Friday Blast is the hottest dance music club in Northern Finland. The club is held every Friday. The founders of Friday Blast Marcus Maison and Timothy Night have years of experience working in the dance music scene. “Through Friday Blast club nights we want to develop the dance music culture in Northern Finland and bring world class acts to perform here,” says Maison. Night continues: “This type speciality club for dance music has never been organized this north. We want to bring the best club music to the Finnish people in this area as well.”

On Friday 10.5. Oulu’s Apollo Live Club hosts Alex Moreno, who is ne of the hottest new DJ’s in Sweden and internationally. His remixws are extremely popular and he’s a regular on top of dance charts. His remix of Loreen’s Euphoria has been listened over 3 million times in Youtube! Alex Moreno has played all over the world in big festivals among many top DJ names like Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Axwell, Eric Prydz, Deadmau5 and Bob Sinclair.

Friday Blast  club nights are held in other cities as well as in Oulu by Blast Tour. Club nights have been organized also in Jyväskylässä and Kuopiossa. This coming Saturday 11.5 Blast Tour brings Alex Moreno to Southern Finland as well. He plays in Tampere, in  Screen Club & Lounge. “We want to organize great partynights and dance music clubs all over Finland. Future artist include for example Maison&Dragen and The Thrillseekers.” Night says.

Previous artists that have performed in Friday Blast club nights or on Tour Blast tours include such names as SynCole (EST), Alexander Brown (DEN), Felix Zaltaio & Lindh Van Berg (SWE), Tydi (AUS), Tom Fall, Proteus ja Filthy Ferrets & Milo. Maison reminds us that “ There’s always a party at Friday Blast – club. Even though there wouldn’t be a special artist booked for the evening, the resident DJ’s make sure that the party goes through the roof every time!”

LINKS:

Loreen – Euphoria (Alex Moreno Remix)

► http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-TU0Ad6Mk

Alex Moreno homepage: http://www.alexmoreno.com/

Friday Blast Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/FridayBlast

It is a charity based event and there will be sales of Sakura Mochi (Japanese sweets), Matcha green tea muffin with chocolate, Kokoro Furoshiki and T-shirts for 3.11 portrait picture project.

A new item called Furoshiki, is a cloth used to wrap items such as clothes, gifts, or other items. It is a reusable and environmental friendly. Plus, you can make different shapes out of a piece of Furoshiki.

*Schedule*
12.00 Begin the sales (Furoshiki, T-shirts, sweets)
12.30 Origami workshop -Let’s make Sakura (cherry blossom)
14.30 Guzheng instrument performance 1
15.00 Guzheng instrument performance 2

*
What is Guzheng 古筝instrument?
Guzheng (Zheng or Chinese Zither), one of the oldest Chinese traditional instruments, emerged around 2500 years ago. It is also the ancestor of many other Asian instruments, such as Japanese koto, the Mongolian yatga and the Korean gayageum. It will be performed by Xinyuan Sui.

More about Kokoro project:
http://www.facebook.com/kokoropuroject
http://kokoro-project.blogspot.fi/

On Thursday October 29, 2011, we met for the first time. On a rainy, windy, freezing day, I trembled as the wind blowing through the trees hit me swiftly in the face while standing in front of the cathedral. The family, who walked to meet me from behind the church, was easily recognisable for consisting of two young parents (Sakke and Nina) and their two daughters (Rebekka and Matleena), all of whom were smiling cheerfully and happily, in a manner consistent with the happy tone of their email. Each of them gave me a tight hug which made me feel extremely welcome, blessed to meet them, and warm, immediately dispersing the unpleasant cold. At that moment, I knew that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

From then on, almost every Sunday, we’d spend time together, which is why, if you ask me, Sunday should be called “Kummipäivä” or ‘Foster family day,’ not only because of my experiences but because you can easily spot students on a Sunday bus talking to each another about how they’re are going to see their kummi family and what they’re planning to do there. Every time I met them was a nice little adventure of some sort, and I did a lot of things with them for the first time ever. For me, that included skating, hugging the real Santa Claus—who resides in Rovaniemi—picking berries, visiting to a sauna with the real wood stove, watching a dog show, or learning how to knit and bake cakes with the granny of the family, which, I came to realize, were very Finnish experiences. For the family, it meant seeing their faces turn red after eating hot chili, trying spring rolls, listening to Vietnamese traditional music, and grooving in their living room to Vietnamese dance steps, and learning to cook rice with a Vietnamese touch, which means cooking it for fifteen more minutes after it’s moist, at a low heat.

We had many funny, relationship-reinforcing conversations. For instance:

“Now tell me what you have in Vietnam, and I’ll tell you what we have in Finland,” Rebekka suggests.

Sakke: “Ok. We have four seasons.”

Me: “We don’t, but we have a daylight time of nine hours every day.”

Nina: “We have greenhouses to grow strawberries”

Me: “Oh, we have them, too.”

Sakke: “Oh really?”

Me: “Yes, but to protect the hotness.”

At this, we all laughed and Nina said, in broken words, “I think we need a greenhouse to protect the cold.” Talk of this type continued and we ended by concluding that Finland and Vietnam are quite similar, at least in terms of land mass, though people seem to want different things: Finns want to dye their hair black; Vietnamese love to dye it blonde.

And my foster family planned tremendous surprises. A month ago, I was invited to come over for a family meeting, as Nina’s parents—who live in Kannus—were visiting them. This turned out to be a family dinner with fabulous Vietnamese food. Nina exclaimed, “last time, you said that you were craving for Vietnamese food? We googled all these, and the people in Asian shop in Kauppahalli were really helpful.” Ecstatic and overjoyed at the nice surprise, I replied with my eyes shining my mouth watering mouth, “I can’t believe it: Vietnamese dishes made by Sakke? Sweet!!’ Sakke is executive chef at the Radisson Hotel. The dinner went on happily with nonstop laughs and moments of struggling to use chopsticks.

Above such specific, great memories, what makes me feel warm is the friendly and welcoming nature of the family. Every email sent to me was a conversation including all the family members. The family was accepting and our relationships were built on respect; our different backgrounds and experiences were seen as an opportunity for us to learn from each other. I could and can still give them a phone call or send a text message for just nonsense things. Above all, the relationship was built on the little things you do when you’re think about someone else. For instance, the other day, there was a sale on Nina’s favorite cheese cake in Stockman, so I bought her one, went to her office building near Rotuaari, and called her to come down to pick it up. You can imagine how pleased she was to get cheesecake. Or months ago, when Nina was rushing to see me at the city centre, she was fined 50€ for parking carelessly and told me, “Oh my God, Sakke is going to laugh at me, I keep bragging to him that I haven’t had any fine for years.”

I’ve talked to five other students with foster families in Oulu, and they’ve mostly been very positive about the experience, though one student told me when she met her family, they sat smiling at each other for three or four hours, but no one really said anything, and they only met once—both sides stopped contacting each other. Also, matching at the International Relations Services doesn’t always work out exactly as specified in the preferences. Anna, a German student, told me “I wrote on the application letter under the “preferences” section such thing like: I love to have a family with little kids. And for the first day of meeting, it turned out that the youngest one in the family was a “boy” of 30 years old. Anyway, it is just a number. We have fun.” Rebecca, 19, an exchange student from Australia told me: “The Kummi program really benefits my experience in Finland a lot. It has been fantastic to have a family here to experience the culture, the lifestyle and I definitely feel more like home. I think I am really lucky because I have been given probably one of the nicest families ever. They are a real lovely family. I might come back to Oulu to do my Master. If that happens, I will definitely love to be their kummi student again. I will keep in touch with them.”

