In search of sisu
The Washington Post sends another reporter to Finland. He’s searching for the meaning of sisu…
How do they do it? Where do Finns find the strength to exist in conditions like these? And how can I get some? I’ll be here for the next three days before heading to Moscow on business, but without a little sisu of my own, I’m not sure I can last.
[...]I don’t know if I’m up to it, but there’s only one way to find out. When we dock, I’m going to work on my “inner Finn,” assuming that’s where sisu comes from. But where do I start?
[...]“There’s a whole culture of krapula in this country,” says Stites. “Finns understand that sisu needs help in the winter, and krapula is the price. You would never show up for work in the U.S. and tell people about your hangover. In Finland, everyone understands.”
Helsinki into a techno-metropolis where software companies such as Linux
Dude must be from Oklaholma.:D.
Comment by Hank W. — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 1:34 pm
“Still, as with most things Finnish, there are limits. Just because downtown Helsinki has few, if any, stop signs doesn’t mean drivers aren’t expected to stop. What makes them? I once asked a cabbie. “Community pressure,” he replied.”
LOL…those fuckers in downtown wouldn’t stop at a crosswalk if you were a dying grannie humping along with a walker to the hospital. I’ve almost gotten flattened three times in the last week in a crosswalk with a light. Community pressure my arse.
Where do they find these people to write such stupid stuff….maybe they’ll send someone over to write about saunas next.
Comment by hfb — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 1:50 pm
But he did, he did, and a duck!
Comment by Hank W. — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
Ha Ha,
perhaps in the US is more SISU. They go to work and do the job evenso they have hangover. And they do it so well that noone recognises the hangover.
The Finns need the hangover excuse to be less efficient at that day.
Where is the sisu?
LOL
Comment by Tom — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
SISU spelled backwards is “U.S. is” Hmmmm……..
Comment by Phil — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
I’m getting tired of Finland getting marketed with these lame old cheesy lines like “Sisu”, “Perkele”, “Krapula”, “Reilu meininki” etc.
Comment by Anton — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:14 pm
PS. How can you market a country with hangover anyway.. .
Comment by Anton — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
I think in USA they have these yield or stop signs on most intersections. In Finland, the rule is that if there are no signs, as usually, you yield to the vehicles coming from the right to the intersection. This rule doesn’t work on community pressure, but on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
One traffic psychologists from HU (I think it was Summala) tells always the story, how one american professor scared a heck out of him, while they were driving the department’s test car as the professor didn’t know this rule and drove all the intersections straight through.
But the harsh winter in Helsinki…Once I read a story about a New Yorker artist, who was planning to stay one year in Suomenlinna, but left after few months, because the nature and the elements were “too near”. Oh, maaan…these guys have seen nothing yet. They should do Oulu or Kemi at January.
Comment by antti (the redneck one) — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Maybe we Finns just don’t realize what an untapped resource our space and craziness is. Because let’s face it, we’re a nation of weird nutters with heaps of space on our hands. This is not always a good combination but it sure can be an interesting and even fun one.
Just last new year we had a bunch of Dutch friends over at my BF’s family’s summer cottage. All I heard during that night was “There’s so much space!” This also happened during our escapade in the snow after the sauna.
The vast amounts of outdoors we have here might be obvious to us, but not to everyone. And yes, there are people in the world who think that saunas are places of perversion.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 3:25 pm
The Washington Post should have sent this guy over in January.
Comment by Fred Fry — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
Heh, Helsinki’s climate isn’t much different from that of, say, Toronto’s, Bern’s or Ankara’s. Here’s another myth:
“Centuries ago, with the advancing Mongols right behind them, ancestors of the modern-day Finns began moving westward from their homeland in the Ural Mountains, eventually settling in the fens and forests of northern Europe.”
In fact, “Finns” have never lived anywhere near the Ural mountains, and even if they had, Mongols were much too late to have anything to do with the migrations of these ancestors.
Comment by TomiA — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 9:40 pm
The reporter seems to have not found the meaning of sisu, as he assumes throughout the article it only means toughness.
Comment by Finnpundit — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
Phil, couldn’t find your email link so I thought I’d drop it here.
Thought you might enjoy Berlusconi’s playboy tactics caught on “tape”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UiY5gB_LPw&search=berlusconi%20meter%20maid
Comment by Ryan — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
Oh nevermind, it looks like it’s a fake. Well, at least its an accurate charicature?
