Already on several occasions I wrote about the peculiar relationship between Finns and alcohol. Even though some of the readers find such topics worn out, interestingly enough there are some intriguing observations about this that continue to make my head spin.

I don’t have many vivid memories from my early childhood, but when I think about it I still rememer the first time I encountered Finns when I was five and they were intoxicated. It was on a hot summer night on the coast of Istrian peninsula in what was then still Yugoslavia (now Croatia). My parents, my brother and I were on our summer vacation in a bungalow village and during the course of our stay we got new neighbors who already during their first night assured a Finnish-Yugoslav get-together. I remember being awaken by short bursts of loud exclamations in a strange language. After this had lasted for a while I heard my dad speaking in another language that was unfamiliar to me and the noise subsided, or I had fallen back asleep.

Without a single trace of doubt this was the event of the week in the sleepy village. In the morning dad explained how in all their drunkenness our Finnish neighbors’ volume meters became unbearably thick-skinned. Since the shouting lasted too long, he had to get up to calm them down. I can imagine that they probably woke up the whole village before they reached their hut in the wee hours.

Fast-forward twenty some years. Not long ago this and other accounts of similar type suddenly all make sense. It was like staring at scattered pieces of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for two years, and then solving the puzzle in two minutes. Only recently I have begun understanding what had happened that summer night and why.

Despite the fact that many prices were being readjusted for the pocket of a foreign visitor, Yugoslavia was still a budget traveler’s dream. Whoever could afford to get there, didn’t have to worry about prices once they got there. Nowhere else, but there, have I seen anyone light up their cigar with money, a Yugoslav Dinar bill. So you can imagine that in a place like that stocking up on booze couldn’t present a financial burden. Especially not if you came from any of the Nordic countries where one suspects some sort of a fine has been added to the price of that watered-down pint of beer. While in Yugoslavia for that same sum you’d get a liter of delicious šljivovica and still have some left. The decision is all too obvious: you quit drinking beer. And that’s probably what our neighbors from Finland had decided already during their first night there. Who could blame them?

However, I can imagine that such vacation alone might instigate a month without a drop of booze, even though it is the month of January that is traditionally reserved for serious detoxification. Even though it might not be the quantity, but rather the method of consumption that makes this peculiar relationship problematic, excessive alcohol ingestion is a serious issue in Finland and many are very somber about it. A third of the population, to be more precise. That’s roughly how many have decided in the beginning of January that they will abstain from alcohol during that month. I’m quite sure it takes a steady diet of something a tad bit stronger than Coke Zero before you decide to resort to sober life for 31 days.

But where does this type of secular nationwide month-long ethanol renunciation come from? There is a dispute about who exactly had instigated the custom in Finland, however, it is most plausible that it originated in the 1970s when a gentleman named Niilo Hakkarainen, a CEO of a paper factory, suggested to his workers to stay clean for the month of February. Obviously some took it seriously and more than thirty years later that humble proposition acquired a status of a serious national challenge. It even got upgraded; the challenge shifted from the shortest possible to the longest possible month.

According to a recently conducted poll 35% of responders promised themselves to stay away from alcohol, but only about a 17% of the population has managed to keep that promise until the end of January in 2007. If they don’t manage to spend the whole month without a drop, it can be at least something to look forward to for January 2009. The good news for those is that the rate of success is on the increase.

If you think you can’t make it, worry not, there is plenty of support out there, if you need it. Finnish Center for the promotion of health and Paihdelinkki (English version AddictionLink) are just two inspirational and supportive examples. The former organization even set up a separate Web site Tipaton tammikuu devoted solely to the challenge. There you can track your daily progress or even challenge your friends or family to do the same. Information is abundant and support is offered in different formats ranging from vibrant forums and various self-tests to plain fact calorie counter for those who need to crunch numbers before they act. Center for the promotion of health even created a desktop calendar, if for some reason that’s exactly what you’ve missed in your previous attempts to stop drinking (both PC users and Mac users served).

If none of that helps, then as a last resort it might help to know that the tax on alcoholic beverages has again been substantialy increased at the beginning of the month.

I admit, the forbidden fruit of January can be a tough nut to crack. At least it was me who got cracked before I cracked it; I had blithely enjoyed my sauna beer just a couple of days ago. I lasted eight days. But then again that kspt sound the beer can made when I opened it definitely did not cause any moral introspection.