I celebrated Christmas with them, which was my first time celebrating Christmas because like the rest of my family in Vietnam, I’m Buddhist, so we don’t celebrate it in Ho Chi Minh. ‘How time flies!’ I thought, eating ham, salmon, reindeer meat, drinking milk, watching TV, and waiting for Santa Claus to appear. I remembered my excitement at all the new discoveries I’d made with my foster family. This time, I felt cheerfulness at being together and reminiscing about our shared memories—and sadness that I was going to leave in two months. Saying goodbye to people you love is never easy, but I console myself with the thought that life in itself is about comings and goings and the most important thing is how we stay together in spirit.

If you ask me, ‘What’s the best Christmas present you got?’ I’d say the handmade artificial snowball from my kummi family, the back of which reads “crunching the snowball and discovering the joy – warm memories from creative childhood days,” and for me, is evocative of everything I’ve been through, from dreaming about snow—and wondering whether it felt like the ice in a fridge-freezer—to the wonderful days with my kummi family, many of those at sub-zero temperatures.

My friend Minh-Thui from Vietnam called me on the phone a few days ago and, hearing about the snowball, said, “I told you so: you don’t need to go that far just to see snow.” “Yeah, you were right,’ I replied, ‘And now you won’t need to go anywhere to touch snow; I’ll give you a crunch of my snowball when I come back.” This long journey, I think, is all worth it. Thinking of all the random waves of life that drifted to me in Oulu, I smile, ended up happily enjoying every little thing. I think to myself, ‘I am lucky to be here, and lucky to have a kummi family.’

Most people I’ve spoken to—by which I mean the students I know at Oulu University studying business, education, IT, or engineering, who I talk to in NISO (Network of International Student in Oulu) parties; people I meet in my student apartment block, in the elevator; students sitting over lunches; random Finns who I say ‘hi’ to in the street, who think I’m strange and who then ask me ‘are you a student?’ ‘where are you from,’ and ‘do you like Oulu?’ to which I reply ‘yes,’ then ask them ‘do you like Oulu?’ and they reply ‘yes’; and others in my ‘kummi’ or foster programme that matches students with Finnish families on weekends—seem to like Oulu. When I ask them ‘why?’ they say, ‘There are so many reasons! Heavy metal music! Santa Claus, because Finland is his home country! Reindeer whenever I go to Lapland for a vacation!’ When they read the Oulu brochures announcing that Oulu is ‘the capital of Northern Scandinavia,’ they feel proud to be living in such a geographically impressive-sounding place. I don’t know about the rest. Of course some say ‘I won’t stay here after my studies finish because I won’t get a job,’ or ‘I don’t speak the language,’ or ‘the weather is too much!’ But of my acquaintances, the ratio’s two dissenters to 150 assenters (more or less).

Winter scenery in Oulu.

To me a good way to describe Oulu is ‘extreme.’ Winter weather here’s often minus thirty, summer’s often plus thirty, and Oulu people are frequently silent just before they reach the sauna, where they talk  about politics or personal issues, or share funny tales of how weird their boyfriends are, before rocking out of the sauna to roll in the snow, naked. I love Oulu for what it is, and, in particular, for one of the best things student life in Oulu offers me: a foster family.

I’m writing this during my second winter here, which means biking every day through breathtaking scenes of tree, field, car, playground, and house, yellow, blue and buried in thirty centimeters of snow. Dry branches covered in snow and frost make a crispy noise when I slide them in the palm of my hand, a pastime I learned from my Finnish foster mum, Nina. Nina has dark hair, is in her thirties, is medium tall, has blue eyes and a lovely smile, and has been living in Oulu for nearly ten years after moving from Kannus via Espoo and Rovaniemi, marrying on the way and having two daughters, Rebekka, now 15, and Matleena, 9. “In this boring Oulu, you have to know how to entertain yourself!’ Nina says when we visit Kannus together in Christmas 2011. ‘Boring?!’ I say. ‘No.’ Boredom, I contend, isn’t where you are but who you’re with. If  Oulu people don’t start the conversation—this happens to me all the time—I start it. And when I do, they often make jokes and laugh harder than I do.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll begin (again) by answering the question Finns most often ask me; namely, ‘why are you here?’

Moving to Finland from Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, where my family arrived when I was six, was a long journey physically and mentally (I covered many miles of thoughts). My first contact with Finland began not in Vietnam but on a usual day in Malaysia, where I was a teacher and master’s student in Sultan Zainal Abidin University and usually bored as I’d no transportation to go to the Kuala Terenganu city centre. No buses went on the weekend; I didn’t want to pay for a taxi; and no bars, bowling alleys, or cinemas existed that I knew or discovered in the course of my stay. I spent my time working, waiting for lunch, or surfing the terrible WIFI connection that kept dropping out in my teacher apartment on campus. So, surfing as usual, I’m struck by a random ad for a competition on www.visitfinland.com requesting pictures in response to the tagline “I wish I were in Finland.” The prize, it says, is that “winners would go to paradise,” by which they mean winners will get a luxury trip to Finland, with meal, travel, and board.

‘Right!’ I think. ‘If Finland’s paradise, why not?’ Strictly speaking, I don’t think too much about whether it really is paradise: the idea of a free trip is enticing enough. So I send in a picture of US pioneer astronaut Neil Armstrong taking his very first steps on the moon, but instead of expressing longing for the advancement of mankind, Neil whispers, “I wish I were in Finland!” I think this is the best illustration ever and am very happy waiting for the announcement of ‘Congratulations! You are free to come to Finland.’ As you might guess, I failed to win. The idea was good, I feel, and people seemed to like the picture (it got many thumbs up on the website), but I imagine many reasons, both politically, and in terms of copyright—sadly, I was not on the moon to take the original picture—why I failed.

While waiting for the news, I begin to search for more information on Suomi, which turns up many pictures of snow. I promptly dream at night of being in the middle of a snowy field touching the snow. I’m not sure how it would feel, but I imagine it a little like putting my fingers in an ice box and touching the icy sides. So when I learn of my unfortunate failure to win the competition, I decide to travel to paradise via a more serious, academically motivated path: by applying to a university in Finland.

I wanted in particular to study education abroad: my childhood dream was to be an educator; also, education was the only subject that I was qualified to study at a university. The more I searched, the more I became stunned to learn that Finland was famous for welfare, education, and saunas—you name it. This sounded promising. Oulu University was the only Finnish institution to which I applied (I still struggle to find a reason for this: if someone asks me ‘why Oulu?’ I answer ‘I don’t know’; and when thinking about it, I compare my decision to Alice’s unplanned adventures in Wonderland, or use the word ‘destiny’ a lot, to make my decision seem more dramatic). Anyway, in 2011, I eventually found myself studying on an Oulu Master of Education programme and living in Linnamaa, behind a tennis court and in front of daycare centre.

