.

I could write more about the kings. I have been to Cologne and seen their reliquary. But, I have to prepare for church. I will end with T.S. Eliot's poem about the 3 Kings:

Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.'

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and thelack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling ofvegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no imformation, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say)satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt.I had seen birth and

death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Advent calendars to see and hear

Tomorrow will be the third Sunday in Advent. At the choir party today, we adults marveled at how quickly Christmas was coming. I remember time passing much more slowly as a child. I fell behind on the advent calendar this year. One moment it was Thanksgiving and the next...Advent!

We are recycling our advent calendar from last year, but I found some great advent calendars on the web!

Here is a wonderful on line advent calendar from the this is Finland web site. Each day has a special craft. I like the idea of making caramels from behind door no. 9.

Maybe I will make caramels while listening to the musical advent calendar presented by the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. While this introductory video is all in Finnish, it is fun to watch the elf creeping around in the background. For December 6, the advent calendar has this lovely Sibelius piece.

And to drink while making Finnish crafts and listening to Finnish music: Glog of course!

I found recipes for Finnish glögi on line. I loved black current glögi when I had it at Kerttu with Keisha after language class. I am adding black current juice to my shopping list.

It is already 11.12 in Finland so feel free to listen to this!

Christmas Music and Global Warming

Everyone knows that Santa lives in Finland! Therefore, it is only fitting that I listen to Jouluradio all day. It is hard to get bored with Christmas music when it is sung in Finnish and Swedish.

It was only last year that my daughter addressed this envelope to Santa. You can see that, while she still believed in Santa, she wasn't quite buying the Finnish location. American kids have the idea of the North Pole drilled into their heads. Too many viewings of Rudolph and the reindeer bullies to quite shake the iconic image of a pole at the top of the world.

As the daughter of a geographer, I have learned to rely on maps. The map shows that it would be impossible for Santa to raise a herd of lichen eating reindeer in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, even if the polar ice cap is in tact. I recently signed an on line petition encouraging the Discovery Channel to air all the episodes of the upcoming series "Frozen Planet". Apparently, the Discovery Channel decided to show the final episode where David Attenborough studies climate change at both poles.

With a liquid North Pole, Santa must be in Finland.

But even if Santa is raising his herd of sleigh pulling reindeer in the sanity of Finland, he is not immune from global warming. It has been a mild winter in Helsinki and in Concord. Not mild enough to raise a tortoise in our house, but mild nonetheless.

Just for a change from Christmas music, you can listen to Stan Rogers sing about the Northwest Passage as you consider global warming.

You Learn Something New Every Day

I can waste hours on FaceBook reading everyone's posts and looking at the graduation pictures of kids I don't know (yes, I posted some of an important fifth grade graduation) that pop up at this time of the year. But the wonderful thing about FB is the tidbits of information that appear on my "wall". Because I liked NPR on FB, this story appeared on my FB page: Russian Women Prove it's Hip to be a Babushka. What fascinated me about this story was not the music or the charming woven birch shoes in the video, but the fact that the women are from the Udmurt republic, where the language is in the same Finno-Ugric family as Finnish.

I expected the Udmurt Republic to be somewhere near Lake Ladoga, but it is actually far to the east. Udmurtia is surprisingly distant from Finland. Like Finnish, the Udmurt written language was not developed until the 18th century*. Unlike Finnish, Udmurt is written using the Cyrillic alphabet. Another distinguishing feature of the Udmurts is the predominance of red hair. A population of gingers speaking a Finnishy language written in Cyrillic. The more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn.

And what about Udmurt literature? You can friend Udmurt literature in Estonian translation on FB. I have, but since I understand less Estonian than Finnish it won't be a lively site. Maybe I can find some Udmurt literature for my Kindle. Amazon has a wide selection of translated fiction available for the Kindle. You have to search under World Literature. It is fun to have a world of World Literature within reach of your wi-fi. Sadly I could only find 3 items on Amazon with a search for Udmurt. One item is a children's folk tale and I am tempted by the I Speak Udmurt hat, but the third item does not succumb to Google translate.

Keep your ears open for news of Udmurtia. Now that I have learned that this region of Russia exists, it will suddenly be all over the papers. And, thanks to the babushkas, maybe the country will be famous for singing women in birch shoes rather than infamous as birthplace of the Kalashnikov.

*actually, written Finnish was developed earlier in a religious context. You can read more about the development of written Finnish on my blog!

