Svenskfinland in English

Crown Princess Victoria will arrive in Mariehamn this evening on a two day long visit to Åland. It’s the first time Åland  has received an official visit from a member of the Swedish royal family since it received autonomy in 1921.

The run up to the event has been covered in Åland’s media (which is vibrant for a population of around 25 000, with 2 daily newspapers and 2 radio channels) widely and Åland is expecting many members of the Finnish mainland’s press to cover the event. The Swedish royal family are always popular fare in Finnish tabloids and gossip magazines.

Mariehamn has also been planning for the visit by the heir to the Swedish throne, with many buildings around the main square getting a fresh lick of paint. During Thursday, when people will have a chance to meet the crown princess in the main square, drivers can expect traffic problems as parking places are closed down and roads closed.

The newspaper Nya Åland reports that royalist football fans will face a difficult decision. Crown Princess Victoria is scheduled to arrive at the main square in Mariehamn at the same time as kick-off is scheduled for IFK Mariehamn’s league match against VPS (from Vasa) - 18.30

The soon to be established town of Raseborg unveiled the design of its new municipal shield today. The design is comprised of a green shield with eight white wood anemone flowers upon it. The shield is crowned by a castle-like crown with five towers, a reference to Raseborg castle.

Raseborg will be formed on 1 January 2009 as a merger of the existing municipalities of Ekenäs, Karis and Pojo (Pohja). The eight flowers on the shield symbolise the previous eight original districts in the previous county of Raseborg. The new town will have a population of 28 000 citizens, of which Swedish-speakers will comprise approximately 67%. The town of Hangö and municipality of Ingå opted to remain as independent entities but where involved in the initial discussions.

The building of the new town has not been without some wrangling. Politicians from Ekenäs, Karis and Pojo have had to decide where the new administrative units will be placed and whom will get the top jobs. As a consequence of the merger, street signs in Pojo will be renewed to place the Swedish text above the Finnish. Independent Pojo has a Finnish speaking majority (59,5%). The citizens of Ekenäs, Karis and Pojo will vote together in municipal elections for the first time already this autumn.

“Most Finns are nuts”.

http://masksoferis.wordpress.com/guide-origins/

Via WordPress’ impressive array of statistics on similar blogs, I found this amusing blog entry that made me laugh quite loudly.

I recommend it for a humorous take on just who the Finns are.

Svenska kulturfonden, the Swedish cultural fund, celebrated its 100th anniversary yesterday with a large party and celebration at the Finlandia house in Helsinki. 1 000 guests joined the celebration with dancers, choirs, circus artists, rock bands, musicians and many more from around Swedish-speaking Finland providing the entertainment alongside traditional staples such as the singing of Modersmålets sång (Song of the Mother Tongue) and Vårt land (Our Land, Finland’s national anthem - The Swedish language lyrics from a poem by J L Runeberg are in fact the original).

In connection with the event, Kulturfonden awarded a record sum in prizes, grants and scholarships. A total of 15 million euros were given out during the festivities. The stand-up comic André Wickström (who is also well known in Sweden) and the ceramic artist Karin Widnäs were amongst the bigger prize winners, winning 20 000 € each.

After the party, Kulturfonden provided a dinner for 500 invited guests.

Kulturfonden works to support and strengthen the Swedish language in Finland, to develop skills, competence, creativity and solidarity amongst Swedish-speaking Finns. Today, Kulturfonden has financial reserves about double the size of Sweden’s Nobel Foundation and around the same size as the Finnish language equivalent Suomen kulttuurirahasto.

Greens in Sibbo (Sipoo) will fight this autumn’s municipal election as an independent association according to a report from Radio Vega Östnyland. Most Green activists in Sibbo have cut their link to the national party because of the Greens’ government ministers stance on the annexation of south west Sibbo by Helsinki. When the matter came up in the government, the Green’s ministers supported Helsinki’s forced take-over of an area of south west Sibbo. This was passed in government by a vote of 8-4. The annexation will occur on 1 January 2009. Previously, around 95% of Sibbo’s electorate had voted against the proposal in a referendum organised by the municipal council. The decisions by both the government and later the high court of administration in favour of Helsinki have been seen by many as an attack against municipal democracy and as a victory of the large over the small. In many letters to newspapers, the annexation has been likened to rape.

