A thought on Finnish vocabulary

Finnish is a bit of an oddity language wise. Most European languages have the same root, and therefore have a lot of similarities, but Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian and a bunch of minority languages spoken only in rural Russia have taken a separate path. This lovely picture demonstrates these connections.

This difference really hits home when it comes to vocabulary. Because of Britain's long history of immigration our vocabulary isn't a million miles from that of the Spanish or French or German. The inconsiderate Finnish forefathers however didn't bother to visit back when it was all the rage and now, 1000 years later, I find myself with endless lists of completely alien vocabulary to memorise. The problem is that you can't just hit and hope like you can with Spanish; you either know the word or you don't and that means learning them. All of them.

Kotiharjun Sauna

Up here in Finland the sauna came first. Presumably, 10,000 years ago, as the Ice Age retreated and the Finnish forefathers tried to convince the foremothers that moving into this freezing land was a good idea the foremothers accepted solely on the condition that their new house would have a sauna.

A photo of a photo from Kotiharjun

From that browbeaten beginning was born the modern state of Finland and the genetic love of sauna has been handed down, generation to generation, ever since (those born without the gene soon met a wintry end). 

Nowadays saunas abound, as do the different styles. In the sliding scale of good to bad people seem to prefer smoke saunas (discussed here) and traditional wood burning saunas. Modern electric saunas are seen very much as a not-great means to a sweaty end. 

Though many apartments, and most apartment buildings, have an electric sauna, having a wood sauna in your house is very unusual, especially if you live in the Helsinki metropolis, so sauna aficionados looking for a more traditional sweat visit the public saunas hidden among the dark streets. Perhaps the most famous of them all is Kotiharju.

The Kotiharjun Sauna is wonderful from the moment you walk in. It's absolutely not luxurious, this is not a spa. It's more like a working mens' club but one based around a sauna rather than skittles and glittery tribute bands. Immediately next to the door is a fridge where you can leave your beers, or you can buy some from the lady in the tiny booth with two dogs sleeping next to her. Then off into the changing room which seems to have been kitted out in Victorian times and untouched ever since. Next there's a shower room with a certain prison feel to it where you can get a special washing from a little lady (very not sexual despite her poorly translated sign (below)) and finally off to the magnificent sauna.

Well done to that translator

The sauna stove itself looks like it formerly served to power ocean going ships. According to the website, the stove has "1500 kg (3300 pounds) of stones and it takes one cubic meter (35 cubic feet) of logs and five to six hours to heat them glowing hot".

The seating is arranged amphitheater style and overlooking everything is a small balcony where it gets really hot. The rules are that you ask the masters up top if they want more löyly (steam/heat/water) before hoiking a bowlful of water into the furnace entrance above your head.

Early Finnish man appeasing early Finnish woman

Then you sit and enjoy. And chat. Finnish people have a reputation for economy of conversation but there's something about naked proximity that really breaks the ice. You talk in the sauna until you feel dizzy and run to the shower where you chat through to the dressing rooms where people are playing cards and chess and then to the fridge to pick up your now-cold beer before walking out onto the freezing dark street in nothing but a towel, where you continue to chat as the rest of the world walks enviously by on their way home.

A really amazing place.

Holiday in Hammerfest, 1953. - Update

A few weeks back I wrote about an epic holiday undertaken in 1953 by my girlfriend's grandparents and their considerable family in a Ford Prefect. Girlfriend's wonderful Mum and Uncle then sent me some photos of the trip and gave me permission to share them here.

Let's quickly remind ourselves of the details which put to shame our present day complaints of, "the plane didn't have much leg-room".

First, Dad, pregnant Mum and six kids packed into this car. En route they also squeezed in a hitcher.

Hero. 

Then they drove this route. According to Google Maps, 3272km

Girlf's uncle explained that the two roads in Lapland had been made by the German army during the war. Apparently young uncle had also turned a deaf ear to his parent's pleas of, "Don't play away from the road, the land is full of explosives" and even returned with pieces of grenade he'd foraged.

Here are some great photos of the journey. Thank you so much to my girlfriend's mother and uncle for sharing them.

The family loaded in and ready to roll. 

The campsite. Half in the tent, half in the car. 

The Prefect parked outside a wagon graveyard. 

I love the girls' dresses all cut from the same roll of material and the immaculate boy (Girlf's Uncle) with shoes shined and socks pulled up. I also love the two stern-faced women nosing in the background. 

Picking berries. There weren't many places to stop and buy food so instead the family had to knock on the doors of local people to get supplies.

Out on the moor. Presumably the eldest girl on camera duty. 

The gang hanging out of a traditional log-cabin window. 

Girlf's uncle and the car on the ferry. Inside the car you can see the rest of the family. Pregnant mum with child on lap in the front seat. Hero.