The Humor of Hesari or "serious leglessness" a phrase to remember!

I love the sly humor of the English edition of Hesari. Just read the entire story and enjoy!

Hockey team's drunken antics lead to official talking-to

Video of Nurminen's hard landing at airport goes viral

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The Finnish Lions ice hockey team, welcomed home on Monday by 100,000 adoring fans as they brought with them Finland's second IIHF World Championship trophy, have come in for criticism in some quarters over the state of serious leglessness displayed by some players and staff on their arrival back on home soil.
Anyone who watched the scenes either at the airport or in the city centre will have found it hard not to notice that a good many players were suffering from the morning (or afternoon) after the night before, and some seemed to have avoided the throbbing pain of a hangover by earnestly continuing their drinking.

Whilst Mikael Granlund's wonder goal against Russia in the semi-finals has racked up a huge number of hits on YouTube and other sites, he is fast being joined by the embarrassing prat-fall of the team's goalkeeper coach Pasi Nurminen at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.
Nurminen emerged from the aircraft looking much the worse for wear and stumbled on the bottom step of the airstairs, crashing into the World Championship trophy as he spread his not inconsiderable frame on the red carpet.
The trophy had a very visible dent in it by the time it appeared before the public in the Market Square, though whether this was the imprint of Nurminen's forehead or something else is unclear.

Another member of the squad, team manager Timo Jutila (who also captained the 1995 World Championship winners) was seen to be rather dazed and confused, and he elected not to go up onto the podium with the others when the team arrived at the square in an open-topped bus to be fêted by fans.
Initially it was thought he had been taken ill, but Jutila himself declared he had an ankle inflammation.
This expression seems set to become a new Finnish euphemism for being totally wasted.

In many ways, the criticism of the players and others for their condition is a bit steep, given the general Finnish relationship with alcohol, but on the other hand, the team are looked up to as role-models by many young people, and this aspect was brought out by Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin (Swedish People's Party), whose portfolio also includes sports.
Wallin reportedly spoke to the Finnish Ice Hockey Association's chairman Kalervo Kummola on the matter, noting that whilst every Finn understood the elation that the players felt after their victory in Bratislava "it should nevertheless be remembered that sports personalities are setting an example for children and young adults".
The team's head coach Jukka Jalonen admitted that the celebrations of some individuals had got rather out of hand, and expressed the hope that they had not caused offence.

Many commented on the online forums that the new generation of players are nothing like the "old school" types (who would include both the members of the coaching staff mentioned above), and it was also noted that this sort of behaviour was these days uncommon as a public spectacle - not least because there were precious few opportunites to celebrate a great victory in this way.
In truth, there were occasions in the past when players' self-discipline failed them, but these generally only made it over the news threshold when someone was "sent home to sober up" in the middle of a tournament.

The general sentiment now seems to be that nobody in their right mind would begrudge the team members the chance to let their hair down, but that maybe their timing - in the full glare of the media and the public - was a shot rather wide of the goal.
Next time - and hopefully there will be future occasions like this to rejoice in trophies won - they would do better to keep things in check until they have gone through the necessary formalities.
The summer recess will offer plenty of opportunities for more private off-camera celebration.

Pointy Shoes and the Influence of Finnish Fashion

It is very possible that this could be an elaborate internet hoax, but I have chosen to fall for it. Long, pointy, totally impractical cowboy boots are a fashion sensation in northeastern Mexico. You can read about them here. And you should enjoy this video as well. It is long, but I recommend watching the entire clip:

The pointy boots immediately brought to mind the Leningrad Cowboys. Is it possible that there is a Finnish-Mexican connection? I was introduced to the Leningrad Cowboys through the movie by Aki Kaurismäki. And that brings this blog back to Finland by way of Cannes. Aki Kaurismäki is in Cannes with his new film Le Havre. I can't wait.

Wannabe Finns

I will have a hard time getting Chris to remove this jacket any time soon. Happily for him it is cool enough to wear the jacket this week. We are carrying on a 2 person hockey celebration here in NH. As one friend pointed out, "You never watch hockey". Au contraire. I have watched Finland demolish Sweden twice. Last night in English. In Estonian on Sunday on the internet.

Neither one of us is Finnish. Nor do we share a drop of Finnish blood. But that doesn't stop us from being wannabe Finns. Watch this video on the Helsingin Sanomat web site here. You will want to be Finnish too.

