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!

Silly pet tricks

David Letterman has a feature on his show for stupid pet tricks, but who would ever believe that a stupid pet trick could lead to surveillance and questioning.

Here is the dog, Jackie, with his owner, Tor Borg. You can read about this footnote (pawnote) in history on the Helsingin Sanomat here or in the New York Times here, but I will summarize if you don't want to go to those venerable journals.

Jackie lived in Tampere with his owners Tor and Josefine Borg. Josefine was German and known to dislike the Nazis and Tor owned a pharmaceutical company that did business with the Germans. An anonymous source reported to Nazi officials in Berlin that the Finnish dog had been trained to raise its paw in a mock salute at the command "Hitler". In 1941, Tor Borg was ordered to appear in Helsinki to answer questions about his dog. Borg denied calling his dog Hitler, but admitted that his wife had called the dog Hitler several times in the 1930s. The Germans ordered some businesses to stop trading with Borg's business, but Borg avoided court.

You can imagine the Wikileaks fallout from learning that a dog was mocking Hitler. Just look to Tunisia. Part of the cause for the rioting is apparently the Wikileaks report about:

A gracious dinner at Mr. Materi’s home was detailed in a cable from the American ambassador to Tunisia that was released by the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks and fueled at least some of the outrage: a beachfront compound decorated with Roman artifacts; ice cream and frozen yogurt flown from St.-Tropez, France; a Bangladeshi butler and South African nanny; and a pet tiger in a cage.

The above is taken from the New York Times.

And now...back to Jackie.

The most mystifying part of this story is that the Germans were spending time on a Finnish dog just months before embarking on Operation Barbarossa. I am reading about Operation Barbarossa in the new book, Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder.

Just to give you a taste of some of the facts from this book here is a sentence from page 182 that I read last night.

"As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War."

The aim of Operation Barbarossa was to make Germany, "the most autarkic state in the world". These are Hitler's words from page 159 of Bloodlands. I had to look up autarkic--it means self-sufficient. Germany would use the Soviet Union to supply food, but first it would have to kill everyone in the way--all 31-45 million of them.

But back to Jackie and Finland. Both survived the Nazis. Tor's business flourished and is now Tamro Group. One can only imagine that Jackie did well. And Finland? Well you only need read Newsweek to know how Finland is today.

Snow and all that it entails

A big storm is blanketing Concord with snow today. Anyone with a school-age child received a wake up call from the superintendent at 5:30 warning us that we could stay in bed. I got up, built the fire, and made pulla!

48 of the 50 states have snow today. Different parts of the country deal with snow in very different ways. You only have to check out your friends on facebook. In Atlanta and Athens, where people are less likely to own sleds, my FB pals are posting pictures of kayaks gliding down snowy hills and empty bread shelves in the local mega-market.

One country that does know how to handle snow is Finland. You only have to compare the response to 5 inches of snow at Heathrow with any given winter day at Helsinki-Vantaa. To read about the pre-Christmas travel horror at Heathrow, I recommend this article from the New York Times. You will never fly again.

If you do fly again, and there is no pesky ash cloud, fly though Helsinki. You can read this article on YLE, but I posted it in full here at the bottom of the post.

We suffered our own travel delay in ATL on Christmas Day. Here is the foreshadowing interview in Logan Airport. After a 2 hour de-icing, our take off was halted when the check engine light came on. My father was a big advocate of covering those lights with a little black tape. We did arrive in Argentina safely, if a little late. In the immortal words of my father, "Time to spare? Go by air."

Now, I must don my puffy pants and run out to play in the snow.
:

Finnish Ploughs Keep Planes off the Ground

published Mon 11:25 AM

The message about Finnish snow removal expertise is getting through.

Image: YLE / Antti Kolppo

The expertise used by Finnish airports to deal with snow is drawing interest from abroad. The snowy conditions across Europe this winter have raised demand for Finnish snow removal equipment.

Finland is ploughing ahead of the rest when it comes to keeping airport runways clear of the white stuff. In recent weeks Finnish snow removal equipment manufacturers have had an influx of queries from abroad.

"The number of requests for further information including technical information about our equipment has increased a lot during the last two weeks," reveals Veikko Möttönen, Director of International Sales for Fortbrand Services.

Finnish snow plough machines not only plough but brush and blow to ensure snow does not ground planes in bad weather. Manufacturers now intend to make the most of the increased demand and there is talk of further capitalising on Finnish snow removal expertise in the future.

"We could try to sell this as a new Finnish export product as Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb suggested before Christmas," Möttönen adds.