Handle with care

Hey kids, here comes the other part of your present: the second short movie by Jalmari Helander, this one is called Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions.
How to handle Santa? What are the Dos and Don´ts?
You will be much wiser after watching this:



A little backround info for those of you who have never heard about the short movies and the feature film that followed them. Wikipedia, do your magic:

"In 2003 the Finnish commercials production company Woodpecker Film published the short movie "Rare Exports Inc. on the internet. Here author and director Jalmari Helander established a band of three hunters (marker, sniper and tracker) searching the wilderness of Lapland for the wild Santa Claus. After the positive reception from the internet audience, Woodpecker Film produced and published the sequel short movie "Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions" in 2005, again with Helander as director and author."

Finally they produced the feature film "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" with a 1,803,000 € budget. The flick hit Finnish cinemas on December 3rd, 2010. It had already premiered as early as September 9th the same year on the Fantastic Fest in Austin. The movie was never shown in German cinemas but was released over there directly on dvd and blu-ray.

Santa Clause is coming to town

Time to give you guys some presents!
You all know that Santa Clause is coming from Finland, right?
But do you know anything else about him? Here is my gift for you: the first of two short movies by Jalmari Helander called Rare Exports Inc.
This tells the real story behind Santa. This is nothing for the faint of heart.
Watch and learn. Stay tuned for more.

   

Harakointi - mitä vittua?!

Today´s topic is going to be a delicate one. It was brought to my attention by a friend of mine, who told he had come across a Wikipedia entry about an old Finnish ritual called harakointi. When he elaborated on the whole thing I couldn´t help myself but wonder what he had actually been searching for on the net.

Harakointi, so he said, dates back to the times people believed in witchcraft and could only be performed by women. Why? Because they showed their vaginas to their enemies in order to curse them, that´s why! Naturally, this raunchy bit of information induced pictures in our minds that had us in stitches! Just imagine the following scenario:

Witch: "Hey you, dickhead! Yeah, you! Look over here!" - lifts skirt - "GRRRRR!!"

Dickhead: "Fuck, I´m cursed! Aaaaargh!!"

Trying to do some research on harakointi I had to realize that www´s info on the matter is very sparse, to say the least. I only managed to find an English translation of the original Finnish Wikipedia entry and an excerpt from an essay by Sari Näre. She is an adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Helsinki and has published widely on gender and sexual cultures (among other subjects). However, both sources shed light on that ancient rite and show there´s apparently a bit more to it than my friend and me have conceived.  

First off, here´s what Wikipedia has to say:

"Harakointi means revealing a woman's genitals as a supernatural magic to protect or curse an item, cattle or person. The woman who does harakointi reveals her vulva, which depending on the purpose either curses or blesses the target. Cattle could be subjected to harakointi when they were let on the summer pastures by showing the lower parts to the passing animals. Farmland could be harakointi'd by doing the sowing or harvest with the genitals bared. Men, weapons and tools going to hunt or to war, as well as those traveling abroad and children left alone have also been harakoiti'd."

"Women have also needed to be careful with their magic powers, for some male items like fishermen's nets and horse harnesses may in some traditions have been considered ruined if a woman stepped over them. The female gender has apparently been considered a threat to male-dominated fields of life."

"Harakointi speaks of how the female genitals have been considered strong in magic power. This was based in the strong taboos, myths and fears related to the female sexual organs. A woman's ability to give birth has been considered supernatural. The magic known harakointi has only been practiced in Finland, but similar magics can be found from cultures around the globe."

Sari Näre mentions harakointi shortly like this:

"In pre-Christian Finland it was believed that women had magic powers to hurt and heal from their vulva. In pre-Christian folk tradition, sometimes women also used this magical power to protect their family members, intimate fellows and animals: the person or animal to be protected had to go under the woman’s naked bottom. This ritual called harakointi would take place, for example, in or outside saunas, especially when something new was happening, like someone going travelling or getting married. So, it was a kind of transformation ritual."