Perkele!!

This is the front page of a Swedish paper Expressen and you can see the site here. The amazing thing about this paper is the headline is the ur-Finnish word PERKELE!

Perkele is the ultimate Finnish swear word. The word has roots in Finnish mythology hearkening back to the pre-Christian Finland.

To say the word properly, you have to be able to roll your Rs. Here are some examples: first from the Duudsonit...

And from Vares...

Remember, practice makes perfect.

The Really Big News!

What is the leading story today? The arrest of DSK? No way! It is this picture - Finland is number 1 in hockey. Or as Helsingin Sanomat wrote: SUOMI ON MAAILMAN PARAS! The picture above is from HS.fi.

The fun started on Friday with this amazing goal by Mikael Granlund:

I love the Finnish commentator. A friend told me the commentator is Antero Mertaranta and that he has quite a following. You can read about him in the NYT here and you can watch him here:

I bet the streets of Finland are full of happy, happy Finns! Ihanaa Leijonat!

49 years of Finnish Talk TV - in the USA? And what about St. Urho and Jimmy Stewart?

While playing around on the interweb, I came across a television show from the U.P. (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan: Suomi Kutsuu or Suomi Calling. It is billed as the longest running talk show in the US and is certainly the longest running foreign television show in the US.

You can watch it on streaming video here.

Why Michigan? Finns immigrated to Michigan in the 19th Century to work in the copper mines and Finnish identity remains strong. To celebrate the Michigan Finns, I plan to make these pasties soon. The comments to the recipe are fun--apparently these pasties are not like the " the crap they call pasties here in Detroit.." We shall see!

And while I am on the subject of Finns in the States, I let St. Urho's Day pass without a proper celebration.

People in Finland may know nothing of St. Urho, the patron saint of Finnish grapes and the giant grasshoppers. Maybe Turku could be the first Finnish city to celebrate St. Urho with the eating of Michigan pasties.

Happy belated St. Urho's Day! "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!" And below is what I love best about the U.P.--Jimmy Stewart:

Finland! - Be Still My Soul!

I have not been blogging lately - not enough alone time! Or rather, I have been devoting my alone time to finishing a grant application that I prepared on behalf of my local library. But that does not mean Finland isn't on my mind.

Today we sang a hymn to the tune of Finlandia in church. But I should be more specific for there are many hymns to the tune of Finlandia in many languages! We were celebrating with "Be Still My Soul". It is a beautiful hymn and the choir belted it out!

When I did a little googling I learned that this tune by Sibelius is important not only to Finns, but to other nations as well. Sibelius composed Filandia in 1899-90 as part of the independence movement that swept through Finland supported by the arts: painting, music, literature.

According to Wikipedia, the Finnish verse translates to:

O, Finland, behold, your day is dawning,

The threat of night has been banished away,

And the lark of morning in the brightness sings,

As though the very firmament would sing.

The powers of the night are vanquished by the morning light,

Your day is dawning, O land of birth.

O, rise, Finland, raise up high

Your head, wreathed with great memories.

O, rise, Finland, you showed to the world

That you drove away the slavery,

And that you did not bend under oppression,

Your day has come, O land of birth.

These lyrics certainly tell of Finland's struggle for independence and maybe, for that reason, other independence movements have adopted the tune from Finlandia. If you find Finnish too difficult to sing, you could sing along in Welsh:

Dros Gymru'n gwlad, O Dad, dyrchafwn gri,

y winllan wen a roed i'n gofal ni;

d'amddiffyn cryf a'i cadwo'n ffyddlon byth,

a boed i'r gwir a'r glân gael ynddi nyth;

er mwyn dy Fab a'i prynodd iddo'i hun,

O crea hi yn Gymru ar dy lun.

O deued dydd pan fo awelon Duw

yn chwythu eto dros ein herwau gwyw,

a'r crindir cras dan ras cawodydd nef

yn erddi Crist, yn ffrwythlon iddo ef,

a'n heniaith fwyn â gorfoleddus hoen

yn seinio fry haeddiannau'r addfwyn Oen.

That hymn was written by the Welsh nationalist, Lewis Valentine. It is the unofficial hymn of Wales.

Another nationalist movement that hoped to win independence through the power of Sibelius was the Biafran independence movement from Nigeria in 1967. You can listen to it here. When you consider the horror of the genocide and campaign of famine perpetrated against the Biafran people, it is very moving to hear this anthem.

