How do you know which nation you belong to? You can´t be a member of any nation without being able to recognize some special "signs" that bind people together to form exatly that particular nation. Among those commonly recognized "signs" binding individuals to become nations are sentences like "He lived just from autumn until Christmas." or "As we all know, God is almighty, omnipotent and foresighted." "If grief smoked, earth would be shrouded in smoke."
The third sentence is the beginning of a poem by Eeva-Liisa Manner. She is one of the most important Finnish poetesses. Maybe you would like to know that
If grief smoked
earth would be shrouded in smoke.
Yet this grief too has fire beneath,
my heart burns but does not burn out.
Si la pena humease,
la tierra estaría cubierta de humo.
Sin embargo esta pena también tiene debajo un fuego,
mi corazón arde, pero no se consume.
My second example of the nation-building sentences is: "As we all know, God is almighty, omnipotent and foresighted." It is the opening sentence of the novel The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna. The Unknown Soldier was published in 1954. It was the first book that did not describe the second world war as a heroic battle of heroic soldiers. It was absolutely the first of its kind. It was telling that life in the front was hard, opinions about the war variable, but the goal shared. Ask any Finnish ceo or top manager about their favourite leadership books and The Unknown Soldier will be among them. It is very likely to be number one in the list. Even 95 % of all Finnish teenage boys have read it with pleasure - girls too, but they are likely to have read some other books as well.
Before we changed the currency to euros, we had Finnish marks. The last sentence of the Unknown Soldier was written on the twenty-mark-note: "Hyväntahtoinen aurinko katseli heitä. Se ei missään tapauksessa ollut heille vihainen. Kenties se tunsi jonkinlaista myötätuntoakin heitä kohtaan. Aika velikultia."
If you ever get interested in learning to know normal life in Finland, it is worth finding out what has been written between those two sentences "As we all know, God is almighty, omnipotent and foresighted." and "/.../ Aika velikultia."
Now I have to confess that I do not have the English version of The Unknown Soldier, but I have it in Norwegian. It says first: "Som vi jo alle vet, er Vårherre fremsynt og allvitende over all forstand." and the last: "Solen så vennlig på dem. Iallfall ikke uvennlig. Hadde kanskje tilmed en slags medfölelse med dem. Vennene, stallbrödrene." (Sorry Norwegians for the ö!)
About the Russian version of The Unknown Soldier I know that some parts of the text have been omitted or changed. The Soviet publisher did not like the way we Finns described the war between us. - If you want to do business with the Finns, reading The Unknown Soldier is highly recommendable.
I started this text with the sentence: "He lived just from autumn until Christmas." It refers to Aleksis Kivi He is the first Finnish professional author. What it meant to be a writer before computers can be seen in the manuscripts. Aleksis Kivi was born on the 10.10. 1834 and died in 1872 at Christmas. For several reasons his life is considered to have been sad. If you come to Finland in the beginning of October and stay until Christmas, you easily get an idea how exactly it was.
Practically all the deciduous trees are now bare. Their branches and twigs are scraping the sky that is getting further and further away simultaneously swallowing light, becoming cold and distant-looking. When you get out into the open-air, the wind bites you sharply enough to remind you of the necessity to put on a warm overcoat, gloves, and a cap, lange unterhose etc.
Winter is approaching. Today in the morning we had snow, even here in the south of the country. The soil is still warm enough to melt most of it during the day, but if you left your car out in the open-air last night, you will still find it covered by white, dry and clean snow.
All the scenery changes. Days are getting shorter and shorter. People start dreaming about travelling to the tropics where there is sunshine and palm trees. Those who stay here start talking about the weather: "They had minus twenty centigrade in Jyväskylä." "Oh yes, but in Oulu they had minus thirty-one, and the terrible wind from the sea." - You can be sure that the British talking about their weather will be just amateurs in comparison with us winter-time Finns.
Maybe I´ll share this arctic-hysteria description with you in Spanish. It is a poem by Arvo Turtiainen describing cold January nights with fifty degrees centigrade and the stars biting the bread of the frost. I do not know us ever having had minus fifty - anyway this is not Siberia - but fifty rhymes better than twenty-five, for instance.
50 grados bajo cero
En las noches de enero
crujen dientes de las estrellas
al morder
el pan del frío.
En las noches de enero
navega la luna
como un ataúd
rumbo a su gélido infierno azul.
se estremecen.
Se congelan
las cortinas de la aurea boreal.
En las noches de enero
resplandece
el puñal del frío
en la mano de la muerte.
All nations have something that combines people together to form a nation - sentences, poemas, songs, sceneries. To become a member - a fellow citizen - you need to know enough of them. If you do not know any, you have no idea of the normal life of those people, you do not know how they have organised their life and how they want to be communicated with.
By the way, did you know that there never was any French Revolution? People in France lived their normal life. It got overwhelmingly difficult, so they started protesting. There were protests here and there, and as life did not get any better, the protests spread over a longer period of time. Then somebody was looking at the tumultous period from outside and collected all those separate incidents under one name ´revolution´. When people abroad referred to everything happening in France, the ´French Revolution´ was born. If nobody had given that special label to what was happening, we might never have had The French Revolution that became rather a popular export product.
If you want to know more about nations and imagination, you could read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson (ISBN:0-86091-546-8). It has been translated into Finnish as well. Reading Imagined Communities you´ll learn that we as various nations are invited into the history. In what language, via which signs and sentences, was the invitation card of your nation printed?
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