Finnish Quotes

Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other…

(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.)

It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.

It’s only the sea,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn’t go inside because it’s a labyrinth and you may never come out again.

You wanna be the next Tolkien? Don't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. TOLKIEN didn't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. He read books on finnish philology. You go and read outside your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. And then the most important thing, once you get any level of quality--get to the point where you wanna write, and you can write--is tell YOUR story. Don't tell a story anyone else can tell. Because you always start out with other people's voices... There will always be people who are better or smarter than you. There are people who are better writers than me, who plot better than I do, but there is no one who can tell a Neil Gaiman story like I can.

Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..." Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish?

If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.

Among Violet's many useful skills was a vast knowledge of different types of knots. The particular knot she was using was called the Devil's Tongue. A group of female Finnish pirates invented it back in the fifteenth century, and named it the Devil's Tongue because it twisted this way and that, in the most complicated and eerie way.

and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove

We came together as a team, but we´re leaving as brothers.

Years ago, when I was working on my master's thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there's almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God.

(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He’s staring at your shoes instead of his own.)

ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Sixteen cases of the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by with only singular and plural. The American Indian languages even failed to distinguish number. Except Sioux, in which there was a plural only for animate objects. The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid If there's no word for it, how do you think about it? And, if there isn't the proper form, you don't have the how even if you have the words. Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a sex to every object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hungarian, not being able to assign a sex to anything: he, she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the First's English. But with some oriental languages, which all but dispense with gender and number, you are my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest, and YOU are my king, and YOU are my servant, and YOU are my servant whom I'm going to fire tomorrow if YOU don't watch it, and YOU are my king whose policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and YOU may be my friend, but I'm still gonna smack YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again; And who the hell are you anyway . . .?

The Swedes have coined the term 'management by perkele' to portray the Finnish managerial approach. Instead of collectively pondering all the possible alternatives and letting every member of the staff from the cleaner to the MD voice their views, as the Swedes do, the Finns act swiftly and don't waste time on the decision-making process. If something isn't happening quickly enough, it is necessary for the top managers to slam their fists on the table and yell, 'Perkele!' Repeatedly, if necessary.

If we all think the same way, none of us probably thinks very much.

Älkää luulko että pelastatte ihmisiä ottamalla heitä kädestä kiinni. Mutta ottakaa heitä kädestä kiinni.

Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas (technical warrant officer trainee specialised in aircraft jet engines)

In the course of all that wandering around losing fights, we developed our own language, Gallacian. I am told it is worse than Finnish, which is impressive.

I finish what I start, and I Finnish what I Swedish.

Finnish is not a language, it is a way of setting at the end of the bench with your fur cap pulled over your ears.

What’s there in Finland?” his boss asked. “Sibelius, Aki Kaurismäki films, Marimekko, Nokia, Moomin.” Tsukuru listed all the names of famous Finnish things that he could think of. His boss shook his head, obviously indifferent to all of them.

India's linguistic diversity surprises many Westerners, but there are nearly thirty languages in India with at least a million native speakers. There are more native speakers of Tamil on our planet than of Italian. Likewise, more people speak Punjabi than German, Marathi than French, and Bengali than Russian. There are more Telugu speakers than Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Slovak, and Swedish speakers combined.

sinä hulluna huusit rakasta minua ja minähän aivan hulluna rakastin

We are much more likely to be drawn to a messy bookstore than a neat one because the mess signifies vitality. We are not drawn to a bookstore because of tasteful, Finnish shelves in gunmetal gray mesh, each one displaying three carefully chosen, color-coordinated covers. Clutter -- orderly clutter, if possible -- is what we expect. Like a city. It's not quite a city unless there's more than enough.

Pearls' burst out the Snork Maiden excitedly. 'Could ankle rings be made out of pearls?' 'I should think they could,' said Moomintoll. 'Ankle-rings, and nose-rings and ear-rings and engagement rings...