And that´s about it, nothing else surfaced on the net. Since Wikipedia claims that similar magic rituals can be found all over the world I tried my luck again. A word to the wise and you guessed it already: when you type the tags witch, ritual, spell, vagina, etc. into a search engine you will find all kinds of things but most will be off-topic. If you thought porn now, you´re wrong. Surprisingly the vast majority is about love spells or potions until Google starts listing pages about satanism or cannibalism.

This is a paper drawing from 1514 called Neujahrsgruß mit drei Hexen (=New Year´s wish with three witches) by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien (1485 - 1545) .

Especially shown in his later oeuvre, Grien had a thing going for witches, virgins and goddesses. He was fascinated by the beauty of the naked female body and some of his works have a surprisingly strong erotic, sometimes even sexual element (mind the times).

This particular artwork pops up quite often in the context of harakointi but I couldn´t find any sources that pin it down to that. Seems like an old sophisticated picture was needed to illustrate the ritual. What other could you possibly use and still appear scientific to some extent? Thought so.

The worldwide fascination with female genitalia through the ages is of course no rocket science at all and since the dawn of humanity men agree that pussy can be curse AND blessing. Yes, pussy! Why do I suddenly use this rather indecent term? Well, after my unsuccessful attempt to track down harakointi in other countries I´m returning to the native country of today´s subject matter - Finland.

Although I´m pretty damn sure harakointi has ceased to be executed in its original form over here, its main component is very well on everybody´s lips.

(Sorry, couldn´t resist - one pun has to be allowed.)

What is cunt or pussy in English is VITTU in Finnish and dear non-Finns, let me tell you, you hear it everywhere and everyday in Finland! Statistics claim that the word vittu and its seemingly endless variations are the premier swear words in Suomi. It feels as if there is a higher number of possible combinations than the decimal places of Pi. The word becomes so omnipotent because it can also be used as "fuck" as in "to fuck/mess with somebody". You want to add some force to your statement or expressed frustration?

One fits all:
"Mitä vittua?" = "What the fuck?", "Haista vittu!" = "Fuck you!" (literally: "smell pussy!"),
"Mua vituttaa!" = "I´m angry!", when you are angry you can even "olla naama norsun vitulla" = "have a face like an elephant´s cunt". Things can be "vittumainen" = "annoying" or become "vituiksi" = "fucked up", etc. pp. Used as a genitive it is combined with literally EVERYTHING. "Vitun hyvä, huono, iso, paska, juntti" = "fucking good, bad, big, shit, idiot" make sense but "vitun homo?"

Most unbelievable is that women use the word as often as men, absolute gender equality! Adults sometimes refer to it as "v-sana", the v-word, when children are present. Then they turn around to their friends and complain about "vitun" something...Still I´m surprised to find both ends of the life span joining the party. I don´t mind grumpy old geezers but sometimes you hear it from speakers so young that you wonder if they have a full concept of the word they´re using. Hopefully not!

In English and German spoken countries it´s more about ass (Arsch) and shit (Scheisse).
"You stupid asshole!" (Du dummes Arschloch!) will always make for a good insult. Someone told me that in southern European countries the male penis is used as main source of inspiration. And supposedly almost everywhere people swear with some form of "fuck".
I have no idea from where the fixation on dicks or asses originates in the rest of Europe but I am starting to get a hunch about the Finnish vittu.

It seems that the Finns have all but forgotten about harakointi and its magical powers to bless people or things. But they definitely have not forgotten how to curse with a vagina!

Make sure to check out:

Wikipedia on harakointi (Finnish only)
Sharing Waters - Sari Näre´s complete essay (English only)

Finns get seksi

Johanna Tukiainen. Singer, model, host and poetry in motion.

Oh là là, and they get seksi all the time. They get seksi because of translatiivi! What? Sexy transsexuals?! In Finland?!? Well, might as well be, I wouldn´t know. Being rather unkinky by nature the translative however is a grammatical form used quite often in Finnish. It indicates a change and refers to something or someone transforming into a different state.

The ending of the translatiivi is always -ksi and is added to the stem of a word.

For example: if you want to say that you´re planning to become an engineer (= insinööri), it will translate to "minä aion insinööriksi."

