The hidden swastikas of Finland

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:
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Even better: The official Flag of the Finnish air Force academy:
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And in 2013 the Swedes noticed that Finland beloved christmas pastry was a swastika too!

Best of: Finnish Police

Since a couple of weeks I have subscribed to the finish police forces various social media accounts. Police forces as well as individual policepersons seems to be quite active, especially on instragram, but also on Facebook and twitter.

Their messages all seem to be taken with some irony and humor. Here are the best (so far).

Obviously the strategy is to present police as people who enjoy sports and are physically fit (maybe these deters criminals) and as people who have fun at their work:

Also the humor and making fun about Halloween and stuff seems to be important:

The police school even participates with one this popular finish fish memes? Witch they explain in the commentary section: nice blog @sbamueller! #kuhajutut-meemi is based on Finnish language so it’s pretty hard to explain 🙂 „Kuha“ is both a fish and a spoken-language version of „kunhan“ (as long as). „Voi“ is both #butter“ and the verb „can“. Here we tackled all the memes in one picture: sporting with other officers (#taukojumppa), wearing the reflective vest (#taikaviitta) and the fish/butter -thing. The text translates „One can exercise as long as one is visible“… Weird Finnish humour… 🙂

„Best of: Finnish Police“ weiterlesen

nice graphics on the Finnish parliamentry elections

Because there was only a shitty graphic on the German Wikipedia Article on the Finnish parliament elections I decided to do my own. Please feel free to use them when you need it. You may find more information about the Finnish Party System here. The original data is from Statistics Finnland, whose people are helpful but don’t seem to know their own website very well.

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„nice graphics on the Finnish parliamentry elections“ weiterlesen

The Party System of Finnland

So we had to give this presentation of the finnish political party system. Something I found quite intresting.

For several causes:

  1. a presentation in Germany and France see to be to very diffrent things (and how both countries apporach to structure and prepare one as well).
  2. you can either choose a historical approach or a theemed approach (or as we did try to marry both of them)

Slide13

But for the oversight slide: The Finnish Party System is competetive. There are currently 8 parties in parliament (excluding the Alands Coalition) in has been roughly this number for long time. There is no dominant party (example for a dominant party see Bavaria and the CSU). There are fairly elastic coaltion, even some coaltions that include Communists and Conservative Parties at the same time. The vote share of big parties is around 20 – 25%. If we use the Paul Lucardie Types most finish parties are either keepers of ideology or pragmatic power managers. There is some volaltility and high cooperation between parties.

The Parties that there are in the system are:

Slide03

If you look at Stein Rokkans Theory of cleavage. Cleavages as big conflicts or fault lines of society. On this slide I clearl tried to give a representation of where which party is. (the green round flower modell in the country / periphery circle is the center party, te other the basic finns).

My professor and I are not about the same opinion where the Gree League belongs. Some of the German Literature (on the German Greens though) claims the Green Party is past cleavage modell other literature says there is new materiallist – post materialist value set and the Greens are on the post materialist value set part.

The Swedish Peopls party is liberal Party for swedish speking people and sorts of not reall representing any cleavage. Its formed aroudn „ethinic“ or linguistic lines.

Slide08

More intresting, and unfortunatly we didn’t have time to show this slide. But its about the left right develoment of parties. It ist based on coding of the party programms. I think its quite an intresting project and with it you can research the development of many party systems, including the German.

What you can see for Finland is: the Party System was really most to the left in 1975 (the social democratic party beeing more left then the greens or the left league today! Even the NCP and Centre Party were much more left! With the Christian Democrats beeing an really right wing party.

Fast Forward that to 2003 and we notice a couple of things: All parties have drifted more to the right, except for the Christian Democrats. Most dramatic for National Coalition, which is now economically a really right wing party. And there seems to be hunge policy merging of the Ture Finns, Christian Democrats, Swedish Peopls Party and Centre Party. They all seem to be very close on the left ring specturm. One could ask if this is a neoliberal centre-right consensus.

Annotation: All calculations and the CMP-Code are based on Budge, Ian et al. 2001: Mapping Policy Preferences. Estimates for Parties, Elctors, and Governments 1945-1998. Oxford: OUP and

The graphic is from the German Wikipedia Article about Finish Politics, even statistic Finland didn’t have something like that.

Correspondingly is this graphic of the finish elections results through time. I looked for this for days and then it was on the german wikipedia.

„The Party System of Finnland“ weiterlesen

A story for Finnish Swedish Heritage Day: Östermark

Today people in Finland celebrate Finnish Swedish Heritage Day. Time for me to publish the following fictonal story. No offence is intended.

Östermark

A normal student party at Uusi-S across the street from Turku University. Samuli and Pekka had been drinking a fair amount of booze. As it was normal in a Finnish student party. But what should you else do. Drinking and having a good time.

“Hey are you going to the independence day event tomorrow?”
“Ah why not, if I’m awake.”
“You are such a lazy patriot.”
Laughter.
Pekka turned around and fell.
It must have been some time when he woke up.

A well hung guy in a nurse uniform spoke to him in Swedish.
“How are you?”
“I’m not sure, my head hurts. Where am I”
“In the the Karl-Gustav Hospital.”
“What is the Karl-Gustav Hospital?”
“The central hospital here in Abo, capital of the eastern province of the Kingdom of Sweden, Earth.” The male nurse said with a friendly smile.
Only then Pekka realized, that the nursa had answerd in Swedish.

He tried to sit up.
“Hey, be careful, we are not sure how long you lay there.”
“Where did I lay?”
„On the opposite side of Abo Academy Student house. You were found there this morning by an ethnography student, doing work on Swedish Student culture.” Pekka was baffled for a moment. He was sure he couldn’t be in Sweden. Was his hung over so bad, he had taken the ferry to Stockholm?
„You are always mentioning Sweden and speaking Swedish to me, but the last thing I remember was being in Turku in Finland?”
The nurse laughed. “Good joke, you students always like to prank, but lets get some rest, a concussion is nothing to take like heartedly.”

Pekka decided to follow the advice and lay back. Maybe this was prank, by one of his friends, who studied nursing. Whatever he was glad his head had stopped hurting. And he tried to sleep a little bit.
Some time later, he woke up when a doctor came to his room and examined him. He asked him why he spoke Swedish with such a bad Karelien accent. Was he part of the Finnish speaking minority from Karelia?
No Pekka replied, he came from Turku and had lived all his live here, but his parents spoke Finnish with him at home.

“Yeah some people are really set in their ways, but boy you can go home. Get your stuff. The nurse will take care if you need any help.”
“But Doctor, its normal that people in Finland speak Finnish.”
The Doctor had been about to leave an turned around.
“Finland? But that is only a term used by his hard core separatist from the East. No one say Finland, we are here in the eastern province of the Union of Scandinavia.”
“No we are in Finland….”, for a moment silence ensured. “At least we were before I fell down the stairs at the student party house.”
“Boy I think its best you talk to our hospital psychiatrist before you leave.”

The doctor wondered, OK, there was no information about the guy in the hospital system and the student card he had carried with him looked a little bit strange, but thee had not been any sign for serious head injury seen on the CT scan.”

„A story for Finnish Swedish Heritage Day: Östermark“ weiterlesen