Whoever knows where Finland is (meaning that they can put a finger on the globe) knows that it must be quite cold that far up north. But just how cold is cold? Well, read on to find out about that and how Finns have developed clever strategies to enjoy the cold. Aha, you’ve just stumbled upon problem number one: do Finns even like their cold weather? Good question. And the answer is two-fold: if you ask them, the most likely answer will be a reassuring YES, but if you don’t ask, then you might even hear them murmuring and complaining how DAMN cold it is and that they are sick of it. It’s interesting to see how they have developed a myth about them liking all this harsh environment; they do and they don’t, but mostly they don’t like it. Although Finns do have a name for a wussy winter, indeed; they call it eurotalvi or European winter. No comment on that one.

But let’s get a bit more scientific and tangible for a moment. The all-time lowest temperature record in Finland was measured on January 28th 1999 in a northern Finnish town of Kittilä when the temperature was -51,5°C. Does that look to you too that it would almost be feel warmer if it was expressed in Kelvin temperature scale: 221,65°K. There you go, much cozier. Serious business, so let’s not joke about it. Anyway, so this year the lowest measured temperature was again in Kittilä, but this time only -43,6°C. Cold place this Kittilä. While in Jyväskylä we had nothing like that as it was a tropical -33°C one morning when I was cycling to school. Just one more statistical tidbit: this February the average temperature in Jyväskylä was -12°C and not a single say the temperature has risen above 0°C. It takes much more than non-sensitivity to cold in order to enjoy this.

Yeah, since the average temperatures are well below 0°C for 3 or 4 months a year, not very much changes around here because of the winter itself. It’s actually no surprise to see even construction and road work to continue as normal. OK, if there are really some things guys want to dig in the morning with shovels, they simply set up one of the diesel heaters and cover with it the area they want to keep warm. As easy as that. Actually the only thing that broke down this winter (and I was told it happens every winter) were Italian Pendolino trains which were either dead in their tracks or the doors would not open and as a consequence no passengers could enter the train. And in a land where everything not only works but is also punctual to the atomic clock, no matter what, you can imagine there was a lot of fuss raised about the south European train manufacturer.

There are more interesting quirks on the way. It doesn’t take much smarts to figure that when it’s cold it also snows. And boy, it snows … a lot. It’s really nice to see how they deal with all that snow and keep the traffic running without any holdups. They don’t try to melt the snow on the roads or pedestrian/cycling paths with salt which is a common, myopic and futile practice in Slovenia (and I believe many other countries). It’s obvious that all that salt pollutes the environment, thus they use it only in some parts of larger cities and on the highways. Otherwise plain gravel is sprinkled for traction. And it works fine; I’ve been riding my bike whole winter long courtesy of gravel on ice and snow. In addition both bike and car owners use spiked tires, but you can do just fine without spikes (at least on bike tires) too. And at least to get a driver’s license in Finland you need to complete a special driving exercise on ice.

What at first I found to be a tad bit more exotic were the almost obligatory electric outlets on the parking spots which are used for keeping cars’ engines warm. Each owner of the parking spot has a key to a small gray box from which they pull out an electric cable and attach it in front of their car: the electric heater below the car’s hood keeps the vital parts warm. Think wool socks for your car. I don’t have a car, so I don’t know, but I suspect that they add the cost to your electricity bill. The whole heating thing gets a bit weirder. The most frequented streets in cities around Finland have underground heating installed and are heated during the winter (to see this and other quirks in color, check out the gallery). But things do become really obnoxious too as it seems like in every city there is at least one football stadium where, now sit down, the grass is heated so that boys and girls can play football in -30°C. Let’s see, they were probably thinking: “It seems like we can get far too much money than we really need from the state/EU … how should we waste it?”

All this leads me to think (no, you’re not the only one to think that) does spring ever come to this land? It seems it does folks. In fact today was the first day in roughly 8 weeks that the temperature rised above 0°C: to a whopping 1,2°C. Of course, there’s a lot more to Finnish winter joys, but I will dissect those in the next edition of Suomessa.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Culture, Finland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.