Another one: if you´re thirsty but penniless in a bar and the local drunk has again passed out over his beer, you can give him a tender punch in the liver and ask him: "Juotko lasin vielä tyhjäksi?" - "Will you still empty your glass?"

Good example, bad advice. If you pull that one off, you´re on your own! But I guess you got it now anyway and "tämä riittää perusteluksi" - this suffices as an explanation.

But why do the Finns get seksi now? Well, when the translative is used for adjectives, especially when they describe a feeling, this rather dry subject becomes quite juicy and funny. Many adjectives have the suffix -nen, e.g. iloinen (cheerful), onnellinen (happy), surullinen (sad) or vihainen (angry). The stem form of these words ends on -se- and is always used when the basic form is altered. So the genitive of vihainen would be vihaisen. When we let the translative kick in now it finally happens: you take the stem vihaise-, drop the n and add the suffix -ksi. Now you can say: "Tyttöystäväni tuli vihaiseksi" but it doesn´t mean that your girlfriend looked pretty hot when she got angry. Your gal just got mad, plain and simple, pleasant side effects not included.

So Finns get iloiseksi, onnelliseksi and surulliseksi etc. day in, day out and it seems only foreigners like me find it so goddamn funny. The best of all is that "seksi" used as a noun means nothing but "sex". Still nobody here turns punaiseksi (red) when saying these kind of things - absolutely elusive!


Maybe just goes to show that I have a dirty mind but there´s another funny thing.
It is a.) the favorite joke of many a tourist who went to a Finnish supermarket and b.) apparently invisible for the Finns, they don´t seem to see the obvious. Here´s what I´m talking about: like many other nations the Finns like their sweets and potato chips, preferably in biiig bags. What is bag in Finnish? PUSSI! Ahem...and how are biiig bags advertised in Finland? Right:

Also minipussis are available, if that´s more to your taste.

As opposed to many other languages Finnish only knows one sound for the letter S. It´s always a feast for me to see trailers for foreign movies/series on the tube and hear them announce for instance an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick in thickest "finniss prronanssiessen". If you pronounce the letter S Finnish style it will sound just like "ass". One big supermarket chain over here is called S-Market, so you can actually go to the (as)S-Market to buy some megapussis and no one gives a damn. Isn´t that beautiful?

SONGS FOR TODAY:

Rod Steward -  Da ya think I´m seksi?


The Cramps - Can your pussi do the dog?

Hyvää syntymäpäivää!

Life in Hel would like to wish all of its readers a happy birthday!
Regardless if it is your birthday today or not. I mean who knows if I can meet or contact you on that particular day? And maybe in YOUR case the great day has already passed, so let´s get it over with: Happy birthday to all of you!
I should actually like the Finnish way of honoring the very existence of their friends and loved ones. Finns are quite careless about the exact date, sometimes even about the whole thing itself. Since I´m a sucker when it comes to remembering birthdays it would suit me absolutely fine to disguise my disability as an attempt to adjust with the Finns and their habits.

But I can´t. My German genes kick in immediately. My long term memory might be as bad as it is but I still care about congratulating or being congratulated on the exact day. And I hate everytime I forget it. Don´t know if that marks me out as a German (other peoples might be as pedantic as us) but it definetely marks me out as not being a Finn.

Of course birthdays can be a big thing here, too. But that´s for either children or aged citizens. Kids are even the synttärisankari - the birthday hero! Then they must get weaned from this affection like from mother´s milk and by the time their 50th or 60th anniversary is celebrated they don´t even think it´s such a big deal anymore.

Just recently a Finnish friend of mine invited me to his birhday party on a Friday. When I asked him if this was his actual birthday he said: "No, that will be next week´s Wednesday. And the weekend after that I´m out of town so I will celebrate already this Friday." I´m already accustomed to this habit for a considerable time now but an unknowing German brain would read out of this information Syntax error!

To celebrate (days, hours, minutes, seconds) before your birthday is unthinkable for a German mind. We get spooked out and superstitious because - don´t you know? This brings bad luck! If someone suggest doing that to us we have to close our eyes and bite our lips not to scream:
"Witch, witch! Burn the evil one! Burn, burn!"

