ATDDTA: Picking Finland

[bekah]

Another reason he picked Finland is because most people know next to 
nothing about it!

First:  Finland has been a Christian country since the 14th century 
or so.  My older relatives there (whom I have visited) are mostly 
very, very Christian and proud of it, the younger ones have left the 
church.  Lutheran was the  state religion for a couple centuries. 
The Finns got their  written language and a Bible in that language 
from the same man. -Michael Agricola,  (1510 - 1557).    April 9, the 
anniversary of his death,  is a national holiday. 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola>.   I saw more 
cathedrals and churches over there than "preterite" sites.    Do you 
consider Sibelius, Saarinen or Linus Torvalds,  to be "other"  and 
"preterite?"   Why does what you said sound racist?


Second - Finns are very light-skinned,  but they are not "near 
albino."   Albino is a condition involving more than skin color.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_popular_culture>


** Finns are probably closer to the nomadic Asiatic tribes than any 
European group.

"By convention the Finns are white or Caucasian. Peltonen was 
probably the palest person on Westwood Boulevard. Nevertheless, in 
the 19th century she would have been classed with the Mongol race 
because anthropologists of that day lumped Finns with the Laplanders, 
or Sami, as they call themselves-the nomadic, faintly Asiatic people 
who roam the Scandinavian Arctic. That's how arbitrary "race" can be.
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/apr/finlands-fascinating-genes>


**  The language "Finnish" is a member of the Baltic-Finnic group of 
the Uralic language family - other Uralic languages include the 
Estonian and Hungarian languages. 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language>

Finnish language is closer to Hungarian and it was very difficult for 
Finnish immigrants to learn English and impossible for the English 
speakers to learn Finnish.  (My grandparents never spoke English but 
all 7 kids did.)    As a result,  the Finns took awhile longer to 
assimilate than some groups.

***
Meanwhile,  I noted that living at the top of the world business but 
I forgot about the myths.  The Kalevala, their national compendium of 
folk tales stories was collected and published in the 19th century. 
But some myths of further north (Lapp and Sami country)  go way 
further back.  There are some for the rune-singers (like Hungary) but 
they're also part Viking and part Mongol and all Suomi / Sami / Lapp.

Bekah
to send the Finnish  "Theft of the Sampo" (a tale from the Kalevala) 
which has a Tibetan connection



At 12:07 AM +0000 6/10/07, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>         bekah:
>
>         You're both suggesting that I'm being over-sensitive, 
>         perhaps I  am. (I've been called worse.)
>
>Perhaps you're being sensitive enough. Yes, somehow it's the whitest of the
>whites, the honkiest of honkies that's been picked out of the 
>lineup, but let's
>not get too bedazzled by the local terrain as to lose sight of the central
>thread of Against the Day: Illumination. Our Beloved Author picks on the
>Finns for a variety of fine reasons, beginning with their close proximity to
>Iceland and to the main source of the Norse legends that pop up in AtD.
>Next, they are major players in OBA's explosive tales of miners and bosses.
>But I would also include their whiteness, near albino, and remind you all of
>Blicero and the North and Whiteness. And the fact that they're not really
>Christians, retaining a great deal of their culture from their shamanic roots.
>Even though they may be the whitest of the whites, they are still, culturally
>speaking, the "other" and thus somehow remain eternally preterite.