Before leaving Vietnam, I’d spoken online to a former Oulu student who’d warned me of certain phenomena in Finland so I’d be well-prepared: ‘beware the weather,’ he said, and ‘boring people.’ When I arrived, it was certainly cold. I’d travelled by train from Helsinki to meet my ‘kummi’ (foster) student pairing, Julia, who was assigned to pick me up,  show me the city centre, inform me how to register at the population registrar, and direct me to the university library and the classrooms. When I got off the train, my fingers were trembling, my teeth were chattering, and my lips didn’t seem to want to move to form the words ‘thank you’ (I apologised to Julia the next day for this). I felt and feel that the Finnish climate is more or less a meteorological rollercoaster you can choose to scream at or enjoy (my choice was to enjoy). Later, when my mum—who lives in the tropics—began to call me on the phone, she became frustrated and accused me of insanity when after saying ‘hello’ I answered her question about the weather by telling her it was ‘quite warm’ at minus two degrees celsius. Anyone who’s been in the Finnish winter knows what I mean. If you do, I think you’re very much entitled to consider yourself a Finn, whatever your previous nationality.

Minh-Hieu Le and her foster family.

The next thing I noticed was that no-one was saying anything on buses. The very first day I arrived in Oulu, I ask a stranger, “Do you know how to get the nearest bus stop?” “Yes,” she replies, ending with a long full stop. Perhaps I’ve asked the wrong question, I think. ‘Next time, I’ll make it clear by asking ‘Do you know how to get to the bus stop, and if you do, do please show me?’’ I rehearse this conversation mentally several times. I’ve read that people wear headphones so as not to disturb others, but I’m fairly sure Finns wear headphones because they don’t want others to disturb them. I don’t know how right that is, empirically speaking, but that generalisation I just made about the ‘yes-full-stop’ stranger—even though I’ve made it—has begun to disturb me a little because my experience with her is the only unpleasant one I can remember. It’s nothing compared to my experiences of summer picnics on huge dandelion-carpeted lawns in Ainola park; autumn leaves changing colors; the gorgeous array of different colored foliage everywhere a tree will fit,  cheerful Oulu citizens swimming in ice holes; being told stories of people losing items and having them returned or finding them in the exact place they left them; and all the kind and humble people I meet and know, including my flat mate, classmate, coordinator, and my kummi family.

As a foreign student, I know that anyone can suffer from homesickness, and on encountering symptoms—especially when it was dark and I was hungry and had to cook for myself, at which point I imagined myself in Vietnam being fed by my mum—I decided that applying for a foster program through the university would help make my student life livelier and more homely. It does. Organised by the University of Oulu, the foster programme aims to create a free, open cultural exchange atmosphere of understanding and friendship between the student and receiving family; I’m paraphrasing their website. To become a part of the program, both sides—in this case, both me and the family who became my university foster family—filled out application forms, mainly stating our preferences (what sort of family would you like? one with little children? animals? what are your hobbies?), which then became grounds for the matching. The kummi programme doesn’t involve any formal commitments or rules, other than the obligation to fill out the form: everything is done voluntarily. The University’s International Relations Service organises connecting the families and students, distributes letters and correspondence, and throws a Christmas party once a year involving musical performances, gifts, and some very pleasant tasting porridge.

I submitted an application form on the student orientation day in September, at the beginning of my first term at the university. Two weeks later, I got the first email from my foster family, which included a brief introduction and greetings from every family member; that, to recap, means Nina, Sakke, Matleena, and Rebekka, whom, I discovered, live in Perävainio, seven kilometers to the south of the city center and past a bun factory on the bus. They proposed four different options for meeting, either Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after six or on the weekend at any time. The venue for our meeting, wrote Nina, was to be “Rotuaari,” which I changed to the church, because as a newcomer to Oulu, the cathedral was the only location I could recognise. The time was set for six p.m. and I found myself looking forward to the meeting by imagining what they’d look like, what we’d be doing, and by mentally preparing things to say about myself, were they to ask me questions.

Part 2

Oulu residents are the fourth most satisfied, of residents of large cities, with municipal services. And nationwide, according to the poll, they are seventeenth most satisfied.

Kauniainen residents are the happiest with the services which their taxes pay for. At 16.5 percent, the Helsinki-area municipality has the lowest tax rate in Finland, is 38 percent Swedish-speaking and is entirely enclosed by Espoo. It has 8000 residents and is the most educated municipality in Finland. Its residents registered 82 on the satisfaction index.

It was a followed by Naantali, a picturesque town that is home to Moomin World, and a number of other small towns. Kokkola was ranked at 15th and Oulu at 17th with a satisfaction rate of 70.

In terms of major cities, Oulu was fourth after Tampere (72.5), Kuopio (72.5) and Helsinki (71.2). The Finnish average was a satisfaction rate of 67 out of 100. The research was conducted by EPSI-Rating Finland.

The country’s least satisfied municipality is Raasepori, near Hanko, with a satisfaction score of 51.5.

While Air Baltic and other airlines have cutting direct Oulu routes, there seems to be no stopping the rise of Norwegian. As of April next year, the budget airline will offer direct flights from Oulu to Alicante in South East Spain.

And they’re assuming you’re going to want to spend time lapping up the sun because the flights will only be once a week – the plane will leave Oulu on Tuesday mornings and return on Monday evenings.

Norwegian currently flies from Oulu to Helsinki and, as of October, has been in negotiation to fly from Oulu to Las Palmas.

With a population of over 300,000, the ancient city of Alicante was established by the Romans. It boasts Medieval cathedrals, a castle and a monastery, as well, of course, as popular beaches.  

The merging of surrounding municipalities with Oulu was supposed to be a matter of cutting bureaucracy, improving efficiency and saving money. But it may also bring considerable pleasure to people interested in having precise signposts.

For there are big changes on the road-side signpost sign-post front. With the absorption into Oulu of Yli-Ii, Kiiminki, Haukipudas and Oulunsalo, the borders of Oulu have changed meaning that the many signs erected on the borders of these towns which indicate that you are entering ‘Oulu’ have to be taken down. In addition, coat-of-arms emblazoned signs indicating that you’re entering the formerly independent municipalities have had to be replaced with a different kind of sign, the same as that found when you enter any area within Oulu. On the other sides of these about-to-be-abolished municipalities are new signs, with coats of arms, stating that you are entering Oulu.

The group ELY has already installed the new signs. Currently, they are covered-up and will be uncovered at New Year as the New Oulu’s life begins.

In addition, it has been agreed that the New Oulu will have one and only one ‘centre’ – the centre of the original Oulu. Accordingly, the ‘keskusta’ signs in the merging municipalities are to be taken down and replaced with signs that read ‘Haukipudas Centre’ or ‘Yli-Ii Centre.’ The won’t be done until the summer of autumn.

The whole sign-changing operation is estimated to cost about 70,000 euros. Two thirds will be paid by the state and a third by the city. The old signs are likely to be recycled.

Or so I thought, until I attended a PhD defence at Oulu University and the ‘Karonkka’ party in the evening. My friend Jani, 33, had been studying for his doctorate for as long as I’d known him – six years. A formal wedding-invitation like card arrived inviting me to big event.

Wearing an evening suit and academic gown, I definitely stuck out amongst the be-jeaned students and university lecturers as I made my way to the lecture hall in which my friend’s PhD defence would take place. But this wasn’t the case once I got there. I suddenly realised that I really was attending something like a wedding.