After the decision, the Greens lost many members in Sibbo who resigned in protest. The same fate also affected Kokoomus (who are the second largest party in Sibbo’s local council), whose government ministers also all supported Helsinki’s forced annexation. The Greens now face a tough municipal election in Sibbo, with 3 of their 4 councillors stating they will not stand for reelection.

Currently, the Swedish peoples party (Sfp) has 20 mandates in Sibbo. The national coalition party Kokoomus have 10. SDP hold 6, the Greens currently have 4 and Centre has 3 councillors.

The image is from one of the several protests against Helsinki’s forced annexation of south west Sibbo that occurred during 2007.

The Swedish Peoples’ Party (Sfp) has set a goal of increasing its number of votes by at least one thousand in the autumn’s municipal elections (when compared to those of 4 years ago).

Sfp is hoping it can offer 1 500 candidates of which half should be women and with an increased number of young people and recent immigrants to Finland than in its previous election campaigns.

According to party chairman Stefan Wallin, this year’s election will be particularly challenging for Sfp as many municipalities are merging creating an unpredictable and new dynamic in many localities.

Some municipalities that are merging with Finnish language dominated neighbours will present a particular challenge for Sfp with the number of Swedish speakers decreasing as a proportion. It will be vital for Sfp to mobilise its electorate to enable Swedish speakers to maintain their representation in municipal councils and governments at the same level.

Sfp has announced that its election theme will be fairness and equality. According to Sfp, individuals must have the right to be treated equally and fairly by all authorities regardless of their background or linguistic group. Municipalities should also be treated fairly by the state, which appears to be a clear reference to the Sibbo drama where the views of Sibbo’s inhabitants were overridden by Helsinki and the central government.

UPDATE Wednesday 16.27

It seems the association for Fair Trade which also uses the term Fairness in its campaigning is unhappy with Sfp’s usage of the same term.

Sfp has designed a campaign logo, a Fairness label/stamp design. Party secretary Ulla Achrén said that Sfp would be a party of fairness, with candidates standing for fairness and for policies of fairness.

Janne Sivonen who is the communications director at Association of the Advancement of Fair Trade in Finland was disappointed at this news, he told Svensk presstjänst: “This is certainly to mislead consumers. The ‘Fair Trade mark’ is a registered trademark in Europe and a guarantee that a product meets international fair trade criteria. Sfp has not asked us for permission to use the slogan. We will be discussing this matter with them.”

The Minister of Culture and Sport Stefan Wallin (sfp) has repeated his belief that there should be more women in positions of leadership in Finland.

According to FNB (STT) via Hufvudstadsbladet, the chairman of the Swedish Peoples Party said today that “Women are often higher educated than men and make up almost half of the Finnish labour force. Yet, that’s not seen in leadership positions. In 2006, only around a fifth of all persons in positions of leadership were women.”

Wallin expressed particular disappointment that the percentage of women on the boards of publically traded companies had increased so slowly. Only 12 % of board members are female.

That’s the opinion of the minister of defence, Jyri Häkämies (national coaltion Kokoomus party). Häkämies told the Finnish Atlantic Society that the Nordic countries’ influence in defence matters would markedly increase if Finland and Sweden joined Norway, Denmark and Iceland as members in the Nato defence alliance. Häkämies believes that the Nordic region would be more secure from a military perspective and that Nato membership would improve and enhance the opportunities for a common planning of regional defence leading to greater efficiency and cost savings.

Häkämies also said that a common Nordic front within Nato would also be of advantage when considering that Russia is regaining some of its former strength. Häkämies previously caused debate when he made a speech in Washington saying that “Russia, Russia, Russia” was Finland’s key foreign policy challenge. This was quickly played down by both prime minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) and president Tarja Halonen.