Cheers to all those who will last for three more weeks.

Mladen

iPod, a music player turned pop icon. It’s a continuous challenge for the nerds, its strong image was used to counter the war in Iraq, it inspired a book documenting its popularity and even sneaked into our daily vocabulary. Surprising? Not really. It looks nice, it’s easy to use and people love it. Apple sold millions, earn googols and marched onto new market.

Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that the talltale iPod player-earphone silhuette landed even on a Finnish rye-bread wrapping. It’s hard to tell if it was an easter egg cleverly smuggled by graphic designers or just a mere me-too statement by the Finnish food manufacturer Fazer gasping for street-cred with their Reissumies rye-bread. Whichever it is, iPod is now gone.

Since Apple jumped the fence onto the home turf of the most valuable Finnish brand, it was really just a matter of time before someone from Olli-Pekka’s office would again pick up the phone and order Fazer to replace that iPod with an Internet Tablet or a Nokia phone. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is exactly what has happened, given the notoriety Nokia has gained when their head of security ordered a cleaning company to remove “Kallasvuo sucks” stencil graffitti from the walls of the E15 squat in Helsinki.

If that’s the case with Reissumies, I’m sure Nokia got a much more cooperative response and less resistance from Fazer than it did from E15. For the sake of posterity here are both old and new, con- and sans-iPod rye-bread wrappers.

Mladen

I’ve survived another night in the wild, and much more eventful than the previous one too. It was already dark outside around eleven o’clock and I have retreated into the tent leaving mosquitoes and rain outside to read a book under a flashlight. About half an hour passed when someone or something begun scratching tirelessly on the side of the tent. Scratching went on for about a minute and then stopped just to continue several moments later. The itchy-scratchy visit lasted altogether some 10 minutes during which I pretended blithely to be completely immersed and consumed by the book, too busy to even care who or what that might be. But inside of me adrenaline was produced in gushes and my heart was racing. That’s the end of it, I thought, what a miserable way to go. Whether a curious bear or an uninvited trigger happy hillbilly taking a break from shooting his gun, whatever it was it would have to either knock on the door or rip open the tent for me to come out.

Even though bears are shy animals and at least in Finland, as far as I know, the last time a bear killed a human being was so long ago no one even remembers. But for all I know, this peace treaty could be broken over my cadaver. And I already imagined the headlines selling the yellow press the next day: “Stupid camper sets a tent just outside a bear den”, or something similarly scandalous and stupid.

I thought if I ever get out of this alive, I won’t be able to get any shut-eye for the rest of the trip. Just how wrong I was. Next thing I remember was waking up startled only the next morning, trying to figure out where I was. I circled the tent looking for clues or traces of my nightly visitor but found none. I now proudly belonged to mountain men, afraid of no one and nothing. Even though it is a statistical fact (if that’s not an oxymoron) that in Finland it is much more likely to get killed by your ex than a bear. There you have it.

Feeling content, I could concentrate on other more important things such as gathering breakfast. This is probably a single most rewarding thing when being out and about in the wild, getting your own food right from nature’s bosom. And there was plenty all around me. Freshly picked bilberries and just ripened lingonberries went straight into my porridge bowl. It was fantastic and I clung to the moment for as long as I could. Which wasn’t all that long as now besides restless mosquitoes I had deer fly attacking me too.

Deer fly were a complete novelty to me when I arrived to Finland a couple of years ago. Never before in my life have I seen an insect so clumsy as a deer fly. Upon my first encounter with the Lipoptena cervi I begun to think this must be either a very young species, or it managed to trick the ways of survival of the fittest by being incredibly cunning at something. I vividly remember wondering through the forest a couple of years ago and only after returning home I’ve noticed tens of these tiny slimy-like flies firmly attached to my scalp, clinging so hard that it took a lot of time, profanities and patience before I got read of little critters.

The interesting thing is that they really aren’t slimy at all, but have an elastic and glassy body that gives impression of sliminess. Deer fly bodies are so elastic that it is actually quite difficult to even squeeze them between a thumb and a forefinger. And boy, do they know how to irritate. But once I learned that their ending up on humans is really just a big mistake, I started treating them with compassion. Just think about this, L. cervi mistake humans for either deer, elk or any other bovine animal. Not that I’d wanted to be mistaken for a deer by anyone or anything, it’s just that they hardly ever bite humans, drink human blood and deposit their eggs under our skin as they like to do so much on their true host animals. Now that’s what I call devotion, it won’t touch it if it ain’t on its diet and reproduction list. Quite some creatures, I must say. We became instant friends.