Hammerfest

Sipoonkorpi

What is it?

Sipoonkorpi is a large national park to the east of Helsinki. It feels different to many a Finnish forest as instead of endless, and sometimes monotonous, trees it has a continuously changing landscape of woods, giant boulders, farmland, cliffs, and peaks.  

Where is it?

To the east of Helsinki between e75 and e18. The main entrance to the trekking routes are near the villages of Sotunki/Nygârd in the west and Helgtrask in the east.

When to go.

This is Finland so although you can go to the park all year, take warm clothing from October to May and expect snow in the winter months. There are beautiful and maintained ski tracks in the west side of the park.

    

Why go?

Firstly, because it’s so much fun. There are ups and downs and cliffs and caves, summits, duckboards, steep climbs, beautiful houses, thick forest, ancient forest, great views, laavus and mysterious old remains.

Secondly, because in comparison to Nuksio, it’s relatively peaceful yet is equally easy to get to.

Thirdly, it seems to be full of things to pick. Near the laavu we saw dozens of people with baskets and buckets full of fungi.

 
Routes

There is a lovely route that walks a loop in the south-west of the park. There are signposts and the trees are marked regularly with green and white ribbons/plaques.

Green and white plaques and ribbons mark the route

A more challenging option is to start from Bakunkarr and walk across the park eventually joining the above route.

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GPS for both routes are available at this link The main ski route starts in the North of the park, depending on conditions.

There are maps available with the trekking routes and ski-routes clearly marked.

This map is excellent. Link here

Holiday in Hammerfest, 1953

Staying in Tampere with the mother-in-law reminded me of an amazing story she told about her father deciding to pack all six kids, one tent and his pregnant wife into the Ford Prefect and drive over 1500km from Helsinki to Hammerfest in Norway.

They also picked up a hitcher.

Ford Prefect

If that wasn't exciting enough, this was 1953 and the countryside war still riddled with German mines and munitions. 

"My father told us not to play away from the road, but of course my brother did anyway", she said. 

Wenger's greatest achievement - that everyone has overlooked.

As we all know, Arsene has been the boss at Arsenal for 20 years now. Over the last few weeks many an article/ex-player has told us of how the modern game formed in his wake, his trophies have been listed, whilst his detractors remind us of how many times he didn’t win The League/Champions League/an Oscar. 

This argument has unfortunately rather overshadowed what should be the true legacy of Wenger, that is as an exemplary role model, perhaps the only example of a decent human being while all about him football falls into into a mire of nastiness and stupidity.   

Wenger has the kind of standards that you might tell your kids to maintain; fair play, decency and prioritising other values over winning; values such as loyalty, faith, patience and good old how you play the game.

He looks after his players, he even lets them move on if they want, even when they’re clearly the best in the team, he never throws them under the bus, he doesn’t criticise them after they’ve left, he gives them chance after chance to prove themselves, he rarely whines or makes excuses, he never tries to steals the limelight, nor blow his own trumpet. He’s clean living, dedicated, incredibly hardworking and ambitious. 

Is there a better role model in popular culture? Would you rather your kid look up to England Captain and habitual face-screamer Wayne Rooney? Maybe serial league winner and ego-monster Ibrahimovic? How about The Special One and eye-gouger Jose Mourinho?

EYE GOUGER!

FROM BEHIND! 

Football (and politics) seems to be more and more about idolising quite horrible people be it managers or players, until they go too far of course and then we ask ourselves (for about five minutes) what kind of example they give to young footballers. So ridiculous has it become that this season they`ve actually had to bring in laws to stop players shouting in the referee’s face. Far be it from the players and managers themselves to behave like any normal civilised person might. 

And amongst it all, Wenger. For my money perhaps the only half decent role model in professional football. 

 - A final thought. When Arsene has left, the Premier League will be like a band you like that turned out to be a bunch of racists. You still enjoy the music but a part of you knows you shouldn't really listen to it.

Top Podcasts

I'm a huge podcast fan. We're so lucky to live in an age where the internet gives us access to such amazing work by talented people and podcasts are perhaps the best manifestation of this.

I've been listening to podcasts for years now and they're getting better and better. There are serious journalistic podcasts like Serial and brilliant interview podcasts like RHLSTP and WTF, sports podcasts like Football Weekly and historical podcasts like In Our Time.

Here is my list of favourite podcasts, the ones I always look forward to downloading and recommend that you do too.

1. Radiolab. A work of art. Radiolab takes amazing stories, often scientific, and then presents them in the most compelling way with clever sound effects and use of conversation to help you catch the most important details. It's truly wonderful.
2. This American Life. One of the podcast pioneers, it almost seems dated now but the same level of professionalism is still there and there's a huge back catalogue of every kind of story you can imagine.
3. The Smartest Man In The World Podcast. Greg Proops takes to the stage and records, in front of a live audience, an awesome monologue/ramble/sermon often about his life experiences, overlooked people who have just died and why we should appreciate them more, music and a lot about feminism. It's fascinating and funny and light-hearted and all told with Proops' crazy self-mocking but honest conviction.
   
