A Finnish Lesson

In Europe Finland came very close to refusing the bailout of Portugal, a package of around $115.5 billion (€78 billion). On April 17, the True Finns won 39 seats in the 200-seat Finnish Parliament (third in size). The party, while left-wing, is nationalist, anti-globalist, and culturally conservative. It’s only been around since May of 1995. With the party’s sizeable gain in seats came buzz that Nazism was back in Finland and comparisons of True Finns to the U.S. Tea Party came instantly as well. The party polarized the Finnish population on the subject of the Portuguese bailout and hence has been denied a role in a governing coalition. Just how stable the Finnish government will be hereafter is another matter.

Now, mind you, Portugal is in the ditch and Finland is among the leading economies of Europe. Just a few weeks ago Brigitte and I marveled at some tables obtained from the European Central Bank showing that in crucial measures of competitiveness, only Germany topped Finland’s performance in recent years. But huge economic meltdowns always hurt an element even of the best-off populations. And it is this element—the people who are hurt—who undoubtedly formed the energy behind the rise of the True Finns. We work like crazy, we’re disciplined, and then some careless, free-spending, indulgent people, far away, Greece, Portugal, whatever, get themselves in trouble, and when it’s time for them to buckle down and suffer the consequence, No, none of that. Here they are at our door and ready to take our money so that they can party on.

Is this a caricature or is this reality? Just yesterday I wrote elsewhere about evil and called it an absence of empathy. This morning’s news brought—if not a corrective to that view then at least a meaningful enlargement of the concept. I learned just how narrowly the EU escaped disaster because the Finnish Parliament narrowly backed the bailout after all. The Finnish lesson for me has been to realize that empathy among people will rapidly thin out if justice is not seen to be visibly applied to all, in like measure, everywhere.

Visible justice. Yes, we need it. When people are hurting, they will balk at pragmatic fixes to collective problems that minimally have the appearance of injustice—and where smoke, there fire. This is certainly the case in Europe where the “union” is new, thin, and where the competent and disciplined are called upon to rescue the apparently neglectful and possibly corrupt. Big mess. And it is precisely in times like these, erupting with righteous rage out of the poorest elements of the population, that ugly political movements rise and sometime, with disastrous consequences, gain the hammer hand.

But the problem of justice, even-handedness, of consistency also arises when we are watching dramatic interventions in favor of political resistance in Libya—but not in Syria. Just to name a single pair. Arises when we watch one or two billionaires tried in the courts but others bailed out with billions of taxpayers' money because they did not technically violate any laws…

Having commented on Swedish influence in Finland in earlier and other contexts, a lighter moment came as I pursued my research. I discovered one of the important party platforms of the rigorously nationalistic True Finn Party. The party’s top cultural demand is the abolition of the mandatory teaching of Swedish to all Finnish pupils from primary school on up to vocational universities. I found this delightfully meaningful, especially that word “vocational.” The lower classes in Finland, surprise, speak Finnish—and nothing but. They must be taught Swedish so that their bosses don’t have to learn Finnish.

Trampling a Sword?

Some questions arose about the coat-of-arms of Finland I used to illustrate a recent post. One e-mail commentator thought that it represented the Christian Lion’s victory over the Saracen Sword. Another wondered what a sword was doing there; wouldn’t it cut the lion’s paw?

March having lived up to its name this year and brought us plenty of war, I thought I’d clear this up on the last day of the month. Wikipedia’s article on this subject (here) brings the following clarification:

The earliest known blazon from this period states that the arms of Finland represents A crowned lion of gold holding a sword in the right forepaw and trampling with both hindpaws on a Russian sabre (ryssesabel), surrounded by nine silver roses in a red field, over the shield a golden crown with a red cap.

As for me, I’d rather trample out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored than bothering with the weaponry. But symbols are symbols, and I got to thinking about the wondrous future coats-of-arms a glorious new age of heraldry would paint. One of them might feature an upside-down lion seemingly kicking the sky filled with sleekly-drawn black and silvery birds. And some future scholar, with many words, will in that future’s more civilized future explain that it represented the nation trampling on a no-fly zone.

Linguistic Relations

In a recent post Brandon at Siris expressed his delight in the sound of the Finnish language and, to prove it, presented Jenni Vartiainen singing in that tongue sublime (link). For me this brought the language to the fore, Finland itself, and memories of my Army years.

I grew up speaking Hungarian. Both languages belong to the Uralic family, traced by scholars to regions to each side of the Urals. That range runs south-north dividing Russia between a western and eastern part. One of two subdivisions of Uralic is Finno-Ugric, and both Finnish and Hungarian are members of it; the other branch is Samoyedic spoken only by about 30,000 people. Now a question. Are such classifications based on tracing peoples? Or are there linguistic similarities the ear itself, the ear on the street, can readily detect? I would say Yes. Let me tell you a story.

Once as a young man I was visiting Heidelberg and, specifically, a single address there, a four story building. As I approached this structure by means of a narrow street, I saw three people in the street. They had their heads craned back. They were yelling up at somebody in a top-floor window. I heard Hungarian. Surprised! Here? In Heidelberg? Just a rare coincidence? I gave my astonishment expression by yelling to the three down there. I yelled in Hungarian—even as I continued on toward them. They faced toward me with looks of pleased surprise and shouted back. It sounded so very familiar—but I didn’t understand the words. At last we stood face to face. And now we realized that althought the words had very odd echoes of meanings, they did not convey them. Well. Reach for a common language. In a moment, speaking German now, we understood. And both sides started nodding. They’d been speaking Finnish, I Hungarian…. However far back Finno-Ugric might go in time, the relationship is deceivingly close even in the current now.

In the Army the colonel I worked for was a Finn with an appropriately Finnish-sounding name: Alpo Kullervo Martinnen. An American colonel now, he was an oddity. He’d also been a colonel in Finnish army and had participated in the Finno-Russian Winter War (1939-1945). The odd thing about Alpo was that he was an avid, passionate student of the Finnish language. He was forever studying it, even during field exercises. At the time I took this to be a personal interest in language, especially his own. Well, I was too young to know then—but that last name of his, Martinnen, should have been a warning. I found out the truth later. Let me tell that story next.

Many years later one of my business trips took me to Finland. Here I encountered a similar puzzle. Every person I visited on business—and all the people in the offices—spoke Swedish, not Finnish. I heard a lot of Finnish spoken, but not in these places. And when I asked my first host about this, he acted embarrassed. “Well, at home. At home we speak Swedish. Lots of people do. But I am learning Finnish.” And the index finger was out to give this emphasis. In due course I learned that Finland’s upper elites are decidedly Swedish. The root of this is that Finland was under Swedish rule through most of its history, from the twelfth century until its independence in 1917. The elites were Swedish. But they, like Colonel Martinnen, were learning Finnish.