Here are some of the essential take-homes: we all need nearby nature: we benefit cognitively and psychologically from having trees, bodies of water, and green spaces just to look at; we should be smarter about landscaping our schools, hospitals, workplaces and neighborhoods so everyone gains. We need quick incursions to natural areas that engage our senses. Everyone needs access to clean, quiet and safe natural refuges in a city. Short exposures to nature can make us less aggressive, more creative, more civic minded and healthier overall. For warding off depression, lets go with the Finnish recommendation of five hours a month in nature, minimum. But as the poets, neuroscientists and river runners have shown us, we also at times need longer, deeper immersions into wild spaces to recover from severe distress, to imagine our futures and to be our best civilized selves.

Kun aika käy pitkäksi se on jo lyhentynyt.

The forest will answer you in the way you call to it.

The third aspect of change is a systematic development of respectful and inspiring working conditions for teachers and principals in Finnish schools.

love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes!

Stalin was especially furious with the "Leningrad Clique" of Zhdanov, who had assured him that the Finnish war would amount to little more than a police action, a nuisance that could be concluded in two weeks.

As I write this, it is nine o’clock in the morning. In the two hours since I got out of bed I have showered in water heated by North Sea gas, shaved using an American razor running on electricity made from British coal, eaten a slice of bread made from French wheat, spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, then brewed a cup of tea using leaves grown in Sri Lanka, dressed myself in clothes of Indian cotton and Australian wool, with shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper made from Finnish wood pulp and Chinese ink.

You're an unemployed bum. Should you live in that Finnish city by the lake with the S-market and K-market? Or how about that other Finnish city by the lake with the S-market and K-market? Finnish cities are all so very different!

Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emÿna daÿda" [modern: Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kieltä, [mutta] en minä taida] ("I willingly want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able") (found in a German travel journal c.1450)

Beer for breakfast, ale for lunch, stout with dinner and a few mugs in between. The average Northern European, including women and children drank three liters of beer a day. That's almost two six-packs, but often the beer had a much higher alcoholic content. People in positions of power, like the police, drank much more. Finnish soldiers were given a ration of five liters of strong ale a day (about as much as seven six-packs). Monks in Sussex made do with 12 cans worth.

To be sure, the Finnish soldier was aware of the numerical odds against him, but he rendered those odds less terrible by cracking jokes about them: “They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?

Mie rakastan niinko lintu mie taihvaale lennän ja laulan

töissä esimies kysyy miksi en kaada kahviin maitoa puhuu ymmärtävästi alaistensa poissaoloista perhesyistä ei ymmärrä että perhesyy se on sekin että perhettä ei ole

PPROBLEM: You "forget" to take off your shoes in the house. SOLUTION: There's no solution to this. She'll divorce you if you don't take off your shoes.

Kevät niin onnen omiaan tekemään meistä rakkaita kun puut joita halata & Makaan ruoholla kaskaat sirittävät rakentavat pesää korviini

minä teinitunnelmainen boheemiromantikko rappion kanssa flirttailija tietysti haluan myös raunioitua oikein

Tahdon seisoa tulevaisuuden rajalla ja huutaa: Ei pelota!

On vain epätäydellisyyttä, jossa on ripaus iloa.

Between 1960 and 1990, for example, official crime rates in Finland, Germany, and the United States were close to identical. Yet the U.S. incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate fell by 60 percent, and the German rate was stable in that period

You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders - you don't see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet.

It will be dark in a few hours," she said at last, anxiously. "Suppose you don't finnish it in time?" "I have finnished!" he snapped, irritated. "I've finnished a dozen times already, but I'm not happy with it." He lowered his voice to a wisper brfore he went on. "There are so many questions. Suppose the Shadow turns on you or me or the prisners once he's killed Capricorn? And is killing Capricorn really the only solution? What's going to happen to his men afterward? What do I do with them?" "What do you think? The Shadow must kill them all!" Meggie whispered back. "How else are we ever going to get back home or rescue my mother?" "Good heavens, what a heartless creature you are!" he wispered . "Kill them all! Haven't you seen how young some of them are?" He shook his head. "No! I'm not a mass murderer, I'm a writer! I'm sure I can think of some less bloodthirsty ending." And he began writing again . . . and crossing out words . . . and writing more, while outside the sun sank lower and lower until its rays were gliding the hilltops.

Vihaan päiviä ja pelkään öitä.

Kyllä aika tulehduttaa haavat.