‘Hello, I’m Jani’s father,’ exclaimed an elderly man, shaking my hand and welcoming me as if he was the host. Just like at many weddings, the close family had the most effort. The PhD candidate (Jani Koskela)’s parents, uncles and aunts, siblings and partner’s family all looked like they were turning up for a mass job interview. Other attendees, seemingly not officially invited to the Karonkka – a post-defence banquet in honour of the PhD opponent – wore grunge as usual. But never mind. There were 50 people in attendance to witness the defence of Jani’s philosophy of education thesis, pithily entitled ‘Discontinuity as theoretical foundation to pedagogy existential phenomenology in Otto Friedrich Bollnow´s philosophy of education.´ Attendees included friends like myself, family, and departmental colleagues (who’d also been invited to the party afterwards) as well as assorted other Oulu University researchers and even Jani’s old headmaster.

After we had sat down, Jani, the Dean of the Education Faculty and his ‘opponent’ entered the room (fifteen minutes later than the midday starting time, as is tradition), the latter two carrying the top hats and swords, symbolising their possession of PhDs. They had excelled themselves in formality, wearing white tie and tails; a style I’d only previously observed at the president’s Independence Day Party.

And then the ritual commenced. The ‘defendant’ presented a summary of his PhD (in Finnish, despite it being written in English), the ‘opponent’ presented a summary of his possible objections (during which the ‘defendant’ stood), and they debated each other for about three hours.

For this was little more than a ritual – the fact that ‘Karonkka’ derives from the Russian word for ‘coronation’ is thus little surprise.

According to Helsinki University educational historian Anni Peura, who actually did her PhD on the process of the Finnish PhD, the ‘defence’ is very much a formality. Months prior to the Big Day, the PhD candidate submits their thesis – or sometimes a series of articles which together make a thesis – to be reviewed by two examiners. If the thesis passes this review process then the ‘defendant’ has effectively got their doctorate and it’s now a question of going through the motions. It is almost unheard of the opponent not to pass the defendant, and it would only happen if the defendant was completely unable to answer any of his questions.

The other formality is the very idea that the defence is a ‘public defence’ in which anyone can turn up and interrogate the defendant about his research. The thesis had been published as a book but nobody there seemed to have read it, with a number of friends of the defendant admitting that, ‘I’d find hard to understand this in Finnish but it’s in English . . . and difficult, academic English!’ Jani’s highly philosophical subject matter – finding the appropriate metaphor for the education process – didn’t make comprehension any easier.

The atmosphere also has nothing of the intensity and unpleasantness of the British or American ‘academic disputation’ or ‘viva voce,’ in which the candidate’s passing or failing really does strongly depend on how they perform. Defendant and opponent met up beforehand for a chat, seemed rather friendly to each other and made lots of jokes.

And after a lengthy break, we turn up at a central Oulu hotel for the ‘Karonkka,’ which appears to be similar to an – albeit small-scale – wedding reception. Now even those who hadn’t made the effort for the defence have noticeably smartened-up and the women are in the evening dress.

According to Prof. Paul Fogelberg, Emiritus Professor of Geography at Helsinki University, ‘Celebrating this important step towards the doctoral degree undeniably has some association with a coronation,’ as the term derives from the Russian term for coronation. ‘The karonkka is mostly organized in a restaurant, often with just the members of the examination panel and a few colleagues, supervisors or friends present . . . The respondent is the host, and the opponent is the guest of honour.’

There was a break between 4pm and 6pm, when the ‘Karonkka’ began at the hotel. Here, there were around 30 people, this time all in evening dress or suits. After a sumptuous gourmet style, sit-down dinner – complete with champagne, wine and a violinist for entertainment – we move to a series of speeches which most of those on my table, none of us part of the defendant’s department, found especially comprehensible.

Prof. Fogelberg explains that, ‘Speeches adhering to a certain scheme form an essential part of the tradition. The first speaker is the Respondent, who may talk in retrospect about how his or her scholarly interests have developed and how the dissertation research advanced. In this speech first the Opponent and then a number of other persons are mentioned, mostly with words of gratitude for the part the person in question has played in aiding, supervising or supporting the Respondent. Then, all the persons mentioned, and in the order they were mentioned, stand up and deliver their own speeches. All these speeches are very informal, and they mostly end with a toast to the doctor.’

Finns often stereotype Swedes and as being ‘snobbish’ and formal, but it seems that the defence and Koronkka, though derived from Uppsala University, is a far grander affair in Finland than in the country it was once part of.

‘In Finland the public examination of a dissertation has preserved a much more ceremonial character than in Sweden,’ says Prof. Fogelberg. ‘This concerns both the protocol and the dress, the Swedes tending to be less formal.’

‘Nevertheless, it is important to note that the ceremonies are not just pomp and circumstance; they form the frame of the event, not the substance,’ he adds. ‘The substance of a public examination of a dissertation is the intelligent criticism presented by the Opponent, and the response from the candidate. On such an important day it is worth dressing elegantly, and not to show up wearing jeans and a worn-out pullover, something that has been occasionally the case in Sweden.’

And according to Jani, even this is not enough. To fully become a Finnish academic ‘doctor’ – with the right to use the top hat – he has to wait for yet another ritual, when he’s presented with a sword, and that won’t be until May.

‘It is actually called “The Doctorate Conferment Ceremony,’ explains 33 year old Jani. ‘It is a three-day festival, which is held for ceremonial conferring of degrees on honorary doctors and young doctors. And although having a supposedly ceremonial nature, the occasion is to my knowledge first of all meant to be entertaining and festive. There’s music and speeches involved, and you can have your close relatives invited there as well.’

Certainly, it’ll be more of a party than the defence itself, which Jani was very nervous about. ‘I remember being quite tensed up before the defence. And as it turned out, basically for nothing. The opponent’s questions were not tricky nor alarming, I felt I could easily answer them. My expectations of how the defence proceeding would go were quite different from how it actually turned out. I expected it to be merely ceremonial, I didn’t really find much value for it in advance. But the defence itself turned out to be quite exciting, not as an intellectual effort, but as an academic ceremony. For the first time, I had to publicly announce myself as independent researcher and request for recognition as a full member of the academic community.’

French writer Beyle, Marie Beyle—pseudonym ‘Stendhal’—once wrote of swooning upon leaving the Florence Basilica of Santa Croce or The Holy Cross, the largest Franciscan church on the planet. Inside, sixteen chapels swell with frescoes or water-based colours on wet plaster of religious figures, some by Giotto, creator of the famous Scrovegni chapel in 1305, reportedly the first to paint in a new ‘Renaissance style’ in which holy figures looked realer and conveyed more emotion. Think of it as a sort of 14^th Century 3D cinema. “As I emerged from Santa Croce,” Beyle wrote, “I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling!”  And Stendhal wasn’t the first to be affected by the meeting of untouchable ceilings, arches, and domes with vividly human pictures of enduring icons from Jewish national stories. An Italian psychiatrist in 1979 observed chest pain and dizziness in first-time visitors to Florence—and dubbed the condition ‘Stendhal Syndrome.’

In 2012, we might all be experiencing a Stendhalian epidemic of which films like Skyfall are the most obvious proof. If we weren’t perched on love seats or bear-hugged by cinema chairs, we might just fall down like Humpty Dumpty or pee ourselves when Spiderman, Rambo, or Abe Lincoln do a back flip and punch someone in the face, saving the universe—Europe, Russia, and the US—from greed and aggression. The most enduring iconic vehicle may indeed be the James Bond juggernaut, now 23 films long, its figurehead a mixture of restraint and violence. With so much popularity, it’s easy to forget James Bond ‘s Britishness. Unlike many US heroes, he seems stiff and polite, but is equally not killed or bothered much by bullets, knives, bombs, gravity, or snowstorms. Like Santa Croce, the Bond films are often dubbed ‘national treasures.’ Not atypically for a Brit, I first saw Dr NO (Bond 1) at eight. In the 1980s and 1990s, BBC1 and ITV, two prominent UK channels, ran at least two Bonds a month and one a day on holidays.