With known Nato enthusiast Alexander Stubb (Kokoomus) also now in government, it seems that the highest levels of Finnish government are increasingly positive towards Nato. It remains to be seen what effect continued media prominence on the Nato issue will have on Finnish public opinion, which according to the most recent polls is still generally negative towards any Nato membership application.

photo: Statsrådets kansli / Lehtikuva Ab

The Minister of Justice, Tuija Brax (green) has stated that she would support a sinking of the voting age (currently 18 ) to allow all those aged 16 years and above to vote. Minister Brax said she thinks this would increase the engagement of younger voters in political matters earlier. Members of other political parties, including some Swedish peoples’ party (Sfp) members and Left Alliance members have also stated this in the past.

Personally, I don’t have particularly strong feelings either in support or opposition to this. I suppose the arguments against a sinking of the voting age would be that younger people tend to be immature and thus could perhaps not be capable of making an informed decision on who to vote for - or that they haven’t grown up enough yet to sufficiently understand their own views. Personally, through having 2 children (and from more or less remembering being one myself!), I think such an attitude is rather pompous and underestimates many 16- and 17-year olds. Frankly, I think there’s probably a lot of people well over 18 who are still rather less mature then many 16- and 17-year olds; in other words, there are people who probably don’t make particularly informed choices long after they celebrate their 18th year.

The only really strong reason to keep things at 18 that I can think of is that 18 is the age of becoming an adult - it’s a marker point for many other things, whether it be drinking, smoking, driving etc. For simple reasons of being uniform and neat and tidy, keeping it at 18 is attractive. Also, you could argue that all the electorate ought to be 18 as they are in theory electing people who will make decisions on things like drinking, smoking, driving. You could, at a stretch, argue that people who are less than 18 shouldn’t be voting to influence decisions on things that the law doesn’t consider them mature enough to engage in yet.

We will see what happens. Certainly, anything that would engage younger people in the political process is worth investigating. As I’ve previously written, I have a lot of time for Tuija Brax. She comes across to me as a very capable member of our government and seems to have a good record in her decision making. Therefore, perhaps her instinct on this matter is also correct.

The First of May is a public holiday in Finland, traditionally a day of political activities (marches by political groups and speeches by various politicians from all parties - notably in Sweden and many other countries, it’s exclusively the left of centre that does this, in Finland it’s become a more general day for politics). The day before (30th April) is called, in Swedish, Valborgsmässoafton or more commonly Valborg - or here in Finland, often in Finland-Swedish Vappen (Vappu in Finnish). This is most especially a day for the university students, but often all of us who graduated from school wear our white student caps at some point. Everyone can join in the parties and general fun of the day, which is traditionally seen as the marker of the start of spring.

So, perhaps you’re a foreigner in Finland, and aren’t quite sure what to do on Valborg. Here’s a beginner’s guide.

Picnic. It’s not really the done thing to eat inside on Valborg. After all, spring is here. So, grab some sausages and get the grill out. It’s sausages/hotdogs that rule the day of Valborg cuisine.

Feel cold. Unfortunately, the Finnish weather is often not as aware that it’s the beginning of spring as we perhaps would like it to be. On Valborg, one generally feels cold at some point because we’ve managed to convince ourselves in advance that it’s practically the beginning of summer. Either that or you’re too drunk to realise that a t-shirt and shorts doesn’t work in a sleet storm.

Summer house party. Well, as it’s practically summer, often the partying takes place in the summer house - for perhaps the first time of the year. A restaurant or bar would just be too “indoors”, and if it really is too cold then the summer house is still a respectable component of the out of doors summer lifestyle.

Beer. Booze. Well, probably you’ve realised that drinking is a major part of most Finnish holidays. This one is no exception and perhaps only second to midsummer in terms of drunkeness. And you can’t beat a good cold beer on the warm spring day of Valborg… hmm. (If you in a city, it’s a good idea to watch where you’re walking the next morning - the pavements often show evidence of the “aftermath”).

Speech. If your (un)lucky, especially in some Swedish-speaking areas, somebody prominent in the local community (usually some old guy, who has already had a little too much to drink by this time) will make a speech to welcome the spring. If there’s a cold wind, rain, sleet or even snow, this will generally increase in strength at this point.

So, enjoy the festivities. And remember to stock up on headache pill in advance! Glada vappen!

I will be back with more regular blogging soon. Right now, it’s holiday time. And aside from that, I’ve been very busy with some work projects of late.