   
   
4. Conversations. This Australian podcast gets some great guests, some famous, some not, all interesting, and has long interviews on a huge range of topics.
5. Rear Vision. Another Australian podcast but this time one that picks a topic, often one in the news at the time, and tells us about it with the help of expert contributors. Great for catching up on current affairs you know nothing about.
6. Adam Buxton. Once part of the amazing Adam and Joe team, now media-meddler Buxton seems to have found his place with a series of great interviews. To date there have only been around 30 episodes but they've all been excellent and are broken up with the host's madness and insane jingles.
   
   
7. Second captains. My favourite general football podcast. The three hosts ramble their way through the week's top football stories and always manage to offer an interesting alternative to the normal boring/summary/aren't we crazy football podcasts. Great musical interludes too.
8. Arsenal Vision. The best Arsenal podcast. If you're a football geek, this one is great. No bollocks analysis filled with empty explanations of motivation or desire here. These boys break it down and tell you why the team is working or why it's not. Stats and formations abound. 
9. Witness. Short but fascinating podcast from the BBC. 1st or second hand accounts of and variety of historical events. Often powerful stuff. 

Special mentions. The following can be a bit hit or miss but are definitely worth a listen.

1. Doug Stanhope. Often more like a live recording of a psychology case study; comedian Doug Stanhope records at his bar/home with his neighbours randomly popping in. The Bingo Is Missing episode, where his girlfriend disappears and Doug and his (ex) girlfriend's new love interest sit at the bar and talk about where she might be whilst waiting for the phone to ring, is incredible.
   
2. WTF. Maybe the most famous podcast of all. If the guest is interesting then it's worth a listen. Host Marc Maron's self-analysis/open style is also kind of fascinating. Skip the first 15mins though.
3. Stuff You Should Know. Two guys that sound like old hippies explain stuff. Some great episodes to dig out.
4. The Infinite Monkey Cage. Great science talk but too often ruined by people trying to be funny.

Some blasts from the pasts. Podcasts that are unfortunately no longer recorded. 

1. The Russell Brand Podcast. The mp3 version of the radio show. First on 6Music then later on Radio2. Love or hate his later incarnations, his radio show has some of the funniest moments I've ever heard in my life. This Cry For Help Playlist on YouTube is wonderful.
   
   
2. The Adam and Joe podcast. Again, a podcast version of their BBC radio show. Great regular items, listener contributions and a lot of two old friends talking nonsense.

Some BBC podcasts. 

1. Desert Island Discs. Good when the guest is good. 
2. David Baddiel. tries to understand. Quite new but some surprisingly interesting (and nicely short) episodes. 
3. In Our Time. Interesting historians try to explain interesting topics whilst getting badgered by an increasingly stressed/senile Melvyn Bragg. 
4. Shortcuts. Comedian Josie Long does a sort of dreamy British version of This American Life. 

Makkara

Finland is an outdoorsy country. Pretty much everyone has, at some point in their life, camped, fished, skied, gone trekking, picked berries, built a fire, punched an elk, etc.

What you soon realise though, is that the main objective for any outdoor activity in Finland, is to get to a place, often a laavu, where you can cook and eat sausages (Makkara).

The Finnish sausage is a bit of a sorry beast. Most people seem to peel of the plasticky skin, often burnt anyway, and then cover the sawdust meat inside with mustard. Those that know me will confirm that I am almost completely devoid of national pride, but the Finnish sausage is a poor imitation of its German or British equivalents.

Makkara

British Sausage

The countryside here is full of laavus, traditional shelters once used by the farmers when they went out to cut the hay meadows. Nowadays pretty much every ski day or trekking day is designed around a visit to the laavu where desperate skiers/trekkers hurry to the fireplace to get their burnt sausage fix.

They really are makkara addicts. This year I joined a kayak club and on the beginners' course they explained how the kayak has a little storage space just perfect for storing a barbecue for your sausages. Having passed the course, we adventured off to a nearby island only to find it full of people who'd come over for the day in their yachts. We watched them land, walk to the barbecue spot, cook their sausages then get back on their boats and sail away again.

So passionate are the Finns about cooking sausages al fresco that they have even invented telescopic barbecue forks which fit neatly into your backpack/ski pants.

Sometimes it feels a bit like the Pokemon craze where going out is actually an unintended consequence of getting to a place where you can wave your phone at imaginary Japanese characters/ cook sausages. At least it gets him out of the house.

Man overboard!

