20% of South Karelian police are learning Russian

From Voice of Russia here (found it on the Portuguese version of the site), referencing a report from the Finnish YLE:

According to the television agency YLE, Finnish police on the Russian border are beginning to learn the language of their neighbors. There are 40 policemen in the courses, which represents 20% of the personnel of the Police Department of South Karelia. The interest in the Russian language has obviously been caused by the influx of tourists, and may prove helpful in extending into local rescue services.

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Gunnar Wetterberg believes the Nordic countries should form a union by 2030

From an article here in Norwegian, that already has 433 replies in the comments section below. If the subject piques your interest but you don't know Norwegian then going through the comments section with Google Translate should be well worth your time.

We will be one of the strongest economies in the world, says the Swedish historian.

Today is Nordens Dag, which commemorates the basic agreement of cooperation between the Scandinavian countries that was signed in Helsinki in 1962.

All representatives from the Nordic countries were invited to Trondheim to mark the day. The Swedish historian Gunnar Wetterberg held a lecture today where he presented an exciting proposal: to merge the five Nordic countries into a single federal state. "When these countries are so near to each other in language and culture, it is no wonder that we were together not so long ago...We will have a very strong base for economic growth in the area, much stronger than we have when our countries are working separately."

There have been many Nordic unions over the centuries, but they have never quite worked. Wetterberg believes there are other causes behind that: "Perhaps there were others outside the region that didn't want it to go so well. For example the Dutch and English would not want both sides of Øresund (the strait between Denmark and Sweden) to belong to the same country...We also ended up in the middle of the USA and Soviet Union during the Cold War."

On the possibility of internal strife in such a union he says that "It has always been the case in Europe that one group fights with another. But now, after 600 years, the great powers are finally leaving us alone." On the possibility that Sweden would dominate such a union: "The Swedes are not so high on the pole any longer either, because you (Norwegians) are richer than us, Finns are better with technology, and the Danes did a better job getting through the financial crisis than we did. None of the lands would end up being Big Brother, and we will go together on equal terms."

Gunnar Wetterberg is optimistic about the timeframe, and believes it could be done around 2030. "The interesting thing is that the population has been in the forefront of this. 1 of 10 employees in Oslo are Swedish, and three percent of the population in Malmö (just across the bay from Denmark) commute across the bridge to Denmark to go to work. It's happening today, and now it is just up to politicians to put a frame on it."

Just to provide some economic background, the "core" Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark together would have a GDP in between Australia and Mexico - right now the highest, Sweden, is 21th in terms of GDP but together they would be in 14th place. With Finland and Iceland added it would be around $1.4 trillion, in between Spain and India. Population of the core three together would be around 20 million, then add another 5 million to that with Finland and Iceland.

The inclusion of Finland would make such a union a political and not a linguistic one, since Finland only has Sweden as a nominal official language (with many Swedish speakers, but still a minority) while Finnish is from a completely different language family. Also, since Denmark is technically sovereign over the Faroese Islands (where the language is very similar to Icelandic) a union of even the first three countries would have a group of insular Scandinavian speakers anyway. And let's not forget Elfdalian (yes, that's a real language).

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The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE)'s Nuntii Latini (news in Latin) reaches an audience of 75,000

YLE's Nuntii Latini is perhaps the most prominent example of news in spoken Latin today, and according to this article in Spanish it reaches an audience of 75,000.

The rest of the article is about why Finland likes the language so much, what the country did for Latin in 2006 when it had the European presidency, the relationship between Latin and Spanish, etc. Worth reading if you can read Spanish but the most interesting part for me was the number in the beginning.

Don't forget that YLE also has a bulletin board here for written communication between users in Latin as well, with a total of 8203 posts. Right now a discussion on Berlusconi is particularly popular.

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Norway's Think back on the road, but production to move to Finland

From about a week ago - after eight months of production being suspended, Think is now able to start production of its Think City vehicle again, a vehicle that I'm a particular fan of (along with the upcoming Nissan Leaf). They will also be able to move production into the United States. Production is moving from Aurskog Norway to Uusikaupunki in Finland though, which is located right here.


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A blog entry on whether Think can still be considered a Norwegian company can be seen here. I agree with the commenter below there - who cares, as long as we get these cars on the road where they belong.

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Another article on Finland's Nuntii Latini Latin-language news service

Main building of Cardiff University.

Here's the article, from yesterday. It's from a Welsh newspaper and deals with that language a bit as well:

Mr Osborne first heard about Nuntii Latini while doing research on S4C as part of his diploma studies with Cardiff University’s Journalism School.

“I asked the MP Chris Bryant if he thought Welsh-language broadcasting had a future,” said Mr Osborne.