It has become clear everywhere that the schools we have today will not be able to provide opportunities for students to learn what is necessary in the future.

I'm writing to hold on to you.

En tiedä pelkäävätkö he tuolia vai minua, vai olemmeko me heidän silmissään yksi ja sama, jonkinlainen kyborgi, pyörä-Maria.

Ikivihreitten humisevien mäntyjen varjossa katson epäuskoisena kukkien lyhyttä kukoistusta.

Oi elämäni, toivoton sammumaton. Miten kadehdin tuulen tuivertamia soihtuja yössä.

You're already dead inside. Years of living in Espoo have made you an empty husk of a human being. They don't call their hockey team the "Espoo Blues" for nothing.

Ja joskus vielä ostaisin Miholle oman ilmalaivan ja tusinan täysiverisiä hevosia ja lakritsitehtaan ja kaikkien Aurosian hylättyjen rautatieasemien valtavat kellot.

Minulla ei ollut ketään. Tiesin että saisin jos haluaisin, eikä se ollut kehuskelua vaan fakta. Saisin jonkun hyvän kiltin hellän joka hitaasti syövyttäisi minut hengiltä.

istuimme niitä pitkiä iltoja silti aina liian lyhyitä ahmimme toisiamme kuin pelossa että kaikki loppuu äkkiä

me rakas opimme edellisten sukupolvien virheistä osasimme tehdä ne samat

aikaa sitten lapsen yksinäisyydessä satumaailmoissa ajattelin että jossain joskus täytyy olla joku että sinä jonkin aikaa olit se ei ole ihan vähän sanottu

Maanalainen kolahtaa kuin keksilaatikko, murut töyssähtävät, tee höyryää enkä minä Lontoossa mykkänä harpo

For her a day of pampering meant comic books, black liquorice, serious exercise, veggie curry and, above all, solitude.

Tämä olen oppinut suomalaisista: heille kaunein kukka on peruna.

Onko arkkitehtia, joka kieltäytyisi kokonaisen kaupungin rakentamisesta, vaikka se nousisikin näin pimeään, kylmään ja syrjäiseen paikkaan?

Nykyisistä asukkaista jollakin tapaa lahjakkaita on kenties seitsemän. Hyvä itsetunto on kuudella, mutta valitettavasti niiden joukkoon ei kuulu kukaan seitsemästä lahjakkaasta.

One Soviet general, looking at a map of the territory Russia had acquired on the Karelian Isthmus, is said to have remarked: "We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead

Metsä huokaa, me hengitämme sen huokaukset. Ajattelen, että malarialla on kovin kaunis koti.

Meren vihaiset vihertävät värit olivat muuttuneet rauhallisen sinisiksi, ja aallot kantoivat vaahtokruunujaan pikemmin koristeina kuin uhkauksina.

kun jonkun menettää ei hänessä menetä pelkästään häntä kokonainen pienoiskulttuuri siinä katoaa tavat sanat tottumukset paikat eleet ilmeet yksi salainen maailma rakas ja käsitettävä keskellä tätä käsittämätöntä tuhoutuu se on kaksijäsenisen alkuperäiskansan tuho sukupuutto ei se voi syntyä uudestaan kenenkään kanssa kerran tuhottu pysyy tuhottuna aina

Smartphone makers sought deeper ties with retail buyers by adding ring tones, games, Web browsers, and other applications to their phones. Carriers, however, wanted this business to themselves. If they couldn’t sell applications within their “walled gardens,” carriers worried they would be reduced to mere utilities or “dumb pipes” carrying data and voice traffic. Nokia learned the hard way just how ferociously carriers could defend their turf. In the late 1990s the Finnish phone maker launched Club Nokia, a Web-based portal that allowed customers to buy and download

Finland is world-famous for its architects and decorators, who know how to produce beautiful effects in simple ways. On my first visit to Finland, I remember being invited into the living room of one of my host’s homes, and immediately thinking to myself, “This is the most beautiful room that I’ve ever seen!” On reflection, I then wondered why I found it so beautiful, because the room was a nearly-empty cubicle with just a few pieces of simple furniture. But the materials and form of the room, and those few pieces of furniture, were typically Finnish in their simplicity and beauty