Back in Germany me and my girl once went to one of these parties where you celebrate "into" the birthday. That is a common habit over there: If your birthday is on - let´s say - a Sunday, you have your party on Saturday and EXACTLY at midnight the music is turned off, everybody goes ape and screams "Häääbbie Böörsdee tuu juu, häääbbie böörsdee tuu juu...!" Then you get your presents and you can open them. But this all has to happen after midnight and not a second before - it wouldn´t be your birthday yet, you see? This system luckily doesn´t take your actual time of birth in account, nobody would wait until...eehm, e.g. 04.37 or 23.41 or whenever you were born.
We´re not that mad. But it seems that the right timing is crucial on a German birthday party!

Obviously I hadn´t briefed my girlfriend about our tribal rites. When we went to the party and rang the bell, the birthday boy (40something) opened the door and my better half said: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" with a big smile on her face. The reply came muttured and without a smile: "Well, actually it´s tomorrow..." I felt bad because it would have been my responsibility to tell her that you can only congratulate after midnight. But how was I supposed to know that she didn´t know? We had just encountered a cultural difference, not for the first and not for the last time.

I have to admit that sometimes I feel a bit stupid about clinging to this unwritten birthday rule myself but at the same time I like it. What can I do, I am German and it´s in my system! Maybe here the old prejudice applies that Germans are always on time - Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps. Hhmm, I dunno...maybe. About this I can only say the following: I have played in bands where we had to tell certain members that we would rehearse half an hour earlier. If we showed up at the original time we would arrive with them around the same time at the room because these certain members would always be half an hour late, no matter what. Pathetic, but that system really worked!

To wrap up this post I hereby proclaim that I don´t intend at all to kiss my stupid habit goodbye! We can party but I congratulate when it´s due!
Hugh!

SONG FOR THE DAY:

The Smiths - Unhappy Birthday

Escalators & Constipators

Come on, it looks more difficult than it actually is. You can do it! 

Take a good look at this picture. Let´s say you are in downtown Helsinki and you are approaching this site. Then let´s imagine these escalators in a total rush hour at 8 in the morning. Now tell me how you would use them together with a friend / collegue / lover / parent / nurse / etc. and / or just the other people on the escalator. I will be able to tell you straight if you are a native or a foreigner.

The Finns are able to perform the following cunning stunt when using this technical marvel: They form a line on the right side and let others who might be in a hurry (rush hour, mind you) walk by on the left. Unthinkable for example in Germany. Ain´t it funny? I bet a common cliché would be that Germans like to form straight lines, but no way, Sir! It´s rather the opposite!

Let´s do our little exercise from the beginning once more. This time we imagine the same escalators in a total rush hour in let´s say, Düsseldorf, Germany. This time I can tell you that the place would be absolutely jammed with people. If you have 30 seconds to get up there because you have a bus to catch you are doomed. This bus will leave without you, no doubt about it. You will never make it in time unless you mow your way through the human obsticles with a machete. Well, one of my teachers always said when I used this case as an excuse for being late: "Get up earlier!" I can´t argue with that but this is not the point here. 

How come Finns are able to make room for others while it seems impossible for Germans? I know some will play the population card now: 82 million Krauts to 5 million Finns and their countries are about the same size. Yes, you might take that into account and of course that means that Finnland just provides way more space for its inhabitants. But do you really want to tell me that a busy city like Helsinki doesn´t look like an anthill in the morning? That Mika, Jussi and Pekka can´t possibly constipate an escalator because there is nobody else but them? I´m not talking about any small village in the countryside. The countryside is what makes Finland so big compared to the number of inhabitants, there is countryside without end. I´m talking about Helsinki, a city that matches Düsseldorf almost exactly. Same amount of people, same hurries, same shit, different day. Here and there people are late for work but here in Helsinki they have a pretty good chance to catch the bus that saves them from their bosses´ anger. But why?

