Kategoria: in English

Julkaistu

TACKLING MARGINALISATION AND IMPROVING EDUCATION AMONG IMPORTANT EU TASKS, ERKKI LIIKANEN TOLD FINNISH SOCIAL DEMOCRAT VETERANS

Ilona Lahdelma and Erkki Liikanen being interviewed by Kari Salmi, President of Suomen Wanhat Toverit
Erkki Liikanen
Social democrat veterans met in Jyväskylä in August 2019

We may not be the youngest but we surely have our sights set on the future. And also some really great memories that came back again, from my student activist days in the late 1960’s. Nice moments with old friends and colleagues.

So I am back today from a two-day meeting of the Finnish social democrat veterans association, Suomen Wanhat Toverit. Three hundred we were who came together in Jyväskylä in central Finland on 24 – 25 August 2019. This is an association that brings us together, mostly at local monthly meetings, but every two years at these larger national events. I am an active member there, chairing one of the two local organisations in the Finnish capital, Pääkaupungin Wanhat Toverit.

We met at the Jyväskylä Workers’ Hall, one of the early works of famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Here we were treated to two exceptional presentations about the future of European democracy.

During his long career in politics, Erkki Liikanen was Finance Minister, Member of the European Commission and then Governor of the national bank, and much more. This gives him a unique vantage point on how democracy in Finland, Europe and the world has developed through many periods of challenge and turmoil. In his highly interesting and engaging presentation he raised major challenges but also pointed at positive developments in Europe and the European Union. Tackling marginalisation and improving education have to be among the important tasks on the agenda. The support for the European Union is stronger than ever in many member states which is also a cause for optimism.

Young political scientist Ilona Lahdelma who is working on her doctoral thesis at Oxford University complemented Erkki Liikanens lecture in a way which opened up the subject of democracy itself and offered an attempt to a scientific analysis of some main trends on the European political scene. Her views on how traditional political divides have changed all over Europe was highly interesting. We were also very attentively listening to how political movements must take account of the effects of the new media landscape on voters’ expectations and behaviour.

Meeting old colleagues and friends is a major function of these conferences. All of us have been active in different professional or political roles within the social democratic labour movement. At a dinner which the City of Jyväskylä invited us to old friendships were confirmed in a very pleasant atmosphere. Once again I could feel the benefits of being this pretty small country where our relations tend to be so uncomplicated.

I enjoyed particularly much my long chat with Erkki Liikanen on the train to Jyväskylä. Upstairs in the café wagon it was nice and quiet, almost empty, except for us laughing now and then to some of the common memories from our youth years. Fifty years back we both worked together in the national secondary school student’s organisation Suomen Teiniliitto. This was the central point for Finnish student activism in the late 1960’s – we were in fact often more active and radical than the university students’ associations.

For the first time I heard – I think – Erkki telling me that I was the first Swedish-speaking Finn whom he had ever met. His home town was Mikkeli, in south-eastern Finland, a completely Finnish-speaking region.

We did of course talk about many other things and about today’s world, but this flashback that brought up many nice and even funny incidents and memories was really enjoyable. I could of course write page up and page down on what we were up to during those wild 60’s, maybe I soon will…

Julkaistu

RISING FROM RUGGED CLIFFS SURROUDED BY OPEN WATERS, THE HISTORICAL FINNISH LIGHTHOUSE BENGTSKÄR

In December 1906 the Bengtskär lighthouse was taken in operation.

Finland’s long coastline has many treasures which invite to great outdoors experiences. One of them is Bengtskär, home of the tallest lighthouse in the Nordic waters. On a windy day in June 2019 we visited this historical site just over 100 kilometers west of Helsinki, the Finnish capital.

The lighthouse was built around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The rugged cliff where the Bengtskär lighthouse stands is the southernmost of a myriad of small rocks and islands. Before its construction, this part of the northern shore of the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland was plagued by shipwrecks.

The scene of a particularly violent but failed attempt by Soviet troops to take over in 1941, Bengtskär is a natural, architectural and historical site at the same time.

In 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland which started the Winter War as we call it here. Against all odds this small country was able to fend off the take-over attempt but was forced to cede territory to the much bigger enemy. The coastal town of Hanko (Swedish: Hangö) had to be ‘rented out’ as a naval base which was set up in March 1940.