Each Bond production is more or less identical in scope and Skyfall, Bond 23, is only a little different. You know the drill. An opening fertility-dance sequence of earth, wind, fire, and boobies sees men being ceremoniously shot and reborn. The story must include a parade of post-WW2 symbols of western industry, from the Aston Martin car to the Walther PPK (brother to the P48 Nazi officer’s pistol, now symbol of the US/UK military), plus a foreign devil. Bond, secret soldier (war is over), dutifully shoots the flunkies, kills the boss, then takes the scenic route home to London, with complimentary tea and sex with delighted female companion. So quickly does James Bond stamp on emerging nuclear war or quash oil ‘pipeline theft’ by foreign moguls, it’s little surprise John F Kennedy was quoted as remarking, ‘I wish I had a James Bond on my staff’ and as including Bond creator Ian Fleming in 1960s talks to ‘bring down’ Fidel Castro.

Bond 23 gestures at a less aggressively national idealism, but manages to seem parochial instead.

Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), Daniel Craig’s Bond limps around England with a grey beard, almost dying or breaking into a sweat, like Batman in The Dark Knight Rises. Previous Bonds have of course been less antsy about the age of their lead character stroke actor. Connery left Diamonds are Forever at forty-one. Brosnan quit at forty-nine. Roger Moore began at forty-five and retired at fifty-seven. Craig, now forty-four, is a relative spring chicken, but his version of the character might, we’re told, be retiring after a bad mission. Worse, MI6 and Judi Dench have lost a secret list, allowing agents to be killed. Artistically speaking, it’s all a bit like watching a statue of Superman with a broken leg. Not exactly realism or character insight, but about as close as the Bond films get to the Bourne Trilogy, in which spies discover that the government offices who employ them perpetuate violence, then try to quit.

Skyfall sets up firm camp in Britain, as if to say, ‘we’re messing with the pomp of the iconography, so let’s play the rest close to home.’ Bombs go off in a London drawn in the strokes of a Harry Potter novel; the J.K. Rowling books seem to have been dipped into as inspiration for a cross-section of UK images familiar to international audiences. Defending posh buildings, Bond rushes about like a wizard detective, ‘magic,’ for better or worse, provided by the mysteries of computer hacking. Events occur in underground locations, abandoned mansions, courthouses, and train stations. Javier Barden plays an exile with a past in M6; Ralph Fiennes, Voldemort in Harry Potter films, is a security-committee chairman; and Daniel Craig conveys resolve by a turn of the eyebrow and a stern straightening of the collar—like a Rolex model in FHM magazine. The plot roughs up MI6, then gears up for the final bullet dance stroke henchman duck hunt—for Queen and Country, of course.

Little here will convince someone who dislikes Bond; Skyfall’s reliance on the deadlinesses of computer hacking is another perfunctory inclusion, common to anyone who’s seen Die Hard 3 or, indeed, another thriller in the last ten years. Besides the tropes I’ve mentioned, Bond of course beds women with dangerous pasts, who help him shave for no reason with a cut-throat razor. In one scene, Bond tips whisky in his gob while balancing a scorpion on one hand, to the applause of vaguely foreign bar-goers: such scenes are there for style and spectacle, and do little to really advance our ken of the character. If Skyfall seems belligerent, undignified jingoism, Bond doesn’t seem to mind or look overly worried, and, since he’s the character we’re following, it all seems arranged as if it should be interpreted as a manageable compromise and should perhaps make us feel that no catastrophe can happen with hard-nosed types like James on the job.

Yet, much more than, say, a Jason Bourne, this openly compromises realism and ritual: like Giotto’s frescoes, it isn’t going to relinquish its national pride, but wants to appear more accessible. For realism, if you’re going to see this, watch The Interrupters, a 2011 documentary about three ‘violence interrupters’ who walk Chicago trying to persuade young people not to retaliate for violence committed to themselves, friends, or relatives. ‘Violence is an illness,’ remarks a commentator. ‘It spreads.’ It’s difficult to see The Interrupters and not regard James Bond as a gang enforcer, ostensibly reacting to ‘terrorism’ but there to present an aggressive front. This has received a lot of praise and an 85 percent rating on IMDB, which as far as I can see is because of the slightly altered ideals. For Bond, this is a bit different. But here’s hoping future Bonds offer a much more radical approach to the iconography of spydom.

Two and a half out of five

They were returning from the Läiniö Snow Village to their hotel in Levi when the bus skidded on the ice and careered off the road.

The accident happened at about 7pm, with the bus ending up in a ditch. Nobody was seriously injured in the accident, although one men was taken to the local health centre with a suspected fracture. The rest of the party continued their journey.

Rescue services emphasized that the road was clearly snowy and icy and that, in such conditions, drivers should always remember to slow down. They stressed that the accident would probably not have happened if the bus had been travelling more slowly.

Cases of the disease, which has almost no symptoms in women, have increased 43 percent over the period, according to the study.

‘We found that most of the registered infections occurred among young people. But on the other hand, the cases with newly detected infections were in the older age group,’ researchers said in their report.

The researchers reviewed the reported cases of Chlamydia in Finland between 1995 and 2009. Diagnoses were tracked each year. It was found that the rate went up from 3.8 to 5.3 percent among men and 4.9 percent to 7.3 percent among women.

In 2009 alone, 25 percent of women and 20 percent of men diagnosed with the disease were diagnosed with it for the second time.

Women in their mid-twenties had the highest level of re-infection, at 37 percent. Men in their late twenties had a re-infection rate of 31 percent, with over a third of re-infection happening within a year of the first infection.

The word Chlamydia derives from the Greek word for ‘cloak.’ Rates of the disease, which is caused by the Chlamydia bacterium, are higher amongst women than men because in men the common symptom is a white discharge from the urethra whereas in three quarters of women there are no symptoms at all. If left untreated, Chlamydia can lead to infertility, blindness and arthritis.

The study was published in the December issue of the international journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

According to airport authorities, this is the first time that the airport has reached a million passengers passing through its exit gateway in a year, though it came pretty close last year.

Airport staff greeted the millionth passenger, Tiina Nurmela, who arrived on Tuesday 27th November on a Norwegian flight from Helsinki. The delighted passenger was given a bouquet of flowers by the airport manager.

Liisa Sallinen, who began as Oulu Airport Manager only last month said in a press release that, “Air traffic has developed considerably in Oulu in recent years, and the millionth passenger indicates this trend in practice.’

‘It is great that Finavia continues to develop the second largest airport in Finland and improves customer service next year through significant investment and refurbishment,’ she added.

The refurbishment is estimated to cost 2.6 million euros and will be finished by 2014.

Finnish education is used to scoring highly in the PISA tests, which measure the literacy of teenage pupils. A minority of researchers, such as Helsinki University’s Prof. Juha Janhunen, have criticised reading too much into these, claiming that they reflect Finnish schools’ ability to make everyone ‘averagely good.’ They do not, he has argued, mean that the schools necessarily inspire or ‘stretch the brightest pupils.’