After picking all the unlucky deer fly off me (I didn’t want to carry them too far away from their families, after all) and explaining how sorry I was that they will have to try their luck somewhere else, I flung them off just to see their ever clumsy flying.

I was on my way to cycle around lake Pielinen today. Lake Pielinen is the fifth largest lake in Finland (check it out here, it’s that dark splotch in the middle). It covers the area of 868 km², so there’s really no way to pretend you’re cycling around it by accident. It took me much of the three days to complete the task. The circumference of 200 kilometers might sound daunting, but there were aplenty boring villages, tiny hamlets and other amusing sites on the way that kept me entertained like a good album on a long driving trip can.

Just a few hours into the ride I saw a perfect bathing spot right off the road. It was invincible. I simply had to wash away all that dust and sweat from the previous two days somewhere and this place was as good as it gets. I pulled off, took the towel and soap and went for a dip. The whole experience ended up more like a quick shower than a nice bath as water was excruciatingly cold and as far as I could recall even avanto was more akin to steamy bath than this was. Sure enough, after I emerged from the lake I stank no more, but it took me hours to rise my body temperature from 13 back to my preference of 36,5°C.

By looking at the map there are countless town names scattered around the perimeter of lake Pielinen, but when you’re actually out there, half would not elicit even a though of naming, let alone placing that name on a 1:200 000 map. But there they were in all their glory marked on the map, being no more than a handful of abandoned train stations and half-deserted houses on both sides of the road. But there was something special about this place after all.

Never before in my life have I seen so many bus stops as I have during these several hundred kilometers. Most of the time I was cycling on back-country roads, but there they were, faithful like a dog, hundreds and hundreds of them. In Finland for every ten trees by the road one bus stop is erected, or so it seems. Not that many buses drove by during my whole trip, but even just a bus stop sign conveyed a certain amount of feeling that I was closer to civilization than I would have wanted to be. I am sure that they have built such an extensive public transportation network just to convince the locals to stay put in such remote places. Just who would have otherwise wanted to live some place called Talviniemi without being assured that all it takes for them to leave is by hopping on the next bus.

As I cycled along the eastern shore of lake Pielinen between Lieksa and Nurmes, two incredibly dull towns, I thought this is it, I am tired of all these hills. But just as I fell into simplemindedness of propelling the bike up and down all those hills, I spotted an unusual sign by the road. It was Mätäsvaara abandoned molybdenum mine. A narrow boarded path led off the road down a narrow slit in the rocky hill. I propped my bike on the wooden hut by the entrance into that really narrow and steep gorge, left the helmet on my head, took my camera and flashlight, and set off to explore the mine.

Already after few paces into the slit the place became eerily silent and dark. But I wasn’t even entering the mine at all. After reaching the end of the slit a truly impressive rock pit with a pitch black pond in the middle opened up in front of me. Mätävaara’s molybdenum mine was one of the largest in Finland in 1930s and 1940s when it was in its heyday. They’ve dug it several hundreds of meters deep and its tunnels covered some 11 kilometers altogether. I was lucky enough to meet a local visiting the mine at the same time. A strongly built older gentleman explained that as they were digging deeper and deeper, they miners taking everything that wasn’t molybdenum a few kilometers away from the site where piles of debris grew into several hills. But everything that is left of Mätävaara’s mine today is this pond hiding kilometers of dormant dark water-filled tunnels beneath its placid surface.

They say that the pit has peculiar acoustic qualities, so today it is used as a summer outdoor stage for concerts. It would be amazing to hear a concert here, I thought, but I didn’t want to waste much precious time as in meantime I had made my mind that tonight would be the last night I’d sleep out of doors. I was only 170 km or so away from Kuopio. If I wanted to check out another cool thing on the road I would have to prolong the trip for two more days, which would endanger my engagements for the upcoming weekend, namely another fine summer party. The plan immediately sunk in and I was determined to get as close as possible to the town of Nurmes on the northern tip of lake Pielinen, spend another night in the wild and cycle home the following day.

