ATDDTA: Picking Finland

[bekah]

I gave up the offended business.  No fun.  Finland is cool -

Saarinen was a famous Finnish architect - designed the arch in St. 
Louis,   and  Linus Torvalds invented Linux - the little computer 
kernel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel> for open-software. 
That little penguin is their mascot/logo.

I suppose there were as many hold-outs to Christianity in Finland as 
there were in Norway or Russia or anywhere else,   and every culture 
had their own little pre-Christian mythologies.   But by the early 
20th century I doubt if the Kalevala was much more than old mythology 
for the Finns - similar to the reality of the old gods in Norway or 
the Celts or Romans or anywhere.

The Finns who came to the US were primarily from the agricultural 
areas of Ostrobothnia, on the central west coast of Finland: 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrobothnia_%28region%29>  but there 
were also substantial numbers from the inland area of  Savonia and 
the Torne Valley which is at the far north on the Gulf of Bothnia. 
They came because of a growing land shortage (population increase) 
and severe crop failures and  later due to the Tsar's stupid draft. 
My own family came from Pori (just south of Ostrobothnia) due to the 
draft and also from the Aland Islands (in the middle of the Baltic 
Sea west of Turku) seeking a fortune in the West.

The very northern part of Finland is Laplander country -  the Sami 
people live up there, in a large area stretching  from Norway through 
Sweden and  Finland over to  Russia,  up by the Arctic Circle.  These 
have traditionally been semi-nomadic people,  fishing and following 
the reindeer herds.   The governments of Norway, Sweden and Finland 
have all  taken measures to protect the Sami culture.  The Sami have 
their own separate  parliament in Finland, almost autonomous.   These 
are like "aboriginal peoples"  like "First Tribes"  or "Eskimos," 
but different in their own ways.   There's a photo of a Sami family 
around 1900 at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people>

Bekah
rambling


At 3:24 AM +0000 6/10/07, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>            bekah
>            Do you consider Sibelius, Saarinen or Linus Torvalds, 
>            to be "other"  and "preterite?"
>
>The only one of the three I know is Sibelius. I guess It's either the Fourth
>Symphony or Tapiola that are my favorite of his works. Many of the
>fantasies I have concerning Finland comes from playing those pieces
>over and over, with their haunting evocations of haunted landscapes. Of
>course Sibelius is welcome in the great concert halls of the world, he is
>among the elect in that regard. But the idea at the center of Tapiola, that
>of an older, colder and meaner cousin of Gaia, there's a bit of heresy,
>that kind of talk'll get you kicked out of the ministry muy pronto, ain't no
>way to square that with the "Unitary Godhead" approach everybody else
>believes rules the universe. "Tapiola" represents old magic.
>
>            Why does what you said sound racist?
>
>Perhaps, on some level, it was. Perhaps, in my exaggerations (14th
>century or so? I stand corrected. So the whole country was wired up
>into those belief systems, all at once, as if someone pulled a switch
>and ---voila!!!) the degree of difference was brought into relief. I'm not
>denying that Christianity became the local dominant religious paradigm.
>I am noting that much of Finland's culture and many traditions were
>retained, probably on account of limited outside interference. Of course,
>in the era of the novel, any degree of exaggeration of cultural difference
>would be employed.
>
>I hope I didn't offend you, that was not my intent or desire. I 
>simply note some
>threads I've been following all along within Pynchon's writing, and 
>I'm applying
>those thoughts to your question. Race, cultural inheritance and demarcation of
>hierarchical order are central topics here. These notions of inheritance and
>dis-inheritance, boundary lines and other sides of tracks, they matter as much
>in AtD as anywhere else in Pynchon's writing.
>
>And I find your post on the Tibetan connection very interesting.
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