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Note
on
Finland
Pictures
of solitaries is part of what I do, and not just because I’m not
gregarious. In an obvious
way we’re all locked inside ourselves.
People who think they experiences a fusion of souls or a oneness
with Nature are high on something, if only those natural painkillers,
endorphins. When it comes
to countries, some have a reputation for reserve and are nearer the
Pole. Finland is Lise’s
home country and I’ve travelled there four or five times.
I don’t think many Finns would acknowledge:
We are Europe’s provincials.
The taste you find
has
a past you could not live with, hollow as bone.
But
that’s how I once saw their country.
One detects intelligence:
When you look at the rising halt, like a skater’s,
of successful apartments between which play
trees and water, at Tapiola, or the shield-
shape of Pyynikki’s turning audience,
and say how intelligent they are ...
A
rotating, open-air audience in the middle of a pine forest was something
to write home about in the ’60s.
Both y’s are pronounced in Pyynikki, like the French
‘u’ in ‘tu’, and both k’s, like the ‘k-k’ sound in
‘bookcase’, and the stress is always on the first syllable.
Finnish
history is as littered with wars as any other corner on earth between
two rival powers, in this case Russia and Sweden, one of which was
always in charge until modern times.
In the 19th century there was a revival of folk traditions and a
Finnish literature emerged. Since World War Two, culture and commerce have flourished, a
fact I’ve suggested here though perhaps not with enough emphasis.
The
sauna is a Finnish invention and most people are not aware of everything
that they are about. These bathing huts used to be pitch black bunkers
and very smoky. They’ve always been meeting places for naked or
towel-wrapped families, business folk, friends and vodka-tossers.
Since sweat tents are now a feature of some New Age navel-gazing
groups, saunas in Finland may have become therapeutic meditation centres
too, though I doubt it. I once went into one of these dark old places,
but only to look at it unheated and with the door open.
I didn’t pick up an vibes, but I didn’t when I stood amidst
the ruins at Delphi either. I
digress.
Alan
Marshfield
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