My conclusion is a fundamental difference in attitude and social behavior. Finns don´t have to be told to line up on the right side of an escalator, they just do it. They don´t question it and regard it as a matter of course. Germans in contrast regard it as a matter of course to question everything, especially when it is totally pointless to do so. It becomes a matter of principal and the principal is me, myself and I. Why do I have to make room? It is my right to stand in your way! Why can´t you use the stairs? Why do you bother me? The same pathological behavior applies to the road traffic. In Germany you know how to drive a car, no one else. Only morons on the street, you are the only sane person in a madhouse. And of course you let them know, let´s teach them all a lesson. The biggest problem about this stupid attitude is the fact that it leads to many avoidable dangerous situations in the traffic. But you can notice it already by the usage of the car´s horn, actually meant as a signal for danger. The Germans use it more often as "Argumentationsverstärker", as a tool to prove their point. A pointless point. Every morning on the streets of Germany: Concerto grosso! I paid a lot of attention to this over here and I can say with utter conviction that what you hear on the streets of Helsinki is: Silencio. 

I´d like to buy an Ä

Bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing...There you see. No, wait. I´m not talking about these blind German retards who insisted on dolling up all by themselves for their big moment of fame on Glücksrad. I´m talking about the unique nature of suomen kieli, the Finnish language. If you are from another European or English spoken country and you stumble over finnish noums like posti, grilli, bussi, taksi, etc. you might think that a) this is rather cute, b) this sounds all pretty familiar and therefore c) learning the language is gonna be a piece of cake. Well, you are terribly wrong. Forget everything you know. It ain´t gonna help you because you are fooled by loan words and here the similarity ends abruptly. In my first post I described Finnish as close to extraterrestrial, which was maybe a bit mean (Yours truly was in for a dramatic effect as usual). But it´s fair and more friendly to call it a secret language. The term is accurate because a) it´s spoken by 0,05 % of the global population, b) even if you learn it, spoken Finnish and its many dialects might differ so much from its written form that you´re still absolutely clueless and c) to further round off the mystique Finns sometimes start to whisper at the end of a sentence. They sound as if they are exhausted from carrying the burden of a dark, well-kept secret. And they can talk while inhaling! It´s like writing with magic ink or something...just miraculous! Today the first part of my intensive language course has endend. I like to imagine that I get a glimpse of light at the end of a long tunnel but quite much still looks like this to me:

Bon appétit!

Let´s face it, it´s not the easiest language on the planet. It doesn´t belong to either the indogermanic or romanic family and that makes it so difficult for many foreigners like me. Finno-Ugric, that´s what it is. Estonia and Hungary are linguistic relatives and while you can really see some similarities between Finnish and Estonian, love letters between Helsinki and Budapest will most likely be written in English. All of the above makes Finnish highly unique and interesting. I am surrounded by that secret language every day and I wanna crack the code to become agent 00 JottEff with the licence to spell. If you like to aim high I recommend you to try it yourself. You will find that Finnish sounds very nice (listen to a sample), the grammar is in fact very logical and it is one of the world´s best languages to curse in, perkele! You will start to like these funny details that make Suomi so adorable. For instance, there are no equivalents for the words he and she. Both is hän in Finnish, that´s why Finns mix up the English personal pronouns on a regular basis. Don´t be confused when you hear someone say "I was talking to my girlfriend and he said..." That doesn´t mean that his girlfriend is still a boy about to have a sex change. The more plausible explanation is that this person has made a common mistake, Finns are just not used to distinguish between male and female personal pronouns, the context tells them if the conversation is about a woman or a man. One thing you should always keep in mind when speaking Finnish is the pronounciation. Of course this is important in every language but the Finns are pretty uptight with it. Some words look almost the same but it´s a double consonant or vowel that makes the difference. The difference though might be enormous. For example, if I say: "Minä tapaan sinut kello viisi" I tell you that I will meet you at five o´clock. If I say: "Minä tapan sinut kello viisi" it translates to "I will kill you at five o´ clock." So if you confirm a date and she starts running for her life, you know that you screwed up the pronounciation. Quite interesting somehow that the Finnish verbs "to meet" and "to kill" are so close to each other. Wonder why...has anyone done some research about this? Another curiosity is the shortage of words at first sight. Sentences can manage quite well with only one or two words: "Oletko iloinen? -Olen." ("Are you happy? -Yes, I am"). Even one word alone can be bursting with information. If someone tells you for instance that he is "talossani" you have a quite distinctive description of his whereabouts. He says "house-in-my" or "in my house" without wasting too much breath. Then there are so many other interesting things like untranslatable words and verbs, or words that even the Finns regard as sounding funny like "lämpimämpi"(comparative form of warm, = warmer). The list is long and you should really take a look at it. Needless to say that I am still making many mistakes but at least I have heard some nice compliments about the way my poor broken Finnish sounds. Sometimes I´m a bit frustrated when the grammar won´t penetrate my thick skull but giving up is not an option! The quest continues next week.