On the weekend I heard a great story about a man who jumped overboard from a Tallink ferry, swam to a nearby island and survived for two weeks stealing crackers from a restaurant that was closed for the winter.

The man himself told the police that he had regretted his act immediately [presumably seconds after he hit the icy water. Ed.] and had swum to the nearest island. - ERR news.

That nearest island was Pihlajasaari which, as you can see from the map, is barely 1km from shore. It's a busy tourist island in summer but in April he was lucky he didn't freeze to death in the sea.

Here are my top 4 scenarios for why he jumped.

1. The Abort. "What? This ferry goes to Estonia! Abort!" Like when you realise you've got on an escalator that takes you to the wrong floor. You can either ride it out, slowly go all the way down then find the escalator that takes you slowly back up, or you can turn round and charge back to the beginning, leaping at the end to get back to non stationary land.
2. The Did I Leave The Oven On? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't but there'll be no peace till you've checked. Now over the side with you scatterbrain!

1. The No Ferries To Pihlajasaari in April Eh? "Well I'll show you. Tally-ho."
2. The Stop The World, I'm Getting Off. "Five euros for a coffee! In a paper cup! I wake up at 6 to get on a stinky ferry, travel 2 hours to a job I don't even like then two hours back to a wife who complains I don't do enough around the house. Well no more my friend! I'm going to live on an island and listen to The Stone Roses. See you later suckers!"

Hitching in Lyngenfjord

The old man stopped to give us a lift. He opened the back of his estate car and helped put our heavy packs in without asking where we were going. He'd been down to Nordkjosbotn to get some dog food and now was heading back to his home near Nordmannvik, about a 3 hour round trip.

He told us that there didn't used to be a road on this bit of the fjord. This was where the Sea-laps (Sea Sami) lived and fished; there was no road to them, only boats.

Then the road was built and later the tunnels to protect the roads from the landslides falling from the sheer slopes in the winter.

He remembered a time when there were lots of people who spoke Kven, something similar to Finnish but different. There were some words that sounded familiar to him but it was hard to understand.

He'd heard that once, more than a thousand Brits had come over, by boat, to work in the mines. That was a long time ago.

Many of the first tourists here were Germans. Many soldiers had been here, during the war, and fallen in love with the place; they came back to visit with their new families.

Now there are lots of Japanese tourists. They come to see the northern lights. Most nights there are half a dozen coaches parked in Skibotn. Most of them stay in Tromsø.

They're building a new tunnel too. Then the trip to get dog-food will only take two-and-a-half hours

Porkkalanniemi. Back in the USSR.

After the second world war The Soviet Union demanded the use of the Porkkalanniemi peninsula as a naval base. This small area juts out into the Gulf of Finland and gave control of all naval access to St Petersburg.

Despite being deep within Finnish territory, access to the area was controlled by the Soviet military. Trains however, running along the south coast could still pass through although the windows were boarded up and photography was prohibited.

The area was finally returned to Finnish control eleven years later in 1956.

Harju OK?

The Alps were formed when Africa smashed into Europe and ruffled the continent up like a carpet on a shiny floor. The Andes are the result of the Nazca plate burrowing under the South American continent like a badger.

Unfortunately Finland escaped the exciting game of continental plate spinning and has largely been formed by huge Glaciers planing it flat every time there's an ice age. This means Finland is flat. Very flat. However, there is one exciting geological fillip to make this country a bit more interesting, the noble Esker.

Esker, or Harju in Finnish, are these cool ridges that pop up all over the country. Sometimes they look like railway embankments. They can run for kilometres and rise high above the surrounding countryside providing great views to the, often flat, lands on either side.

So, you may ask, if glaciers raked the rest of the country flat, how did Eskers form? Good question.

At the glacial maximum glaciers, normally moving like a slow frozen river, slow down and stop. Generally the glaciers around this part of the world stop when they get down to Germany, presumably retreating quicky from the weirdos playing dreadful oompah music.

Water however is a tireless beast and continues to try to move through the glacier. As it does it begins to form tunnels which get bigger and bigger. Anyone who's tried to put glacier ice in their whisky knows that the water is full of sediment and this sediment gets left behind in the tunnels. Sometimes the tunnels are huge and they fill with huge amounts of sediment. Eventually the glacier melts away and Finland is revealed but the sediment remains, still in the shape of the tunnel that housed it for so long. And that snake-like pile of sediment will eventually get covered in grass and trees and become the beautiful Eskers that we know and love.

Paradise esker

Canadian Esker

Esker heaven

One final point. The Finnish word for esker is Harju and it sounds like Are you which gifts us a great opportunity for top comedy. i.e. Harju you sure? Harju OK? Harju happy? Harju getting annoyed? Harju re-evaluating our friendship? Harju going? Harju coming back? Harju still there?