Suomi-neito

A snippet, a piece of fluff, a symbol you might come across; might find a place in the Guide to Finland, might not. Enjoy!

The already ready chapters are, of course, available for your perusal: say the inhuman history of ice, or the Finnish social peculiarities of no-talk.

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Maid Finland

Finland’s equivalent to Uncle Sam is Suomi-neito, or Maid Finland (“Suomi” is Finland in Finnish), a young woman dressed in white and blue, usually blonde-haired and invariably thin and pretty in a pretty homely way.

(I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: In the great high school of nations, Finland is a Carrie White, a girl with serious issues of self-confidence and surprising, amazing potential. Linux and Nokia, baby!)

It is often said that the map of Finland looks a bit like a maiden waving one hand; you will need quite a lot of alcohol to see this clearly. (See Wikipedia and try.) Be warned, though, that once you’ve psyched yourself to See the Maiden, such questions as “Where’s the nether end of Finland? Y’know, the naughty bits?” inevitably follow.

(Well, the mythologico-geographical arsehole of Finland is the city of Kajaani, a nice and tight little place right next to a big wet spot (lake Oulujärvi). I will not continue this anatomical speculation any further. Kajaani is a nice place and the fact the writer was in the army for a year there has nothing whatsoever to do with this.)

If one imagines this position of Maid Finland on the map, feet in southern Helsinki, skirts spread wide and head pointing north, one hand reaching to northwest, then I guess the old union of Sweden and Finland — okay, the old position of Finland as an exotic eastern province of Sweden — and the identification of Sweden as an older woman, Svea-mamma, means the two spent many centuries with their geographical heads put together, presumably whispering insanitary rumours about their neighbors. (“Did you hear the newest one about Poland? It’s said she has troubles with the ‘crown’, you know — nudge nudge, wink wink?”)

Then, in 1809, when Finland became, with the violent push of a conqueror, an autonomous part of the immense, sprawling, many-parts hulking orgy of different nations that was Russia — well, the geographic picture that implies might be a bit too risque to be drawn here.

After that glow faded, Maid Finland herself took the center stage during the romantic and nationalistic art-scribbling days of the late nineteenth century, before independence. In one particularly famous painting from that time — “Hyökkäys” (“Attack”) (1899) by Eetu Isto; see it here — she is depicted as a frightened girl being attacked by a vicious two-headed eagle, which tries to tear a precious book titled Lex (in Latin, “Law”) from her hands.

That painting doesn’t need much explanation if you just remember that the said two-headed eagle was the national of emblem of old-time Russia.

Ever since the resulting divorce of 1917 — no nation nor eagle wants to see its dirty laundry dumped out in such a fashion — Finland has been standing free, hem brushing the Baltic, head peeking over the Arctic Circle.

(This might mean the Åland Islands are a pile of Finland-droppings, being on “ground level” right next to the said hem. Or then a purse. Yeah, a purse sounds much better.)

Geopolitically, this position of poor innocent Maid Finland is a bit troublesome, since most of Europe, indeed, seems to be positioned to peek under Finland’s skirt.

Well, no worries because Finland wears snow pants underneath. It’s the winter, you see.