The house of horrors, I´m in torture chamber No. 17 on the 3rd floor. Just kidding, of course...

I´m attending class at Työväenopisto in Herttoniemi, that´s just three metro stops from my place. Hopefully four times a week, three hours a day will do the trick in the long run. Part 2 of the course is ahead of me and the going is about to get tough. No easy way out anymore with explanations in English which was the habit in the first part. Our (very nice and friendly) teacher told us (very nicely) that from next Monday she will speak Finnish 98% of the time and expects us to answer in Finnish, too (not so very nice but more than reasonable). I know that the day will come when I´ll be able to communicate with people over here in their mother tongue, it is just a question of time. If I just wasn´t so impatient...

Kahvia ja pullaa

The evil twins of temptation!

Coffee and buns - curse or blessing?
I´m not able to decide but I can´t get enough of them, that´s for sure. And you find them everywhere, because the Finns are full-blown coffee addicts. Just take a look at what the statistics say: In 2003 every Finnish resident consumed an average amount of 11,4 kilogramms of coffee. That means that each Finn gulped down 4,8 cups per day. This bare fact puts them in world wide pole position, they are the masters of mokka, the coffee champions with esprit for espresso! The Krauts in comparison are not that hot for coffee with only 2,8 cups per day and person. All of you who think that the low German consumption is a result of their constant beer drinking I will have to disappoint: according to the same statistic that hot juice made from beans makes it before beer when it comes to Deutschlands favorite beverages.

Germany has a reputation as the promised land of bakery products and rightly so, this centuries-old trade has spawn a huge variety of goodies and tidbits. But let me call out: I DON´T CARE! I found my promised land here in Suomi because cardamom is what I dig and cinnamon is what I crave! Both ingredients are used a lot in Finnish bakeries and I love it. My fellow Germans connect the taste mostly to christmas, that´s the time cinnamon usually finds its way into teutonic dough. Here you have it all year long so it´s christmas every day, ain´t that nice, kids? My absolute favorite is the Korvapuusti which means "slap in the face" or "Ohrfeige" (recipe linked below) and I must limit my gluttony if I don´t want to morph into a member of Poison Idea (R.I.P. Pig Champion).

By now I´m drinking so much coffee that a friend already told me I would be close to becoming a real Finn. I would applaud to that if my hands wouldn´t sh-sh-shake so m-m-much. As mentioned before you will find kahvia ja pullaa almost everywhere but especially in sommer time the nicest place to enjoy them is one of the many outside coffee places. This year´s summer was historic with the highest temperatures in Finland´s written history (37,2 °C, global warming anyone?). Many have hold me responsible for that, accusing me of having brought that incredible heatwave from Germany to the country, maybe in my suitcase? Or maybe I put the sunshine in a condom and swallowed it, only to give birth to the hottest summer of all time on a Finnish lavatory. But wait, I lost my train of thought...Ah yes, I was getting at this: The weather has been more than nice, also the beginning autumn was rather mild so far with lots of sunshine. I really wonder when the shit hits the fan over here and the cold comes creeping in. Many, many days were just perfect for a coffee break, sometimes at the seaside, sometimes in a park or on a terrace. Dear suomalaiset, your coffee culture rules and I´m your biggest fan!

An inviting kahvila on Pohjoisesplanadi. Who can say no to that? I can´t.

How to make korvapuusti:

www.food.com/recipe/korvapuusti-finnish-cinnamon-rolls-428065