On the ferry to Helsinki, I study the comprehensive FCO brief on Finland.
This provides the following useful information:
- Finns drink more coffee per capita than any other nation in the world. Belgium are second and Norway third;
- Finnish speeding fines are based on your annual income. In 2004, the 27 year-old heir to a family-owned sausage empire received a record €170,000 ticket for driving at 80 kph in a 40 kph zone;
- There are very few original Finnish words which commence with the letters b, c, d, f, q, w, x or z. Most of them are loan words with Swedish, Germanic, Russian or English origins;
- Finland is home to the world mosquito-killing championship, the world mobile phone-throwing competition and an annual national wife-carrying competition (for which the first prize is the wife’s weight in lemonade);
- 10% of Finland’s land area is covered by water and 69 % by forest;
- Finland has 187,888 lakes and 179,584 islands. The surface area of Finland is growing by about 7 sq km a year due to uplift following the last ice age.
All this is tremendously interesting stuff, with which I hope suitably to impress any Finnish politician with whom I may fall into conversation this afternoon.
Lucky you, in Helsinki for midsummer, just the right time of year!
Finland’s language policies are well worth attention. They have a Swedish minority of only about 6% of the population but there is a legislative basis for a much wider use of Finnish/Swedish in the private sector than is the case here in Wales. The Uusimaa bridgade of the Finnish defence forces has Swedish as its language of training (Finnish is still the language of command – I know you have blogged on Adam Price’s idea of some use of Welsh in the British Army in the past). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uusimaa_Brigade)
While neither of these things might instinctively appeal to you, I wonder whether there is anything we can take from the example of Finland to strengthen the position of Welsh in a consensual, non-threatening way?
It also has the distinction of having a Monty Python song about it.
Including the lines:
Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.
Which sounds splendid, but your hosts might not be so pleased with the verse that goes:
You’re so sadly neglected
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.
Blame Michael Palin.
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