Kolumni

Finns and Geography

3.3.2010 0:01 Mary Nurminen

Finns tend to think that they're pretty good at geography while other people, for example Americans, are not.

When it comes to other countries' geography Finns really are rather impressive. My kids have the most wonderful tests at school where they're given a map of, say, Sweden and they have to put in all the names of the rivers and cities and whatnot. I am seriously impressed by this and wish we'd had such things when I was a kid.

(And for those of you who may still have nightmares about those tests, sorry for bringing it up.)

When it comes to the geography of their own country, however, Finns are sometimes not so sharp. To test it, I just held a survey in Facebook and by phone, asking only 1 question about Finnish geographical areas.

So far 15 people have answered the question. Only 2 have got it right.

What was the highly technical and difficult question that I asked? I'll throw the same out to you: within 30 seconds and without looking it up, tell me what lääni you live in.

One very funny thing about this small country is the way they slice it up into all kinds of geographical areas, name those areas, then once people learn the names, go back and decide to slice it up again another way and, just for fun, change some of the names.

For the life of me I can't figure out the point of this cycle.

Could it simply be a reaction to hundreds of years of being ruled by other countries? Once they could finally decide these things for themselves, they kept deciding again and again and again, just to show the Russians and Swedes they can?

I guess it could also be caused by the same thing that makes big companies change their organizations all the time: new people and governments come into power and they want to make changes that are visible and people will remember. Hit by a staggering lack of imagination, they slice things up again and rename them.

Or could it be that the Finnish government makes these changes for the official reason they give for doing it (every single time) - to save money?

Ha ha ha ha ha!!! I hope you liked my joke. The cost of changing all the signs alone costs millions, I'm sure.

One result of this constant cycle of changing it all is that no one pays attention anymore. You can be driving to your home town in the area you grew up in, only to discover that the name of the place was changed ages ago and you didn't notice (has happened to my husband who grew up in Keski-Pohjanmaa but now goes home for visits to Pohjois-Pohjanmaa).

It can also happen that you don't notice when they do something like give up the whole idea of the lääni, which is by the way the answer to my survey question. You don't live in any lääni at all because we don't have them anymore.

How many of you got that right?

VOCABULARY: Nightmare: painajainen, Slice: viipaloida, Staggering: tyrmistyttävä, Sign: kyltti, Lääni: a geographical area somewhat similar to the idea of a "state" in countries like Mexico and India.

Mary Nurminen juhlii 20:ttä vuottaan Suomessa kirjoittamalla sarjaa suomalaisten perusolemuksesta.

Kommentoi artikkelia