Comment by Ryan — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 10:52 pm
Fred Fry: The article actually seems to stem from late January, as is indicated by “Finland in late January is no place for complainers.” and the frequent mention of five hours of daylight.
Ryan: The Berlusconi clips are indeed fakes. I read something about them from the Der Spiegel web site some time ago. Apparently they stem from an entity called “Jetfilm” in Berlin. The story (in German) is found here: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzkultur/0,1518,407772,00.html
Comment by Paha Kurki — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
“SISU spelled backwards is “U.S. is†Hmmmm…….. ”
Phil you misspelled Uusis!
Comment by C.U. rling — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 11:25 pm
“Fred Fry: The article actually seems to stem from late January, as is indicated by “Finland in late January is no place for complainers.†and the frequent mention of five hours of daylight.”
Oops. See what happens when you don’t bother to read the whole article.
Comment by Fred Fry — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 12:34 am
“… software companies such as Linux …”
“… ancestors of the modern-day Finns began moving westward from their homeland in the Ural Mountains …”
Facts, facts. They’re just facts, but if you don’t get them right, you’re just writing fiction. For the record, Finns are genetically closest to Flanders people(!) in the Netherlands. Finland is not an Arctic country, only Lapland lies in the Arctic, not the main Finland peninsula, which has a cold-temperate climate.
Comment by sepisp — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 4:42 am
Finns come from siperia by the way and claim that Finns are genetically closest to Flanders is total bullshit. Closest genetically are Estonians and the Balts.
Comment by taas — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 7:39 am
“… homeland in the Ural Mountains…”
It’s funny how something that was a sound scientifical theory around 1850 just lives on and lives on and lives on in popular imagination.
Comment by N. Siinistö — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 8:56 am
Wiik does cite some genetic research that claims that we really relatively surprisingly are closest to the Flemish - Antwerp, Ghent, the fields of Flanders make every Finn’s heart beat louder, the long lost brothers!
Comment by mjr — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 9:00 am
It’s funny how something that was a sound scientifical theory around 1850 just lives on and lives on and lives on in popular imagination.
My thoughts exactly. One can take almost any general history book and the same mistakes about Finland keep repeated. Apparently these folks just read each other when they deal with marginal areas and peoples.
As for sisu, I don’t think anybody pays much attention to it anymore, for a good reason. It’s a foolish habit which perhaps makes Finnish men commit suicides more than any other western men in order not to “lose face and one’s dignity”. Most certainly it has positive sides, too, but often it simply means something like: “You have to end what you started no matter what the odds are or other people say”. That’s not a healthy attitude in a modern world.
Comment by TomiA — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 9:48 am
The closest Finnish genetic relatives are the Swedes (mother line), then Baltics (Estonian, father line). There’s also a mysteriously close genetic link to Belgium. To put it in a overly simplistic way that also children and Americans remember; One grandmother came from Sweden, another from Germany (Flanders), and one grandfather from Baltics, and another from Urals (north of the black sea) with the language.
Comment by Markku — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 10:18 am
“Finland is not an Arctic country, only Lapland lies in the Arctic, not the main Finland peninsula, which has a cold-temperate climate.”
Climates are a different thing. Lapland doesn’t have an arctic climate, it’s subarctic like all of Finland. Only a small part of northern Norway has an arctic climate.
If average temperature of the warmest month (July) doesn’t exceed 10 degrees, the climate is arctic. Naturally this means that in 2004 the climate of cold and rainy Helsinki was closer to arctic than that of hectic Utsjoki.
http://www.fmi.fi/saa/tilastot_3.html
Comment by Kuukke — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 2:03 pm
National Geographic magazine published a great article of Finland in May of 1968.
http://www.abong.com/1968.htm
After that, there’s been just cheap imitations!
Comment by Hoplaa — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
I suppose “sisu” is bit of cliche these days and belongs to our pre-postindustrial recent past in any case. I wonder if we have anything unique in a specific sense: climate is hard and life has been difficult and poor in many places. Maybe the sense of an isolated gritty underdog is quite Finnish with our colonial overlords Sweden and Russia always seeming to have the upper hand, Sweden in terms of culture and self-confidence and Russia in numbers. Even if it has always been a myth I think that in the desperate war years it was probably a highly useful myth. Now it probably does more harm than good with the high suicide and murder rate that we have here - mixed up, drunken withdrawn Finnish men…
Comment by mjr — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
“let’s face it, we’re a nation of weird nutters with heaps of space on our hands.”