But now I must run and prepare for another week, but I will listen to Finlandia while I tidy away the detritus of the weekend. Enjoy this video along with me:

More Finnish skiing news!

Finland now has 4 medals in Oslo. The women's relay team took home the bronze. Thanks to Barbara for keeping me up to speed. The women's relay team members are Pirjo Muranen, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, Riitta-Liisa Roponen and Krista Lähteenmäki. You can read the results here on Hesari. Make sure you have your Google translate fired up!

Finnish skier finishes first in Oslo

This post is really an opportunity to share some vacation photos with a friend, but I do have some Finnish news at the end of the post.

We recently spent 2 nights in beautiful Jackson, N.H. We have had many wonderful family outings in the Mount Washington valley. This was our first visit to Jackson and I am sure we will be back. We skied one day at the Jackson XC center and on our way home we skied a half day at Black Mountain. Skiing at Black Mountain was the most fun that I have ever had on down hill skis. If you want more information about restaurants and the like, please send me a comment.

And now for the Finnish news: Matti Heikkinen won the gold medal in Oslo! You can read about Heikkinen here on YLE in English. I found this interesting tidbit on the web site for the World Championships. It highlights the importance of wax and mentions the Finnish doping scandal of 2001. Apparently the Norwegian wax guru Magnar Dalen is helping the Finns fly across the snow. The New Hampshire connection is that Kris Freeman finished in the top 30, 2 minutes and 10 seconds behind Heikkinen.

The Lost Thing is the Big Thing in Finland

A friend gently chided me (ridiculed me) for my previous post about Finnish at the Oscars, but it was BIG news in Finland. Mari sent me the link to coverage on Ilta-Sanomat. The gist of it is "Hän kiitti suomeksi" He thanked in Finnish.

Oscar-voittaja kiitti suomeksi!

Shaun Tan kiitti Oscar-gaalassa mukana ollutta vaimoaan Inari Kiurua suomeksi.

Julkaistu: 28.02.2011 04:21

Oscar-gaalan lavalla puhuttiin ensimmäistä kertaa suomea!

Oscarin parhaasta animoidusta lyhytelokuvasta The Lost Thing voittanut australialainen ohjaaja Shaun Tan lausui kiitospuheessaan suomea.

Hän kiitti graafisena suunnittelijana työskentelevää vaimoaan Inari Kiuruaja sanoi suomeksi ”minä rakastan sinua”. Oscarin kävi hänen kanssaan noutamassa lyhytelokuvan toinen ohjaaja Andrew Ruhemann.

Tiettävästi Oscar-gaalassa ei ole aiemmin kuultu suomea. Suomalaisista Oscar-palkinnon on käynyt noutamassa ainoastaan Jörn Donner, joka tuotti parhaana ulkomaisena elokuvana palkitun Ingmar Bergmanin ohjaaman elokuvan Fanny ja Alexander (1982).

Aki Kaurismäen Mies vailla menneisyyttä (2002) oli myös ehdolla parhaasta ulkomaisesta elokuvasta, mutta ei saanut Oscar-palkintoa.

What the Melissa Leo F-word! Finnish at the Oscars!

Just in case you missed it--The Lost Thing won the Academy Award for best short animated film and one of the award recipients said, on the air, "Minä rakastan sinua". And yes, he wasn't a Finn. A Finn wouldn't say that on the air!

P.S. I wasn't the only viewer to notice the Finnish romance. Here is a link to YLE's English news service.

And, if you haven't seen The Fighter, you really should.

Eroaa. Väkilvalta. Mielenosoittajia.

Three new words in my Finnish vocabulary.

I try to listen and read along with Selkouutiset each day and my new vocabulary started in Tunisia, spread to Egypt, and now is describing events in Libya.

Eroaa ---- leave

Väkilvalta ----- violence

Mielenosoittajia ---- demonstrators

I would never be able to remember these words if I were confronted with a vocabulary list, but seeing them night after night has driven the words home. I am following the struggle for democracy in these countries as well as in Wisconsin and down the hill in the State House.

I spent a summer in Carthage and have always wanted to return. My interest in Tunisia was sparked by Flaubert and also by Queen Dido and her unrequited love. She covered a lot of ground with her ox-hide. (If you are interested in the math that enabled Queen Dido to cover the entire Byrsa, read here. I took the top picture from this site).