Jokainen on nähnyt, miten vesi juoksee vesikellosta. Samalla tavoin kuluu ihmisen aika, mutta ihmisen aikaa ei voi mitata vesikellon mukaan, vaan ainoastaan kaiken sen mukaan mitä ihmiselle tapahtuu. Tämä on suuri ja ylevä totuus ja täysin ihminen ymmärtää sen vasta vanhuutensa päivinä, jolloin hänen aikansa juoksee hukkaan eikä hänelle enää tapahdu mitään, vaikka hän luulee paljonkin tapahtuvan ja vasta jälkeenpäin huomaa, ettei mitään ole tapahtunut. Sillä kun ihmiselle tapahtuu paljon ja hänen sydämensä muuttuu ja vaihtaa muotoaan, silloin voi yksi ainoa päivä olla hänelle pitempi kuin vuosi ja kaksi vuotta, jotka hän tekee työtä ja elää yksinkertaista elämää itse muuttumatta.

Sometimes, the lascars would gather between the bows to listen to the stories of the greybeards. There was the steward, Cornelius Pinto: a grey-haired Catholic, from Goa, he claimed to have been around the world twice, sailing in every kind of ship, with every kind of sailor - including Finns, who were known to be the warlocks and wizards of the sea, capable of conjuring up winds with a whistle.

There was the biography of a Norwegian resistance fighter who swam through chilly oceans and got gangrene and wandered through I think it might have been Finland or Lapland in a sweet short summer and everyone took him in and the dark Finnish women made him tea with honey in it on late afternoons and it was beautiful but also horribly sad because the book was only half over and you knew that bad things were going to happen.

tällä hetkellä rakastan sinua vain joskus ehkä juuri silloin, kun kierähdät omalle puolellesi sänkyä tai kolahdat lattiaan herättämättä liikaa melua laidan yli rakastan sinusta ylemmät osat ja kirveellä irrotan toiset.

Myöhäisteollisessa sivilisaatiossa ihmisen ahdinko on muodostunut niin pahaksi että maailmanlopun visiot alkavat näyttää kiinnostavilta vaihtoehdoilta: globaalin katastrofin katseleminen sykähdyttää sivilisoituneen elämän surkastuttamaa ihmissydäntä

people coming out of church conversing about the sermon sniffing at the autumn air something in the papers about forces of popular opinion and values which are unto our nation what is holding you back, Catullus? why don't you go and die? the stalks of the potato-plants are rotting fast this year only October now this evening away A boy comes out of the wood, crossbow on his shoulder

Rubiini muuttui kuin meri. Väliin se oli vain vaalea, sitten siihen valahti ruusunväriä aivan kuin lumihuipulle auringon noustessa - ja äkkiä sen sisimmästä kohosi tummanpunaisia liekkejä. Se saattoi muuttua aivan kuin mustaksi tulppaaniksi, jonka heteinä hehkuivat pienet säkenet.

Craftsman Ilmarinen wept Every evening for his woman, Weeping sleepless through the nights And fasting through the days; In the early hours complaining, Every morning sighing for her, Lamenting for his lovely lost one, For his dear one in the grave. For a month he swung no hammer, Did not touch the copper handle, and the clinking forge was silent. Said the craftsman Ilmarinen: "I poor fellow, do not know How to live or how survive; Sitting up or lying down Nights are long and time is tedious. I am troubled, low in spirit. 'Lonely are the nights now,lonely And the mornings dreary, dreary. In my sleeping I am troubled, But the waking is the saddest. It's not for evening that I'm lonely, Not for morning that I'm dreary, Not for olden times lamenting, But I'm lonely for my loved one, Dreary for the missing of her, Lamenting for my dark-browed lovely. 'Often in these days it happens, Happens in my midnight dreaming that I stretch my hand out touching, touching something that is nothing...