I don’t know if it was just me or was the last day objectively by far the most dull. Hills, hills and more hills. Some smart aleck came up with speculation that origins of word Suomi are to be found in suo, a Finnish word for a swamp. During this last day of cycling it wasn’t difficult to solve the riddle of Suomi. Suo was complemented with mäki, a Finnish word for hill. There are countless swamps in Finland, but there are just as many hills, if not more. It was almost hypnotic, especially when going downhill, and delirious whenever it was time to climb that next hill. I was getting tired of this not just because I would cycle 150 km on the last day, the exhaustion was mental too.

During those four days I’ve cycled some 500 km. It was fantastic. I’d do it in an eye-blink again, I’d just pick a different tour this time.

Mladen

This is the fourth and the last part of the Koli cycling trip series. Here you can find the first, second and third parts.

What could be better than spending a warm sunny summer day picking strawberries. Picking and munching to be precise. With tens of strawberry fields in vicinity I can’t wait to get down on my knees and get my hands dirty. Picking is quick. In fact so quick that it’s relatively easy to get about two kilograms in about half an hour. It’s kind of fun, even though I have to admit that cultivated strawberry fields are more for the city slicker type of adventurers. You basically don’t even have to look for any berries as they are right there on the field staring right at you, it doesn’t require any special skill or endurance and even if you tried really, really hard it would be rather difficult to get lost. Which makes picking all other berries a completely different affair. They grow out in the wast forests and swamps, so you might want to put that emergency helicopter number into your mobile phone. If you are picking in the area with a network coverage, that is. Even though this might sound a bit strange, but they are much sweeter when picked like that. It could be more challenging and fun, but could also be too much for the feeble.

By visiting an open market in any Finnish town around this time of the year it’s easy to tell that we’re in the midst of the berry season. Strawberries and bilberries will soon be followed by raspberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, crowberries, cranberries, and what-you-know-it-berries as they gradually ripen in the weeks to come.

And people love picking them. According to some statistics I’ve stumbled upon two-thirds of Finns will pick berries during the summer. So if you spot a person standing in the swamp who appears to be loitering, it is very likely that they are literally knee deep in the berries (and water). Although this is Finland, it is not very likely that anyone would want to be killing their time in the middle of the swamp. Anyway, if you do happen to stumble upon such individuals, chances are both of you are in there for the same reason. Which also means you’re not only invading their turf, but also their privacy. Finns are nuts about their forest fruits and their personal space which can be on a clear day, out in the open within the radius of up to 80 kilometers.

Obviously this whole ordeal is about much more than just berries. It’s about being out and about your favorite swamp, enjoying silence and hopefully solitude too, taking in fresh air, getting a snack on the way and saving some for later. And taking pleasure in such activities is deeply rooted in cultures of all the Nordic peoples. All with the exception of Danes who live in way to densely populated areas to have developed such primal urge for the untouched nature. And the attitude of being one with flora and fauna is also a part of everyman’s right enjoyed by these peoples.

However, even before it was codified into law, which happened in the Nordic countries mostly in the 20th century, everyman’s right was a generally accepted custom. At least in Finland everyman’s right guarantees everyone the right to roam freely in the countryside, without the need to obtain permission from the owner of the land.

This custom has been an integral part of Nordic cultures where people have enjoyed it for hundreds of years. However, everyman’s right covers much more than just free roaming. One of the basic premises of this right is enjoying the fruits and joys of nature as long as you don’t cause any permanent damage. Not only are you allowed to pick berries and mushrooms, and fish without permission to a certain extent, but can also traverse the land at will and camp on it freely. And all this comes without the fear of getting shot, as might be the case in, for instance, the US where it is advised to take the ‘No trespassing’ signs with utmost seriousness. Here, the case is exactly the opposite: it is illegal to put up a ‘No trespassing’ sign and build a fence, even on your own land.

As if it wasn’t difficult enough to wrap my central European mind around such concept of practically boundless freedom, there is still more to these comforts. If you want to sell the collected fruits, not only are you allowed to do so, but are almost encouraged as you do not have to pay any taxes from the sales. Generous? If you consider that Finns annually collect more than 50 million kilograms of berries, I think it is not only generous, but also very tempting.

Even though I am pretty sure that most of berries end up being consumed before they are sold, the volume allocated for sale is still far from negligible. For some this means big business, while for others it can provide a livelihood. What has become a constant in the recent years in Finland are seasonal workers from Thailand who come here to pick berries during the summer months. They usually number in hundreds and in the matter of several weeks they pick enough berries to earn a living until the next season comes about.