But the reality of Tunisia was better than the books. It is a scenic land littered with Roman ruins. And before the Romans were the Phoenicians. The Phoenician spirit seems to survive today in Tunisia. I took heart from this quote from the New York Times that Tunisia will not go the way of Iran:

Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no love for the former Ben Ali government, but said he believed that Tunisia would remain a land of beer and bikinis.

“This is a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi said. “We are sailors, and we’ve always been open to the outside world. I have confidence in the Tunisian people. It’s not a country of fanatics.”

Night train to Rovaniemi

Here is a rap video by some very young Finns. According to the comments on boingboing Ella and Aleksi were four years old when they started rapping in Finnish. I love this animation-especially the fox. The video answers whatever questions you have about flushing the toilet on a train.

Something to make your inner child chuckle

I am linking to an ad for a Finnish chair. It looks great. I am sure it would cure my poor posture. But the best thing about this chair is how this ad made my husband giggle. Enjoy!

And now for something completely different (and Finnish)

While exciting demonstrations ripple through Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and even Algeria, a masked band of food activists is striking out against a large American corporation - the sacred Golden Arches.

Above is a picture from the Daily Mail of Jani Leinonen, spokesman for the Food Liberation Army. You can listen to an interview with Mr. Leinonen here on NPR. Mr. Leinonen comes across as quite charming with a subversive sense of humor. Can you imagine a member of ELF admitting that they love McDonald's food. Mr. Leinonen even ate at McDonald's the day after the kidnapping.

The police stormed his home and arrested Mr. Leinonen and he admits that he, "sung like a bird" during the police interrogation.

You can watch Mr. Leinonen's demands of McDonald's on the YouTube video below. I wonder what it would take to get some answers to these questions. If you wonder why the translation spells hamburger as hampurger then you should know the Finnish word for hamburger is hampurilainen. I wonder if this art performance piece will land Mr. Leinonen on the United States no fly list. Like Mickey d's, the US has a notoriously thin skin where any performance can be deemed to be "terrorism". Remember the Aqua Team Hunger Force campaign in Boston?

Finns on Ice

It has been over a week since I last posted on my blog. I have to blame the weather! We have snow and some not too chilly days. I am trying to spend as much time outside as possible. When you move north of the grits line everyone advises you to get outside in the winter to stave off the inevitable depression. They tell you this while you are stocking up on polar fleece everything. I still haven't found a polar fleece bra, but I am fully outfitted in everything else. Not too shabby for a Georgia girl.

I am taking down hill lessons at Pat's Peak and Joe Ayotte is teaching me how to skate ski. As much as I am willing to play in the snow, I have no urge to play on the ice. Too hard. But where there is ice, there is hockey.

This weekend has been great for hockey here in the capitol city. Just around the corner from our house is the Black Ice Pond Hockey Championship. We have watched our friends, local firefighters, lawyers, you name it, playing hockey on the pond. But I have been in the mood to do something Finnish so we rounded out our day by driving to Henniker (the only Henniker on earth) to watch our favorite twin Finns play hockey for New England College.

I grabbed my large Finnish flag and some more polar fleece blankets so we could cheer Aki (44) and Niko (8) on in comfort. New England College (The Pilgrims) has 3 Finnish players, 3 Swedes and a Russian. There are many Swedes playing hockey in New Hampshire. If you want to see a Svea hat, just go in any local hockey rink. We saw one last night and knew we were in the right place. The large wooden pilgrim was also a clue.

Aki and Niko each scored, but Trinity won in the last second. It was a heartbreaker. While I didn't see NEC win, I did enjoy chatting with the local Finnish fan club.

Joanna Broom (with the Aki sign) and Dominique Grant (with the Niko sign) are both juniors at New England College. They are friends with Aki and Niko, but were asking me questions about Finland. It will come as no surprise to any Finnish readers to learn that Aki and Niko don't brag about Finland--so I did! I told Joanna and Dominique that Finland is Newsweek's highest rated country.

We had a great time rooting for the Finnish Pilgrims despite the last second loss. I hope we make it to another game so we can check in with Dominique and Joanna. It will be great if they read my blog--in true American fashion I can and do brag about Finland.

More Snow in Tiny Town!

I just received the robo-call from the Concord School District-another snow day for Sophie. I had planned to drive her to school today because the sidewalks have been so treacherous here. The streets are plowed and the driveways are plowed, but the sidewalks are an afterthought. Small children and poodles have a hard time struggling over the walls of ice and snow left by the slush and then they plummet to the street hoping the cars will stop.