This trial is a farce. The real prosecutor is not the state of Finland, but the government of one great power. The real defendants are not the persons who were picked on political grounds and now stand accused here. The real defendant is the Finnish people. The purpose of this trial is not to mete out maximum sentences on those accused, but for a Finnish court to declare that Finland was the aggressor in the war and that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving, wronged victim of an unjustified aggression. [Final statement during Soviet dictated "War-responsibility" mock trial, 1945]

Silloin susi, jonka kanssa Aalo oli juossut, yhtäkkiä muutti muotoansa. Metsän halki kulki elävä ja väkevä henkäys, niinkuin jättikeuhkot olisivat henkäisseet, ja koko korpi vavahti näkymättäin askelten astunnasta, ja suuret siivet, joitten leveyttä ei kenkään kuolevainen vielä ole mitannut, kätkivät korven salatumpaan pimentoon kuin on aarnikuusien katve. Sillä tämä susi oli Diabolus sylvarum elikkä Metsän Henki, vaikka hän nyt vasta oikian hahmonsa edestoi.

Sinikka ei usko, että sellaista edes voi olla olemassa kuin L-vika, vaikka Osku sanoo, että hänen veljellään, sillä kuolleella, oli. Kuolleen veljen L-viasta puhuminen saa aikaan omituisen assosiaation, että veljen kuolema johtui L-viasta. Mikä ei tietenkään ole totta, mutta Osku ei halua ottaa mitään riskejä.

Marijuana users generally start smoking between 14 and 19; first-time psychotic breaks most often occur from 19 to 24 for men, 21 to 27 for women. In other words, almost no one develops a permanent psychotic illness the first time he uses marijuana—or even after a few months. The gap between when people start smoking and when they break averages six years, according to a 2016 paper in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry that examined previous research. The Finnish paper showing that almost half of cannabis psychosis diagnoses convert to schizophrenia within eight years is more evidence of the time lag. A problem that seems temporary becomes permanent.

Kyllähän kuolemassa tiettyä glamouria on, se täytyy myöntää. Eihän kenelläkään esimerkiksi ole niin paljon ystäviä kuin juuri kuolleella.

Seuraavaksi leikitään sitä leikkiä että huomenna on uusi päivä.

Asioitten arvostaminen on raskasta.

Joskus iltaisin kaipasin seuraa, mutta kaipasin mieluummin seuraa kuin yksinäisyyttä.

It is said, once a wise man from the far North told me; it is said that there are in certain parts of Scandinavia cities within cities like there are circles within circles; existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagination can create : man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and as silent as the night they prowl in.

Hyvästit oli sanottu moneen kertaan, mutta aina haudattu toisiin sanoihin, eikä niitä lopulta ollut sanottu kertaakaan. Niin me tulemme tänne yhä uudelleen jäähyväiset askeliamme painaen. Ne ovat ikuisesti myöhässä ja poissa paikoiltaan: mennyt hetki, jota emme tunnistaneet silloin, kun se oli ulottuvilla, ja jonka aavetta emme siksi koskaan lakkaa kantamasta mukanamme.

We have long known that women (in particular women under fifty-five) have worse outcomes than men following heart surgery. But it wasn’t until a Canadian study came out in 2016 that researchers were able to isolate women’s care burden as one of the factors behind this discrepancy. ‘We have noticed that women who have bypass surgery tend to go right back into their caregiver roles, while men were more likely to have someone to look after them,’ explained lead researcher Colleen Norris.25 This observation may go some way to explaining why a Finnish study26 found that single women recovered better from heart attacks than married women – particularly when put alongside a University of Michigan study27 which found that husbands create an extra seven hours of housework a week for women.

In just a few decades, Minnesota has gone from being approximately 99 percent German, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, and Polish to 20 percent African immigrant,7 including at least one hundred thousand Somalis.8 And that’s not counting the Somalis who have recently left the country to fight with al Qaeda and ISIS. One hundred thousand is just an estimate. We don’t know precisely how many Somalis the federal government has brought in as “refugees” because the government won’t tell us. The public can’t be trusted with the truth. Since becoming more multicultural, Minnesota has turned into a hotbed of credit card skimming, human trafficking, and smash-and-grab robberies.9 Mosques have popped up all over the state—as have child prostitutes and machete attacks. Welfare consumption in Minnesota has more than doubled on account of the newcomers—only half of whom have jobs. Those Somalis who do have jobs earn an average of $21,000 a year, compared with $46,000 for the average Minnesotan. (Consider yourself lucky, Minnesota: In Sweden, only 20 percent of Somalis have jobs.) Eighty percent of Somalis in Minnesota live at or below the poverty line. Nearly 70 percent have not graduated from high school, compared with only 8.4 percent of non-Somali Minnesotans.10