But it seems that leading British educational publisher Pearson begs to differ. It’s recently published study, The Learning Curve, written by the Economist Intelligence Unit, found that, overall, Finnish schools score the highest in the world in a combination of high quality teachers, accountability, a sense of moral purpose, and in levels of literacy, school attendance and graduation into higher education.

The report, which involved interviewing education experts from numerous countries, finds that a ‘culture’ of valuing education is seemingly more important than simply pumping money into the school system and that there seem to be surprisingly few correlations between education ‘inputs,’ such as improving school choice, and ‘outputs.’ Even increasing spending on schools has less of a major positive effect than the researchers predicted.

‘The small number of correlations found in the study shows the poverty of simplistic solutions. Throwing money at education by itself rarely produces results, and individual changes to education systems, however sensible, rarely do much on their own. Education requires long-term, coherent and focussed system-wide attention to achieve improvement.’

Their other key finding, also, they argue, highly relevant to Finland coming in first place is that ‘there is no substitute for good teachers.’ The effects of a ‘good teacher’ go way beyond what anyone might expect and Finland, they find, has the best teachers.

‘Good teachers exercise a profound influence: having a better one is statistically linked not only to higher income later in life but to a range of social results including lower chances of teenage pregnancy and a greater tendency to save for their own retirement,’ notes the report.

It also finds that schools will be more successful if teachers are ‘respected as professionals’ rather than regarded as ‘technicians . . . in a huge educational machine.’ Equally, it emphasizes that educational culture ‘can be changed,’ the good or parenting does not have as major influence on educational outcome as one might think, and that schools should try to predict what skills the world will need in twenty years time and focus their curriculum accordingly.

Finland’s triumph in the report puts it ahead of South Korea (2nd), Hong Kong (3rd), Japan (4th) and Singapore (5th). European countries don’t get a look until the UK (which came in 6th) and the Netherlands, ranked 7th. But the Finnish way of educating children stands in stark contrast to the intense and relentless cramming associated with South Korean and Japan.

Newspapers around the world have been trying to work why Finnish education has been ranked so highly, while the system in their own country has not made the grade. The leader writer for the Macedonian International News Agency seemed flabbergasted at the country’s counter-intuitive approach.

‘But how do they do it? It’s simple — by going against the evaluation-driven, centralized model that much of the Western world uses. Finnish children don’t start school until they are 7. They rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.
The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.
There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.’All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms,’ he added.

‘Finland spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States. 30 percent of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school.’

Drawing upon the report, the leader writer also noted that Finnish teachers spend only about ’4 hours per days in the classroom,’ have allotted weekly time for ‘professional development,’ have ‘Masters degrees’ (in contrast to most teachers) which are ‘fully funded,’ and are selected from ‘the top ten percent of graduates’ where, in most countries, a Bachelors degree from the equivalent of a University of Applied Science is enough to teach in a secondary school.

According to the police, they have stopped 1389 drivers of which 12 turned out to be drunk, with one under the influence of drugs. Police sources have asserted that roughly 1 in 100 drivers being incapable of properly driving is ‘not a good trend.’

Police were also called out to assorted Christmas parties over these weekends to deal with rowdy behaviour inspired by drink. Over the period of surveillance, 40 people were arrested and had to spend the night in a police cell.

Police were also sent out to deal with 27 cases of assault in public places and ‘dozens’ of cases of assault on private property.

Produced on the volunteer basis by the ‘Oulu Folk’ Association (their name is always in English), the Oulu Folk 2012 CD and DVD combo is the first such contribution since 2008.

Eero Vaananen, chairman of the ‘Oulu Folk’ Association, told YLE that the CD is a showcase for Oulu-based Folk music and it will enable Folk musicians to showcase their skills. He added that over 80 percent of the songs on the compilation have been either written or arranged by the bands themselves, and that hopefully the compilation will give many of these bands the courage to go out and make their own albums.

The compilation is an eclectic mix of Finnish styles, country music, Flamenco, and even the occasional Irish folk song. Bands include Aquaplan which produces ‘pop-heavy jazz Folk’ and Folkstone, which concentrates on Scottish and Irish music.

Kammarit focuses on ‘Pop Folk.’ Samples of their music can be found here: http://www.myspace.com/kammarit

30 year old Australian Dan Cairnes is not the first person in his family to emigrate half way around the world. His family came to Australia from the UK in the early nineteenth century with their relative Captain Cairnes, who was eventually captured by Spanish pirates and made to walk the plank. Hopefully, no Oulu pirates have their eye on Dan Cairns. Though he admits that ‘the darkness has been hard to adapt to’ and people seem ‘harder to get know,’ he’ll probably avoid his kinsman’s fate.

The former bouncer has been in Oulu since the beginning of the year, having met his Finnish girlfriend while she was an exchange student at Canberra University. Dan was studying creative writing. In fact, his first novel, Elf: The Rillian Wars, has recently been published.

Spotting the budding Fantasy writer is fairly easy. All in black with long hair and a beard, Dan could be a character straight out of Lord of the Rings. But he also seems to be wearing a metal military identification tag around his neck. And, indirectly at least, his experiences in the military are behind his decision to try and eke out life as a ‘writer,’ a vocation he can pursue ‘anywhere in the world.’

‘I wear the tag as a homage to my time spent in the army,’ Dan explains. ‘I’ve defused explosives in Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.’ As a ‘combat engineer,’ Cairns concentrated on ‘defusing mines’ but he also helped to build hospitals. ‘I’ve seen combat situations,’ he adds, looking downwards, slightly reluctant, at first, to talk about his military past.

This is a past, especially in the Afghan capital Kabul, in which he has seen children with legs missing, and people lose their lives, especially because of landmines.

During the 1980s ’10 million landmines were laid in Afghanistan by the Russians,’ Dan tells me. The people of Afghanistan are ‘the nicest people on the planet’ and will insists on ‘offering you food they can’t afford to give you’ (which soldiers can never accept, in case it’s poisoned). But the Taliban are not so ‘nice.’ Fighting against that Western-backed government, they carefully dig up and rebury mines by the sides of roads, so that they can do maximum damage to Western military convoys.

Dan says that when he got back from Afghanistan he felt ‘separated’ from what he’d seen ‘for a while. You separate the self from it until later. But it bugged me.’ Now, Dan’s post-traumatic stress mainly surfaces in ‘bad dreams’ and ‘messed up sleeping patterns.’

In military jargon, engaging with the enemy is known as a ‘contact’ and Dan recalls one incident in which one of the trucks in his convoy drove over a mine, which duly exploded. Following procedure, the other trucks drove up alongside the damaged one and the men got out . . . to find they had walked into a ‘Daisy Chain’ in which a series of mines are planted within the blast radius of the previous mine. Dan witnessed six men being blown up, each of them maimed in the process.

‘It’s frustrating because you can’t focus towards an enemy. There’s no one to retaliate to. It’s not a lot of fun.’

Defusing the mines also seems to involve divorcing ‘the self’ from the situation and acting like a robot. ‘At first I felt tense but it’s like driving a car. You could swerve and kill yourself.’

After leaving the army, Dan decided to pursue his passion for writing, so began a degree in creative writing two years ago which he’s continuing in Finland via correspondence.

