Finland is a great country. Well not because hundreds of millions of people live there or because its sunny all the time, no because of its people. And these people are much more relaxed about certain things. For example they are much more relaxed about swastikas. The swastika was a symbol adopted by the Nazis as to symbol their movement. It existed before and if you go to Bali you see it – with a totally different meaning – on temples and even on clothing.
So there are a couple of swastikas around in Finland. For example on this school building in Helsinki:
Even better: The official Flag of the Finnish air Force academy:
The university of Lapland:
And in 2013 the Swedes noticed that Finland beloved christmas pastry was a swastika too!
Does the swastika have an alternative meaning in Finland? It does in Hinduism and Buddhism (hence it being prevalent in India and Bali), but it does seem out of place to me in Finland…
It must have had a diffrent pre WW2 or national socialims meaning.
But here they are more relaxed abouth the german meaning…
They are more relaxed, I saw this in the city bus: https://www.instagram.com/p/9gq50eiJI3/
Egan Richardson tweets this:
https://twitter.com/eganrichardson/status/902118423685156864
Now I understand: the Flag of the Finish President is eerily simlar to a swastika!
And here an intresting Link explaining, why it might came to that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tursaansyd%C3%A4n
You should check out Latvia. The swastika has very long roots there, and they still managed to outlaw nazi and soviet symbols. Note though that they didn’t outlaw swastikas, sickles and hammers. I’m guessing context matters, as it should.
Interesting article about it:
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/does_finland_need_its_swastikas/9865204