In 2012, a World Economic Forum analysis found that countries with gender-inflected languages, which have strong ideas of masculine and feminine present in almost every utterance, are the most unequal in terms of gender. 33 But here’s an interesting quirk: countries with genderless languages (such as Hungarian and Finnish) are not the most equal. Instead, that honour belongs to a third group, countries with ‘natural gender languages’ such as English. These languages allow gender to be marked (female teacher, male nurse) but largely don’t encode it into the words themselves. The study authors suggested that if you can’t mark gender in any way you can’t ‘correct’ the hidden bias in a language by emphasising ‘women’s presence in the world’. In short: because men go without saying, it matters when women literally can’t get said at all.

Akheronin sisuksissa on kyyneliä, hammasten kiristystä, utua, tulta, sietämätöntä poltetta, jäätävää kylmyyttä, koiria, karhuja, leijonia ja käärmeitä. Tässä legendassa helvetti on eläin, jonka sisällä on muita eläimiä.

Eläminen ei ole helppoa. On opeteltava silittämään paita ja valitsemaan solmio, sopiva viini, elämänkumppani ja tulevaisuus. On keksittävä ja muistettava salasana. On luovuttava pehmoleluista tai piilotettava ne. On ymmärrettävä salasana. On opeteltava siteeraamaan Derridaa, ompelemaan pudonnut nappi, paikkaamaan kadonnut tasku, niistämään hiljaisesti, itkemään suljettujen ovien takana, pysymään hengissä. Kyltit auttavat: Varo taskuvarkaita, Hiljennä vauhtia, Kävele nurmikolla, Infopiste. Heiltä voit kysyä elämän tarkoitusta. He googlaavat sen puolestasi.

–Suutelen jalkojanne, ihana rouva! Ja menen jonnekin muualle suremaan onnetonta tähteäni...ja teidän huonoa makuanne! Samalla uudistan tuttavuuteni erinoimaisen Beaune-viininne kanssa. Se näiden kirottujen burgundien kunniaksi on sentään sanottava, että he osaavat valmistaa viiniä!

Kuvitellaan hetki tilannetta, jossa lehdistö soittaisi aina luterilaisen, katolisen tai ortodoksikirkon tiedotukseen kun pitäisi tietää, "mitä mieltä suomalaiset ovat". Maahanmuuttajien tilanne on juuri tämä. Kehotan keskustelemaan aiheesta joskus sekulaarien muslimien kanssa. Siinä on joukko, jota todella vituttaa.

The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document's word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word "play" thirteen times, "language" twelve times, "nature" six times, and "math" five times. But there is not a single mention of "literacy" or "writing." Instead, two of the most frequently used words are "learning" (with forty-eight appearances) and "development" (forty-seven). The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn't start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because "their monolithic culture values reading.