Dan’s first novel got very positive, and helpfully critical, feedback when he published sample chapters on writers forums. But finding very few agents interested in the Fantasy genre, Dan decided to publish Elf himself and pay a professional literary editor to bring it up to scratch. The first of a duology, Elf follows the life of a sixteen year old Australian boy who is killed and finds himself resurrected, and fighting some extremely bloody battles, in a Medieval fantasy world.

‘It’s warfare but it’s removed from current warfare,’ explains Cairns, who has also written short stories that are more obviously focussed on his military experiences. ‘I chose fantasy because you can choose your own rules. I don’t have to conform to the rules of our universe. In a way it’s escapist.’

However, the soon-to-be-published second book in the series will involve ‘more modern warfare,’ drawing more clearly on parts of Dan’s own life. Somehow, at the moment, he feels ‘more comfortable’ writing about experiences such as battle through the prism of the Fantasy genre.

Dan Cairnes’ novel Elf: the Rillian Wars is available on Amazon. Sample chapters can be read here: http://authonomy.com/books/46781/elf/read-book/#comments

This category is made of almost 220,000 people born abroad and about 37,000 people born in Finland to foreign parents. Those with only one Finnish parent are counted as Finnish by Statistics Finland.

The percentage of foreigners is highest in Åland, where they make up 11.6 percent of the population.

In terms of cities, 11.8 percent of Helsinki residents are classified as either first or second generation foreigners. Half of all foreigners in Finland live in Uusimaa, as do sixty percent of all second generation foreigners.

Northern Ostrobothnia has amongst the lowest percentage of foreigners, ranking 17th out of the 19 Finnish regions, with about 1.8 percent foreign residents. Southern Ostrobothnia, at 1.5 percent, has the lowest.

According to Statistics Finland, Russians make up by far the largest group in the category, followed by Estonians and, way behind, Somalis and then Iraqis. Europeans make up 59 percent of foreigners. Swedes are the ninth largest minority, Germans the 13th and British people the 15th largest.

That milestone was passed on Monday morning when temperatures dropped to – 22 in Oulu. With it now unquestionably being time to get the thermals out, Monday’s temperatures rose to only – 16 even in the warmest part of the day.

And there will no let up for the rest of week. Morning temperatures will be – 20 on Tuesday and Wednesday and – 17 on Thursday. On Friday it might be time to take the frozen vegetables in from the garden to avoid their getting covered in fresh snow, with temperatures rising to a low of – 14 and a high of – 8.

In fact, the whole of next week is predicted to be much warmer, with Oulu temperatures oscillating between about -10 and -6.

“exchange day” on Saturday at the Kisakenttä kindergarten Sat 1.12. at 11-16!

Open and free of charge ‘Exchange day of Things, Thoughts and Dreams’

The Great Exchange day of Things, Thoughts and Dreams

- wall of exchange for thoughts

- box of exchange for dreams

- exchange market

- free flea market

- selling of bird boxes, feeding boards, bird seed

- nature path

- selling of organic food

- hints for winter cycling

- play, music

- coffee and food

Further information and registration: retkikerho@retkikerho.fi, 045 639 5311

http://www.olsy.fi/retkikerho/tulevatretket.php

Fingersoft Oy’s Hillclimb Racing, in which you have to pilot a spluttering car over a series of hilly terrains, is taking the US market by storm, reaching a highpoint of 500,000 daily downloads on 17th November. It was released on 22nd October and already has 13 million downloads on Android.

Described as ‘very addictive and fun’ by Fingersoft, the game has over 11,200 Facebook ‘likes’ from all around the world and has an average rating of 4.7 stars. The game can be downloaded for I-Phones and tablets.

28 year old Toni Fingeroos, who is in charge of the company, told 65DN that his game’s success can be explained by it being ‘easy and simple to play.’

A video of the game can be seen here: http://www.fingersoft.net/games.php

Everybody knows that Father Christmas (or Joulupukki) comes from Lapland, and there will be an opportunity to hear traditional Finnish carols sung in Lapland’s native language.

‘Beautiful Carols’ will be performed at Karjasilta Church, Nokelantie 39,  on 2nd December at 3pm. The carols will be sung in a combination of Northern Saami, Inari Saami and Finnish. Finnish Saami speak one of three dialects – Northern Saami, Inari Saami and Skolt Saami – none of which are mutually comprehensible.

Led by soloist Annukka Hirvasvuopio-Laihti (from Utsjoki in the far north), the touring Saami choir will perform 17 songs in Northern Saami and 11 in Inari Saami.     

Inari Saami currently has about 300 native speakers while Northern Saami retains around 2000 speakers in Finland. However, there are over 20,000 speakers of the language when you include those living in Norway.

According to the police, the lorry was travelling on Highway 4 to the south, about 5km south of Olhava, when a car travelling north drifted onto the wrong side of the road, for reasons which are currently still unclear.

The car and the lorry collided and both vehicles ended-up in a roadside ditch. A crane was used to remove the lorry, which was owned by the Pirkka food company, on Sunday evening. The lorry was damaged, though the driver was uninjured. The car, by contrast, was badly damaged and its male driver was pronounced dead at the scene.

The road surface was wet, but it had been heavily gritted, so police do not think that this was what caused the accident. They are continuing to investigate what did.

Valkee’s device, also called Valkee, is rather like an I-Pod but in place of ear phones it shines concentrated light into the ear canal. It has published research indicating that when people suffering from the winter blues use the device for about ten minutes each day it partly alleviates their symptoms. The devices retail at 185 euros.

However, its recent claim that the device also helps to combat jetlag has been criticised by the public health watchdog Valvira as having no scientific evidence to support it. Accordingly, this claim has now been removed from Valkee’s website.

The device has proven controversial, with critics claiming that the fact that the academic research into Valkee has been partly conducted by one of Valkee’s senior figures amounts to a conflict of interest.

Valvira’s criticism was originally misreported by YLE as being of the device as a whole. A YLE journalist wrote, ‘The company’s claim that the earbuds do anything beneficial has not been scientifically proven.’ However, this mistake has since been corrected.

Overnight hotel stays in Northern Ostrobothnia in September 2012 were eight percent down on the same time last year, according to Statistics Finland. Overnight stays in Lapland where down by one percent, but South Karelia, by the Russian border, witnessed a 33 percent increase in hotel use.

The changes may reflect significant alternations in the backgrounds of foreign tourists coming to Finland in the last year. There has been a fifteen percent increase in tourism from Russia and a 21 percent increase from Japan. However, overnight stays by Spanish people have collapsed by 30 percent.

Overall, however, there has been an increase of two percent in foreign tourist numbers in the last year.

So far this year, Oulu Police Station has cancelled 115 gun licences, 25 more than they cancelled in the whole of 2011.

Of this number, twenty were cancelled when concerned doctors contacted the police to explain their fears about particular patients being permitted access to guns.

The rise in cancellations, to a significant extent, reflects a change in the law in June last year meaning that doctors are now obliged to tell police if they harbour concerns about the mental health of gun-licence-holding patients.

The robbery took place at 1.30pm at the Kangaspiska Kiosk, in Oulunsalo.

A man entered the kiosk, in which there were no other customers, brandishing a knife and threatened to stab the shop assistant unless she handed over money. The shop assistant complied and the robber left the kiosk, sprinting in the direction of Oulunsalo’s sports hall. However, there was only a small amount of money in the till.

The robber is described as being 165cm tall and of slender build. He was wearing black shoes, black trousers and hooded jacket. His face was covered with a ‘some sort of scarf.’