For some reason, that made me laugh out loud.
Comment by M — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 3:18 pm
National Georgraphic also had an articke about Helsinki in 1981. Nice pictures of a horizontal sleet storm
Would be interesting to see the 1930’s and 1940’s articles.
Comment by Hank W. — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
“Centuries ago, with the advancing Mongols right behind them, ancestors of the modern-day Finns began moving westward from their homeland in the Ural Mountains, eventually settling in the fens and forests of northern Europe.â€Â
The closest genetic relatives to Finns can be found in Flanders, around Belgium and Holland. Finns were nowhere near the Urals. It amazes me that Washingon Post’s writers never seem to check any facts. Quite unprofessional.
Comment by Anonymous — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 9:50 pm
What reilu meininki? What sisu? This country lacks balls and is anything but fair! Just goes to show that if you repeat the same bullshit long enough, people actually start to beleive it.
Comment by Martin-Éric — Sun, Apr 2nd, 2006 @ 12:52 pm
What reilu meininki? What sisu? This country lacks balls and is anything but fair! Just goes to show that if you repeat the same bullshit long enough, people actually start to beleive it.
Not that I totally disagree with you, but if you truly feel so, I wonder what’s keeping you here. Speaking as an IT professional, it surely can’t be the money.
Comment by Freeridin' Franklin — Sun, Apr 2nd, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
In my habitat the reilu meininki was the ability to leave your house and car doors wide open all day and night without fear of someone screwing your property. Sisu…maybe, farmers kids ‘celebrating’ every year their 1st of May by collecting the stones away from the same damned field their war wounded grandpa had cleared with a steel bar and a horse.
Maybe they are a bit museum stuff nowadays. You can’t expect those virtues from the politicians and officials. It is the guy somewhere between Helsinki and Oulu, who in the middle of the night begins to warm up his old tractor he hasn’t used for the whole winter to pull your van and moving load out of the snow. Been there.
Comment by Antti (the redneck one) — Sun, Apr 2nd, 2006 @ 2:50 pm
“It is the guy somewhere between Helsinki and Oulu, who in the middle of the night begins to warm up his old tractor he hasn’t used for the whole winter to pull your van and moving load out of the snow. Been there.”
Antti,
I think I love you.
Anna
Comment by AnnaSeMulle — Mon, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
*with glowing red neck* OK, those were really my experiences, not just pretty words. Of course people can march in a bunch of counterexamples, but borrowing from Messrs. King and Churchill, I believe this nation lives sometimes up to its ideals after exhausting all the alternatives.
Comment by Antti (the redneck one) — Mon, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:37 pm
Antti: yep, I believe they were your experiences. Ahh, Finnish men: They’ll program your computer, drive a tractor, and make googly eyes after a few good beers. Gotta love ‘em.
Anna
Comment by AnnaSeMulle — Wed, Apr 5th, 2006 @ 5:11 am
Yes Anna, exactly
And as the saying goes: men - can´t live with them, can´t live without them 
Comment by sri — Wed, Apr 5th, 2006 @ 9:08 pm
No matter, what Aarno Laitinen writes, I think our ladies deserve a compliment too. At 37 I’m gradually turning invisible to the young ladies, but I’m beginning to see goddesses in a wind suit (or what is ‘tuulipuku’). I could go on and on about a little ‘Butch’ girl, I knew at 5 and from whom originates 75% of my cursing vocabulary, or the lady I met while delivering newspapers. She was at her late 40’s and with fingers battered by rheumatism so that he asked my help for opening the milk carton for the morning coffee and staying over for a cup. I remember just her red silk coat and long black hair.
Or my wife, who is absolutely the best and worst thing ever happened to me.
So ladies, thank you for your existence.
That said, springtime softened PM Vanhanen’s head or what you think?
Comment by antti (the redneck one) — Thu, Apr 6th, 2006 @ 8:56 am
They should leave that dude alone. The guy sends romantic sms -messages as opposed to half of the population and the media gloats on that. So fucking what, who cares? You should leave that shit to “Seiska”. Guess it’s just finnish mentality though, people don’t have a life of their own so they keep peeping in neighbours windows and telling about what they did next day in stitching club. No sisu in faceless people.
Comment by Keksi — Fri, Apr 7th, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Marvelous. Thanks, will spread this among my friends!
Comment by free ringtones — Sat, Jan 6th, 2007 @ 12:26 pm