It was a perfect day. After running some errands in town and after a bit of writing I jumped on my bike and set out riding through the forest until I reached a nearby lake. And that nearby lake can never be too far away in Finland anyway. I leaned my bike against a tree, glanced at the kids splashing in the lake and perched myself on a sunny chair-like rock poking out of the water. After a contemplative moment I decided to pull newspaper instead of my swimming shorts out of the shoulder bag.

It is summer and coming from about twenty degrees south of here, I am still very much used to associating summers with scorching heat and thinking oftentimes about ways of protecting oneself from the burning sun and hardly bearable heat. Both of which is usually accomplished by staying indoors only to peek out once the sun has set. I believe I need not remind you anymore that matters such as weather are rather different around here. Although there are a few perks that are definitely still worth mentioning. One of them is tolerance.

All the technological advancements in garments aside, people everywhere still complain about bad weather. I don’t ever expect this to change. Bad is of course whenever something is falling out of the sky or even if it’s just being hot or cold. So it’s not really a big surprise that people spending their whole life living in the same place get used to the local climate complain merrily when they relocate to a different environment. Heck, some complain regardless of what is going on. Finns can be particularly vocal when the winters are not cold enough. Which is strange enough as they also perpetually complain about them being too cold too. Often both statements by the same person in the same sentence.

I’ve noticed this is no different when the summer comes. Alright, one would expect that rainy and cold summers might not be this nation’s favorite flavor of the season, but hear, hear, they spread it all over the front pages of their national newspapers when it gets too sunny and warm too. And you’d be surprised how cold this can still feel.

A couple of years ago I’ve read an interesting piece about weather and how our bodies adjust to temperatures and as a result we have different perceptions on when the weather is cold or hot depending on where we live. I can’t remember the exact details, so don’t quote me on this in your high school science reports, or anything similar. Anyway, it was the temperature differences that astounded me so much that I remembered the numbers from the article. The authors claimed how the limit for hot weather in Greece is around 35°C, while that same limit in Finland is around 25°C. A difference of whole ten degrees Centigrade.

Even if it wasn’t for reading this article I couldn’t track down, this difference is already obvious by just looking at the thermometer and looking at what people are doing outside. I think I’d have a really difficult time imagining that anyone would walk around topless at 25°C in Greece. Not only that Greeks wouldn’t go purposefully sunbathing, the thought of it alone wouldn’t even begin to cross their minds in such chilling conditions. And Finns? At 25°C, men are more than happy to take their shirts off, women will lie for hours at a time in their bikinis wherever there is anything green in town and newspaper editors will send their junior journalists on assignments as absurd as checking which bars in Helsinki would serve topless men without issuing complaints about their half unnatural attire. And it doesn’t even have to be 25°C, on a sunny day 20°C is more than enough.

Their affair with natural waters is similar. They swim in the sea and lakes all around the country at what are for me suspiciously low temperatures. Sure, they like it when the water is warm, but it’s difficult to figure out when warm is as people really do go for a swim, whether the temperature of water is 4°C and they need to cut a hole in the ice or 24°C. A couple of months ago the temperature of the Baltic sea had risen to something even my mother who doesn’t even think about dipping her toes into anything less than hot spa water would consider for a swim, just to see it drop to no more than 13°C overnight. But I don’t think this temperature swing made anyone change their mind. Ten degrees up or down, who cares.

Well, as a matter of fact, I do. Even though I don’t need a thermometer to figure out if I’m going for a swim or not. If it’s only kids gleefully splashing in the water and their observant parents sit fully clothed on the shore, I’ll try some other day.

After all it’s not really difficult to figure out an optimal climate for Finns, it is impossible. And it doesn’t really have to do with the weather anyway.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Culture, Finland, Leisure. 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.