I appreciate being able to drive my car in all weather, but sometimes I wish the streets weren't plowed. There would be less salt and less ice and we could ski and sled to our destinations.

Concord does have an ordinance about keeping your sidewalks clear, but it is not enforced. In Finland there are criminal penalties when a property owner fails to maintain safe conditions for pedestrians. At least one person has died in Helsinki this year and it is possible that the building owner could be charged with involuntary manslaughter as a result. You can read the story here on YLE.

I found the picture of the old timey snow roller here. It makes me want to move to the Northeast Kingdom.

FinnDisco Redux

Chris and I puzzled over today's Selkouutiset story about a Finnish dance instructor. As we parsed the vocabulary we had one question-what dance instructor has 2 million euros. According to the story on YLE, a Finnish dance instructor sued Nordea Bank because of poor returns on an investment. The dance instructor, Ake Blomqvist, was asking for 1 million euroa damages. There is an article, in English, on Hesari here.

I thought that Ake Blomqvist looked strangely familiar. Back in my pre-Finland days I posted a video of a Finnish dance instructor teaching disco. The hip thrust was memorable. With the magic of You Tube I found that I was right! Ake Blomqvist of the law suit and the Finnish disco sensation are one and the same.

Here is another Ake Blomqvist video for your viewing pleasure:

A bittersweet welcome to the sun

I read this article last night on Selkouutiset. The gist of the article is that the blue light is waning in northern Finland and the sun shone for the first time, if only for 10 minutes.

I remember when the days started to get longer when we were in Finland. I felt a little mournful because I knew I would miss the protective cover of the dark. My friend Mari expressed this same thought to me recently. You can feel very exposed in the bright light of day.

Winter and all its fun has finally arrived in New Hampshire just as the days are growing longer. We have been trying to cram our winter fun into this very short season.

And this season is growing shorter. 2010 was one of the warmest years on record. Snow and glaciers are melting at a rapid pace around the globe. You can read the New York Times here about the exposed mummies in the Andes. But the new Republican majority will do nothing to try and slow global warming. I guess the maple syrup lobby isn't sweet enough.

Kaamosaika on päättynyt Pohjois-Suomessa

Aurinko näkyy jo vähän kaamoksen jälkeen. Kuva: YLE

Kaamosaika on Utsjoella ohi. Kaamosaikana aurinko ei nouse Suomen pohjoisimmassa osassa. Kaamosaika alkoi marraskuussa. Sunnuntaina aurinko näkyi Utsjoen taivaalla jo 10 minuuttia.

Kaamosaikana ei ole täysin pimeää päivällä. Silloin valoa on sen verran, että maisema näyttää siniseltä.

Pohjois-Suomen kaamosaika johtuu siitä, että alue on maapallon pohjoisnavan lähellä.

More Fintango!

Here is Marko Maunuksela, the Tango King of 2010, with his entry for the ever popular Eurovision contest. Chris tells me the name of the song is "The Gloomy Country's Tango". And you can follow this link to read more about Finnish Tango. Marko Maunuksela was crowned the Tango King in Seinäjoki, the second city of Tango (after Buenos Aires).

I posted about Finnish tango at this earlier post.

Look what we missed--Loistava!

Some enterprising person has already posted this video on You Tube:

Tonight! in Turku

I wish I were in Turku today! This weekend marks the opening of the year where Turku reigns as the Capital of Culture.

Here is the description of what is happening tonight:

Thousands of Turku residents will be part of the opening spectacle The spectacular opening brings fire and love above River Aura Turku will open the Capital of Culture year 2011 with a three-day weekend full of events and activities on 14–16 January 2011. The opening performance “This Side, The Other Side” on the evening of Saturday 15 January is the single largest event of the year.

I don't know whether I will be able to see anything from a web cam which you can access here. I might be clinging to the side of Sunapee at the proper time.

I was reading about the Capital of Culture events on YLE and learned that Talinn is also a European Capital of Culture. Today is the first day that the Euro, rather than the Kroon, can be spent on culture in Estonia. There is a lovely story about the Kroon in Estonia on NPR. You can listen to it here.

Meanwhile, I think I will make plans to visit Turku in 2011. And I will visit both sides of the Aura: this side and the other side!