Of course, these professional pickers are a bit different than you and me. First of all they have their own areas and know when and how to pick. Secondly, the work might not really be appreciated or even endured by many. The most praised and consequently the most expensive berry in Finland is cloudberry which grows only in swamps. I spoke to a salesman on the local market who buys cloudberries straight from pickers and he told me that on average these pickers pick anywhere from 100 to 150 kilograms of cloudberries per day. And during the high season cloudberries can easily reach prices of about 10€ per kilogram. However, I can’t really imagine that carrying a bucket of berries on my back and wading through the mosquito infested swamps would be fun for more than half an hour. So, I am pretty sure that every cent these people earn is well deserved.

But before you start packing your things and heading to Finland to do some lucrative business consider that this year the season has been worse than usual.

Mladen

Yes, to much surprise it’s about booze again. One would think that after living in the Nordic countries for almost two years now, I’d finally get used to all those things about alcohol consumption and everything that follows suit. Alas, I have not. Far from it. I still find the relationship between locals and booze too fascinating to be able to let go.

Alcohol consumption has a special status in the Nordic countries. Its consumption is not a taboo like it is in many other places. Quite the contrary, the media are usually relatively expressive about this or that problem related to drinking too much hooch and advising people not to guzzle as much as they do. Even though according to statistics inhabitants of many other European countries consume a lot more alcohol per year than inhabitants in the Nordics do, it is considered to be a big problem, at least in Finland.

Why then do alcoholic beverages have such notorious reputation around here?

My wild guess would be: the prohibition is to blame for everything. In what is today Finland, already in 1866 the state banned home distilling and begun regulating the sales of alcoholic beverages. I haven’t been able to find any statistical data (and even if I did, it would probably be quite biased as it would have to justify the ban), but I think that they did it just because the state thought their people were having too much fun. Because we are people, whatever you ban us from becomes our curiosity. So after 1866 things only continued going downhill.

First, in 1914 the state prohibited distribution of alcoholic beverages, only to completely ban production, transportation, sale and storage of alcohol in 1919. In plain man’s talk, everything containing alcohol was completely outlawed. The only approved use of alcohol was for the medical, technical and scientific purposes. All of a sudden everyone wanted to work in the medical, technical and scientific fields. One thing led to another, and that’s how alcohol kick-started the birth of Finnish high-tech society.

But for the rest of the population the next 13 or so years weren’t a walk in the park. It was only in 1932 that the ban was lifted and in the same year the population witnessed the introduction of state owned and operated company which was granted an exclusive monopoly on the import, export, manufacture and sale of everything containing alcohol. Believe it or not, but 75 years later Finland still uses the same system. They did rename it from Alkoholiliike to Alko (to make it easier on the pronunciation), made an amendment here and there, put up a trendy Web site, but three-quarters of a century later it is still state owned alcohol monopoly and one of the few state monopolies in the EU today. That’s what I call being true to the tradition. And Finland is as high-tech as high-tech can be.

The two wars that were devastating for the Finnish soon came into picture and were seen as a good reason to further curb the consumption of booze so the nation witnessed a slew of restrictions. But then in the following decade when things laxed down a little bit, we also get the first official national alcohol consumption statistic: 1,41 liters of pure alcohol per head. No, that’s not 14,1 or even 141, it is 1,41 liters per person, as in slightly less than one and a half liter. I know, you’re also wondering what was all that fuss about.

I see only four options here. The prohibition either straightened up the nation, or it never was as bad as they wanted us to believe, or these statistics are complete bollocks and the state had absolutely no idea how much fun their people actually had or they knew but just wanted to believe that they had everything under control. But wait, there’s more. According to the official record, it took a whopping 16 years for this official figure to double.

Let’s be smart alecky for a moment here. If we take this as a constant trend and consider that the consumption of alcohol doubles every 16 years or so, then today the consumption would be a little bit over 17 liters per person of pure alcohol per year. Which is, in other words, a lot more than in Luxembourg that is with around 15 liters the current reigning champion in the world of alcohol consumption. Despair or rejoice not. Currently Finns consume just a tad bit over 10 liters and again according to the officials the amount is in decline. This doesn’t only mean that they have not been keeping up, but are actually backing out all the time.

I sign-off now to make myself a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater to celebrate.

Kippis!

Mladen