“And he said, ‘If Finland can still have a radio programme in Latin, Welsh has a chance’.

“I hadn’t heard of it then. But it was intriguing.”

Later in his course, Mr Osborne had the chance to apply for the Welsh Livery Guild award – a £1,000 travel bursary – and pitched the idea of visiting YLE to find out more about Nuntii Latini.

The future of the program though is not certain and there will need to be successors to carry it on some day:

But programme founders and editors Reijo Pitkäranta and Tuomo Pekkanen are approaching retirement and, despite the recent addition of podcasting and MP3 downloads, its future is uncertain.

Mr Osborne said: “It started in 1989, when the Berlin Wall was still standing. Next September it will have been broadcasting 20 years.

“Basically it’s just those two professors behind it and they haven’t really got anyone to pass it on to.”

Will Nuntii Latini have a future?

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Report from CTV on how Finland has the best educational system in the world for only a few hours a day

Suomen koulujärjestelmä - Finnish school system

This report came out on the 7th of September - the link to the video is here (Windows Media file). It basically shows how the educational system in Finland is based on teaching fewer hours a day than other countries but making those hours count. The reason behind the smaller number of hours spent in school per day is that children have a certain amount of time that they are able to concentrate in a day, and anything after that it wasted time. You'll notice the other extreme here in Korea where kids spend so much time studying at night that they end up sleeping through class the next day, so their schedule basically goes like this: wake up sleepy, get to school, half-ass classes and sleep through a lot of them, finish school, finally really wake up, go to the hagwon (학원, cram school), study hard there, come home late at night exhausted for a few hours' sleep. There's a saying here called samdangsarak (삼당사락, 三當四落삼당사락) that I can't remember that basically says "sleep four hours fail the test, sleep three hours and you pass it" - in short, don't ever sleep, just study. That's one funny thing about proverbs by the way: the assumption that just because a proverb exists for something that it must somehow be true. In this case the proverb is 100% wrong.

A few months ago there was a documentary here on a high school student that had the best marks in the whole province, and he never went to cram school after regular school, and always slept ten hours a day. While he stayed awake and concentrated on everything the teacher said the other poor students were drowsy and couldn't concentrate. It's amazing that most parents here can't grasp the basic concept of sleepy = hard to concentrate.

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Finnish president Tarja Halonen alarmed by the crisis in Georgia / Skremt av krisen i Georgia

The church of Enontekiö (Enontekiön kirkko / Kirche von Enontekiö)

A bit of news in Norwegian from Namdalsavisa.no.

Skremt av krisen i Georgia

Alarmed by the crisis in Georgia

Finlands president Tarja Halonen synes en krig i Europa der Russland er involvert, er et «skremmende fenomen».

Finnish president Tarja Halonen believes a war in Europe where Russia is involved would be an "alarming phenomenon".

Den finske presidenten sier at krigen om Sør-Ossetia klart viser at såkalte fryste konflikter lett kan blusse opp.

The Finnish president said that the war over South Ossetia clearly shows that so-called frozen conflicts can easily flare up.

– Årsakene til dem er historisk kompliserte, og det er svært viktig, om enn vanskelig, å løse dem, sa Halonen tirsdag.

The reasons for them are historically complex, and it is very important, albeit difficult, to resolve them, said Halonen Thursday.

Hun er likevel tilfreds med at Finland, i egenskap av å ha formannskapet i Organisasjonen for sikkerhet og samarbeid i Europa (OSSE), klarte å få i stand en våpenhvile mellom Georgia og Russland.

She is nevertheless satisfied that Finland, as the party with the chairmanship in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), managed to bring about a ceasefire between Georgia and Russia.

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Lithuania, Apocalyptica, Finland, Conan O'Brien

Just a bit of randomness. I came across a video yesterday on Lithuanian landscapes here:



Some might recognize that song as One by Metallica. It's played by a Finnish group called Apocalyptica, which is a group of professional cello players that first came to prominence with a CD of Metallica cover tunes played on the cello. Recently they've moved from simple cover tunes to their own songs, and here's one of them live:



Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't include this video of Conan O'Brien's trip to Finland:



The reason he made it was because of this:

After meeting Finnish actor/director Lauri Nurkse on October 11, 2005, O'Brien discovered that he was popular in Finland, and began a long running joke that he resembles the first female President of Finland, Tarja Halonen. After joking about this for several months (which led to the recurring segment "Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland" and his endorsement of her campaign), O'Brien traveled to Finland and appeared on several television shows, and met President Halonen. The trip was filmed and aired as a special.

The best part of the video starts from about 3:55 in, as O'Brien instructs the visitor to the country on how to say "welcome to Finland" in Finnish (hint: it's not even close to Finnish).

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