She sat and watched the dockhand when it was sunny and she sat and watched him when it rained. Or when it was foggy, which is what it was nearly every morning at eight o’clock. This morning was none of the above. This morning was cold. The pier smelled of fresh water and of fish. The seagulls screeched overhead, a man’s voice shouted. Where is my brother to help me, my sister, my mother? Pasha, help me, hide in the woods where I know I can find you. Dasha, look what’s happened. Do you even see? Mama, Mama. I want my mother. Where is my family to ask things of me, to weigh on me, to intrude on me, to never let me be silent or alone, where are they to help me through this? Deda, what do I do? I don’t know what to do. This morning the dockhand did not go over to see his friend at the next pier for a smoke and a coffee. Instead, he walked across the road and sat next to her on the bench. This surprised her. But she said nothing, she just wrapped her white nurse’s coat tighter around herself, and fixed the kerchief covering her hair. In Swedish he said to her, “My name is Sven. What’s your name?” After a longish pause, she replied. “Tatiana. I don’t speak Swedish.” In English he said to her, “Do you want a cigarette?” “No,” she replied, also in English. She thought of telling him she spoke little English. She was sure he didn’t speak Russian. He asked her if he could get her a coffee, or something warm to throw over her shoulders. No and no. She did not look at him. Sven was silent a moment. “You want to get on my barge, don’t you?” he asked. “Come. I will take you.” He took her by her arm. Tatiana didn’t move. “I can see you have left something behind,” he said, pulling on her gently. “Go and retrieve it.” Tatiana did not move. “Take my cigarette, take my coffee, or get on my barge. I won’t even turn away. You don’t have to sneak past me. I would have let you on the first time you came. All you had to do was ask. You want to go to Helsinki? Fine. I know you’re not Finnish.” Sven paused. “But you are very pregnant. Two months ago it would have been easier for you. But you need to go back or go forward. How long do you plan to sit here and watch my back?” Tatiana stared into the Baltic Sea. “If I knew, would I be sitting here?” “Don’t sit here anymore. Come,” said the longshoreman. She shook her head. “Where is your husband? Where is the father of your baby?” “Dead in the Soviet Union,” Tatiana breathed out. “Ah, you’re from the Soviet Union.” He nodded. “You’ve escaped somehow? Well, you’re here, so stay. Stay in Sweden. Go to the consulate, get yourself refugee protection. We have hundreds of people getting through from Denmark. Go to the consulate.” Tatiana shook her head. “You’re going to have that baby soon,” Sven said. “Go back, or move forward.” Tatiana’s hands went around her belly. Her eyes glazed over. The dockhand patted her gently and stood up. “What will it be? You want to go back to the Soviet Union? Why?” Tatiana did not reply. How to tell him her soul had been left there? “If you go back, what happens to you?” “I die most likely,” she barely whispered. “If you go forward, what happens to you?” “I live most likely.” He clapped his hands. “What kind of a choice is that? You must go forward.” “Yes,” said Tatiana, “but how do I live like this? Look at me. You think, if I could, I wouldn’t?” “So you’re here in the Stockholm purgatory, watching me move my paper day in and day out, watching me smoke, watching me. What are you going to do? Sit with your baby on the bench? Is that what you want?” Tatiana was silent. The first time she laid eyes on him she was sitting on a bench, eating ice cream. “Go forward.” “I don’t have it in me.” He nodded. “You have it. It’s just covered up. For you it’s winter.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. Summer’s here. The ice will melt.” Tatiana struggled up from the bench. Walking away, she said in Russian, “It’s not the ice anymore, my seagoing philosopher. It’s the pyre.

Hän oli sonnustautunut kiireestä kantapäähän soopelinmustaan haarniskaan ja seistessään saliin johtavan oven kynnyksellä hän näytti tuomion enkeliltä. Kaikki hänessä oli järkkymättömän mustaa alkaen kypärän sulkatöyhtöstä, joka heilahteli pienimmästäkin liikahduksesta, aina aseisiin saakka, jotka olivat erehtymättömästi sota-aseita eivätkä niitä koristeita, joita ritarit tavallisesti käyttivät juhlissa.

Finnish education appears paradoxical to outside observers because it seems to break a lot of the rules. In Finland, “less is more.” Children don’t start academics1 until the year they turn seven. They have a lot of recess (ten to fifteen minutes every forty-five minutes, even through high school), shorter school hours than we do in the United States (Finnish children spend nearly three hundred fewer hours2 in elementary school per year than Americans), and the lightest homework load of any industrialized nation. There are no gifted programs, few private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests. Yet over the past decade, Finland has consistently performed at the top on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to fifteen-year-olds in nations around the world. While American children3 usually hover around the middle of the pack on this test, Finland’s excel.

Tein valintani kyllä - lähtekäämme matkaan! Kuultavan kultaisena kesäyö sarastaa kotilaakson yllä. Joki kiskoo kiiltäen kuin teräs päin ulappaa. Sinä, joka itse olet laulu ja jolla on laulun mahti, ota oman itsesi tahti! Sainko sinut vihdoin satuuni vangiksi vai pakenetko jälleen luotani? Sinä, joka itse olet laulu! Kas, tässä käteni! Pitkin jokea, joka huuhtoo kotirantaa, käy tieni päin ulappaa ja päin merta - merten taa. Jos tiedän että seuraat, on minullekin maailmassa vielä aamunmaa.