After a brief period of peace the war flared up again in the summer of 1941, also as Finland wanted to regain some of the earlier losses. The light tower at Bengtskär was used by the Finnish artillery for leading the fire of their nearby base as well as the navy and air force and thus the Soviet troops wanted to eliminate it.

A small museum in the lighthouse building ells the story of this violent battle in July 1941.

In the early dawn of 26 July, shielded by bad weather, four ships from the Hanko-Hangö base arrived at Bengtskär and landed some 120 elite soldiers. The small Finnish garrison was able to force the attackers to hide behind the large rocks on the island and they were for many hours unable to proceed to the lighthouse building itself.

Finally, the Finnish soldiers had to retreat to the higher levels of the tall building. Poorly armed, they stopped the first attempt by the attackers to force their way up the spiral staircase by throwing down the only hand grenade that they had. This caused a break in the fighting which allowed troops from the nearby Finnish coastal artillery station Örö to land on the other side of the small island. The Soviet troops finally had to retreat both from Bengtskär and from their naval base.

The battle over Bengtskär cost 32 Finnish soldiers their lives. The Soviet losses were probably much bigger although exact numbers have never been given out.

This grey and a bit rainy day was much more peaceful. Some 60 to 70 visitors had arrived there for a few hours, by taxi- or sight-seeing boats. We were guided around in three languages – Swedish, Finnish and English – and had a chance to stroll around on our own. The cliffs on this tree-less island were steep and slippery but the beautiful outer archipelago flora was more than worth a careful inspection walk.

Bengtskär is also a unique refuge for the eider birds and as you can see from the pictures there were still many female eiders ( Swedish: åda, Finnish: haahka ) in their nests quite close to the buildings. These birds are not shy of people and this does in fact protect them against the birds of prey at sites like Bengtskär. Some of us who have been around for quite a time know that the best pillows were always made with eider down – ejder dun in Swedish.

With the whole Baltic Sea opening up around Bengtskär it is far from easy to traffic this rocky little island when winds are strong and the waves are high. The ‘harbour’ or actually the berthing place is reached through narrow straits through the smooth but treacherous cliffs.

I was impressed by our boat driver and his skills, a young man from one of the islands in this archipelago. I also talked much with him about how life is here today. Many traditional small industrial sites have closed down and jobs are more scarce today than they used to be.

It takes an hour and a half by taxi boat to get to Bengtskär from the island village Rosala, a legendary holiday site in this Swedish-speaking archipelago.
At the natural harbour of Bengtskär.
The Moomin Troll mascot is watching over the taxi boat’s passage through cliffs and rocks in these stormy northern waters.

Still, I am happy we went there on Wednesday with its 7 m/s winds, on Thursday they were up to between 13 and 17 m/s.

The southern archipelago is a part of Finland where Swedish is the majority language, an important region for our national minority. This is also why Bengtskär does not have a Finnish name but is just called Bengtskär, in Swedish.

Julkaistu

A NOSTALGIC DAY IN THE ARCHIPELAGO NEXT DOOR TO HELSINKI – HELSINGFORS

A beautiful summer Sunday (23 June 2019) – and what could be better than to get out on the water. This time we went to the archipelago just west of the Finnish capital Helsinki – Helsingfors. We took the tour boat from a suburban marina in Finno which brought us to the Pentala island in about an hour.

The island world just outside the Helsinki metropolitan region is quite fantastic and today it showed its most beautiful face.

The route was a bit nostalgic for me as this was where we used to head westward for weekend trips with my parents’ slow wooden cabin boat. Later, when I was about 14 or 15, we were allowed to go alone, with friends. Often we berthed for some days on one of the many uninhabited islands, most with superb red cliffs at the sea shore, smoothed by the ice age. The water was clear and the swimming great.

Later, with our own family, we had a small summer house a bit further west. Today we remembered the stormy weather and the agitated sea on the open stretches when we took our small cabin boat there for the first time. Our luck I guess was that it was a slow Norwegian dinghy kind of a boat, made to roll on top of the waves…

Today’s tour was of course different, like taking a bus but still right out there in the fresh air and clean nature. We wanted to see a new museum on the island, an old fisherman’s homestead. It is owned and managed by the municipality, with free entrance, and the boat trip there and back costs 6 Euros. If you are retired – age does not matter they said – you pay only 3 Euros, sponsored by our next door neighbours in the Espoo – Esbo municipality.