Oulun Vesi has begun sampling the raw water supply more frequently than usual and will continue to do so until at least the end of the year, according to their spokesperson.

‘We monitor the water on a daily basis anyway, but now the monitoring is being done for specific substances and we are looking more closely,’ said Oulun Vesi’s spokesperson.

So far, however, their tests have not revealed any difference in the quality of the water used by people in the Oulu region. According to the spokesperson, though pollution from Talvivaara may reach Oulu, it does not appear to have done so yet.

The Talvivaara nickel mine, which is close to Kajaani, was described as ‘an environmental disaster’ by the Reuters News Agency. It was reported on 8^th November that the mine’s ‘gypsum waste pond’ had begun to leak, causing the emission of nickel, uranium and assorted toxic metals. On the same day, a Helsingin Sanomat editorial claimed that the ‘disaster’ cast doubt on ‘the efficiency of Finnish society as a whole.’ Talvivaara’s CEO resigned on 15^th November.

Photo:Wikipedia

Everybody living in Finland has heard of Mannerheim. He’s the country’s national hero. But beyond being aware that he led to the Finnish army against the Soviet Union in the 1940s and commanded the Whites during the Civil War, most people in Finland, and especially expats, are likely to know very little about him.

English expat Jonathan Clements is an exception. The Jyväskylä-based writer of popular history books clearly became obsessed with the Marshall of Finland a few years ago. The dying father of his Finnish fiancée (his funeral was a ‘cruel week’ before the wedding) ‘dragged’ Clements round Finland to see all the significant sights in Mannerheim’s life. His Finnish wife helped Clements get to grips with Mannerheim’s Swedish diaries and Clements’ own research seems to have involved him following the Mannerheim trail all the way to China. The result is this absorbing, superbly detailed, powerfully written biography: Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy.

Although the subtitled scans well, most of the book is focussed on Mannerheim’s extraordinary life as a spy and a soldier. Clements explains, in a very readable yet measured way, that Mannerheim was born into a Swedish-speaking Finnish noble family in 1867, making him a baron. Poorly behaved at school, he was sent to a military academy in the hope it would teach him self-discipline. Expelled from the Finnish military academy, the wayward youth made his way to St Petersburg (Finland then being a Grand Duchy under Russian rule) and qualified as an army officer there, all the time being funded by generous relatives. He married a Russian aristocrat, had a couple of children and became one of the ‘Chevalier Guards’ (guarding the royal family), stationed in St Petersburg. Not only does this period in the Marshall’s life allow Clements to employ his skill in bringing a city to life – he describes some unusual and tragic incidents that occurred while Mannerheim was there – but we also learn that the lingua franca in multicultural St Petersburg was German.

By 1904, Mannerheim still hasn’t seen any real fighting, his only war wounds being inflicted by stroppy horses. He also breaks-up with his wife and starts gambling. Needing the money, he volunteers to fight in the Russian war against Japan, and Clements takes us on an intriguing journey through the notable people he met and the problems he encountered. In perhaps the most eye-opening part of the book, Mannerheim then becomes a spy, touring China, overtly as a Swedish anthropologist – his fieldwork was published after his death – who is in fact only interested in finding out about military fortifications for the Tzarist regime.

Mannerheim, now a colonel, fights assorted other campaigns until, in 1917, he makes his way back to St Petersburg and by chance gets embroiled in the February Revolution, in which Imperialist agents are being killed. He is spotted looking like an officer and asked why he’s wearing officer boots. Mannerheim’s witty reply – that he’s lucky to able to get hold of any boots these days – saves his life. The Marshall very narrowly escapes being killed in the February Revolution on a number of other occasions. In one instance, leaving Russia, he’s asleep on a train and is woken to be checked by a revolutionary guard. He instinctively says ‘Da’ (having spoken Russian for years) and the guard is instantly suspicious. On another, the guards being Ingrian, and Mannerheim’s knowledge of Finnish, save his life. The escape from St Petersburg reads like a well-written thriller and is one of the most gripping parts of Clements’ work.

Less than a hundred years have passed since Finland was torn apart by civil war. Movies are still regularly produced about it and anybody with an expat spouse will have distant in-laws who fought and even died in the conflict. Clements does the best job I’ve yet seen, in a popular work, of explaining the complex reasons why the civil war occurred, without leaving the reader asking too many questions. Mannerheim is somehow the right man in the right place and the right time and with brilliant military ingenuity, evacuates Red-occupied Helsinki of important Whites, sets-up a capital in Vaasa and, in an albeit brutal campaign, takes back the south of the country. This makes him a national hero for the Whites and a hated murderer for the Reds. As the country rebuilds, he is its head of state – a position he never really sought.

Clements not only has narrative but also comic skill. He seems to instinctively know when there’s been a little too much serious historical description, such that it’s time to bring in an amusing anecdote. The book is peppered with these and possibly the best is that, in the 1930s, having retired after failing to be elected president, Mannerheim becomes irritated by the noise of a supposed coffee shop (actually a Prohibition-era speak-easy) on an island not far from his house. So he buys it, makes it far more respectable and is, in essence, a coffee-shop proprietor until the Winter War breaks out! Also, in the early 1900s, he returns from the front and surprises his family (who fear he’s dead) on Christmas Eve, dressed as Santa!

The book culminates in Finland’s darkest hour; the invasion by the Soviets. Mannerheim was brought out of retirement to respond to this and Clements defends his actions – in ceding 12 percent of Finland – arguing that it was the shrewdest way to keep the country independent. Again, Clements is in his element, dramatically describing every step of the war and providing morsels of detail that testify to the intensive research he has obviously undertaken. The war unites the divided nation under Mannerheim, he is made ‘Marshall of Finland’ and he is president in its wake – again through circumstance rather than ambition. When, between the Wars, the nationalist Lapua Movement asked him to takeover the country as military leader, he refused. But now Mannerheim has cemented his place as the national hero.

For a book aimed at any educated layman who can speak English, there are a number of suggestions for improvement that might be made. A little more background on the nature of the Finnish nobility might have been helpful. It would have been useful to translate currency figures into modern dollars or euros. But these are minor issues.

This is an excellent biography of an amazing individual of whom more deserves to be known.

Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy. Jonathan Clements. 2012. Haus Publishing. Paperback. 336pp.  €15.90 (Stockmann).              

According to the organisation the spill from the Kajaani nickel mine, which began last Sunday, has leaked the poisonous substances into nearby lakes and rivers.

Matti Ikonen, the Green Peace campaigner leading the campaign against Talvivaari, told 65DN that residents near the mine have been told to not use the water from the lakes for anything, including for the sauna. Some waterways near the mine have turned green or orange, he added.

By last Sunday, it appeared that the leak had been plugged (though not fully fixed), but not before the Finnish government had condemned the incident. Environment minister and Green Party leader Ville Niinistö called it a ‘clear contravention of environmental laws.’ All production has been suspended at the mine until the problem is completely resolved.

Ikonen claimed that the company may go bankrupt if faced with the bill for cleaning up the waters it has polluted. He claimed that ‘potentially’ half of Finland’s waterways are now damaged.

He added that the incident is already affecting local tourism, with cottage owners reporting that regular foreign clients are not returning this year because they have heard about the local pollution.

The incident was reported by the international news agency Reuters and the resultant fall in the value of Talvivaara’s shares has been reported in market news around the world.

Nobody from Talvivaara Oy could be reached for immediate comment.