Julkaistu

MEETING AT CITY HALL – TRYING TO GET HELSINKI TO UNDERSTAND THAT OUR PITÄJÄNMÄKI-REGION NEEDS MORE SUPPORT

After stone age excavations it was City Hall in Helsinki this afternoon, discussing municipally owned or supported community centers in the Finnish capital. We saw some good examples of other city region associations having done a great work renovating old historical buildings that otherwise would have been demolished. Superb work by our friends in other parts of town !

I hope that also we here in Pitäjänmäki – Sockenbacka will one day have the chance to build up a place of our own, especially as we are growing very fast. This is a part of town where the multicultural profile has increased maybe faster than anywhere else. We need to work a lot to preserve and develop our community cohesion and for that we need tools.

Actually we have tried to get our own space already over many years – even decades – as my predecessors as association presidents tell me.

Today, we work on our own, financed by our members through their modest contributions, without any city support.

The city services had made an obvious mistake and budgeted far too little this year for our kind of residents’ organisations. It did feel a bit strange that they were very complementary about the work we are doing but just had to excuse themselves as they had ran out of money.

Not the fault of the responsible civil servants who have always been very supportive, but maybe something for the politicians to take another look at.

Well in any case, today we manage with the support of our local members’ and the help we get from the Pitäjänmäki business community…

Julkaistu

5,000 YEARS OLD TREASURES ARE BEING UNEARTHED IN MY HELSINKI VILLAGE

This was a great experience and learning opportunity to participate i the stone age digs in my own village. Lead by archaeologists Jan Fast and Janne Soisalo the team uncovered once again new treasures and new knowledge from the smooth sands of the Nuolipuisto ( Swedish: Pilparken) park. This is incredibly important for the people of Pitäjänmäki – Sockenbacka who learn new things about their past.

The digs were hosted by Pitäjänmäki-seura, the local community association that I am president of, and co-sponsored by the amateur archaeologists’ association ANGO.

This site at the Nuolipuisto park with its children’s playground houses the richest stone age finds of the Finnish capital. In June 2019 professional and amateur archaeologists together with villagers from here were unearthing loads of ceramics as well as other items. They believe that this used to be a small island where people went for fishing and trading and maybe even lived. The land which was pushed down by the inland ice has of course risen considerably over this time and today the site is a small sandy hill.

We had a lot of fun as well, such as when the small kids from the next door playground came over and messed up both the digging tools and the neat stacks of sand. To do the digs like this is really a superb way for creating an interest for archaeology among small and big, and an understanding of how much it tells about our ancestry.

We are not Rome or Athens but our first villagers lived, cooked and traded here more than 5,000 years ago 😊

Julkaistu

STONE AGE EXCAVATIONS CONTINUE IN NUOLIPUISTO PITÄJÄNMÄKI

Exciting to be part of these excavations which my regional residents’ association Pitäjänmäki-seura is hosting this year. Today – Friday 14.6. – was the second of five days.

I have understood from Jan Fast, leader of this team, that when the digs get a bit deeper during the weekend there may be many treasures to be found. But already today, interesting items came up from the sand as you can see in the sifting picture below.

Many local people – both adults and children – visited the site and were told about the activities by members of the Helsinki amateur archaeologists’ association ANGO. There is a nice atmosphere up on the hill and the ’typical Finnish summer weather’ as we like to wryly say – 18C and a bit of rain – did not seem to bother…

This is a 5,000 years old fishing and trading site right next to a children’s playground, in the Nuolipuisto (Swedish: Pilparken) park just close to my home. In the stone ages most of this area was covered by water and the main route to the Finnish inland passed by here.

This is a joint initiative with both professional and amateur archaeologists participating. It is approved and supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency – a government institution – and fully financed by our association together with the participating archaeologists.

An important project for my neighbourhood, it opens up our history and heritage in very concrete ways and strengthens the identity of this fast expanding city region.