Heh… If Americans had as high an interest in culture as that, we might bother to have surveys like this in the States!

Relax Phil, take a chill pill. As you have so painstakingly pointed out in the past (when the results disagreed with your way of thinking), the sneaky Finns lie like troopers when filling in Eurobarometer forms. Secretly they love opera, ballet, and modern art with a vengeance, and they only threw in this curve-ball here to upset those foreign journalists who arrive on freebies and keep saying how wonderful the classical music education is in the country.

Had the survey shown that Finns were at the top of the list of culture interested peoples, you would have blamed this on some artificial, mind-controlling plot by the “Welfare Statist” government.

What is culture, anyways? I don’t care for museums or the opera (much less so the latter), but can see why it might be a good thing for them to be supported. Otherwise there would be nothing more than MTV3, Linnanmäki and Popeda, and that definitely isn’t “cultural” in my book.

Fins’ idea of ‘culture’ is to sit in a park and drink from liquor bottles, then go somewhere and sing karaoke. Real culture like theater and classic music is too expensive for average pekka. Not that Fin understands how money and finance works in first place. To spend whole paycheck is ok. But still, most Fins are poor/basic peoples who live because they get money from others. Culture would be luxury. Sorry, but just my opinion.

the sneaky Finns lie like troopers when filling in Eurobarometer forms.

Well I don’t think they’d lie, but maybe the word “culture” has slightly different meanings and different languages. Finland has a strong culture, I’m surprised to hear that Finns don’t find their culture important to them.

I think culture is VERY important to Finns, but what we call “culture”, typical Finns just call “normal stuff” and it’s not seen as anything special. Culture is alot more than operas and ballets.

“Culture is alot more than operas and ballets.”

Then to walk around in adidas suit with walking sticks?

Or take ferry ships to Estonia like herd b/c expensive Finland economy sucks? Is that the culture you mean, Phil?

I actually think Phil is right in comment nr 5. The word “culture” conjures up different things in different languages. There are also different attitudes towards the word in different countries. I think that can be one of the reasons why the French are so high-up on the list, a lot of their politicians talk regularly about the importance of maintaining the French “culture” in the face of the Anglo-Saxon “cultural imperialism”. Perhaps that means that the importance of the word is stronger and thus the result in Eurobarometer.

Culture is alot more than operas and ballets and adidas suits and walking sticks and booze cruises to Estonia.

I think that can be one of the reasons why the French are so high-up on the list, a lot of their politicians talk regularly about the importance of maintaining the French “culture” in the face of the Anglo-Saxon “cultural imperialism”.

Yeah, maybe this survey result is actually a good thing. The higher on that list, the more xenophobic you’ll be able foreigners and cultural change.

#9 Quite correct. As is Phil, in his way. what is WRONG with this topic as presented is the fact that:

It takes a small sound-bite out of a large report and tells us readers nothing about the concepts of “culture” being put forward by respondents in these countries, and also give us readers no access to the original documentation or methodology. It gives us one, (rather vague) question – No. 3 out of a total of more than 20 – and gives the impression that this is what it is all about. Finns are lukewarm on culture (despite all that money being poured into it by a wasteful and overbearing government, blah, blah, blah).

We can resolve this problem by linking directly to the original report, which of course Phil SHOULD have done, but he was too busy scoring points against things like “government support of the arts” (a favorite hobbyhorse of his).

Here’s the Eurobarometer report in all its 167-page glory.

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/quali/ql_eu_cultural_values_en.pdf

Particularly interesting, in the light of JG’s remarks, is the fact that people in Northern Europe, including Finland, show a very high association of “culture” with the performing and visual arts and correspondingly high levels of attendance at such events – opera, theatre, cinema, art galleries, etc. – and in MAKING art and culture themselves (See QA2 and QA4 – round about pages 7 – 25).

Conversely, people in Southern Europe ratye “knowledge and science” or “the family” a great deal more highly than the average European. Apparently those in the north take these things more for granted and see culture in terms of people on stage or with a paintbrush in their hand.

Whether this slants the figures is anyone’s guess, but it is always important when examining things like this to have a full deck of cards to play with, and not just one ace that happens to take your fancy. Here I’d blame YLE and any other media outlet as much as Phil, by the way.

But then again, having all the information out there would hardly generate winners and losers, polemic, or a good argument, and since that is what Phil wants (that and to satisfy his own Libertarian prejudices, of course), I suppose we should not be surprised the debate is a bit narrow.

So what is culture if not watching tv, or listening to radiohead, or going to movies/clubs etc.?

Surely not only opera and ballet applies? If the people behind this survey didn’t convey such a limited view about culture, the percentage would be 100 in every country.

Hmmm… post didn’t go through. Maybe being held up in spam filter. Phil? I tried once, nothing happened. Then I tried again, and it said I’d sent it once.

Anyway, read the FULL report here.

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/quali/ql_eu_cultural_values_en.pdf

As JG says, culture means very different things to different people.

Speaking of Radiohead they are releasing their new album soon and you can decide for yourself how much to pay for the digital version of it. Not a new idea I guess but taken to a new level certainly. Is P2P culture at last winning the war?

Gee, culture is a MacDonalds in every city. I think you even have one?

Well the Radiohead guys propably decided that they don’t need that much more money and opted for the freedom offered by not having a recording contract.

A cool gesture for sure though!

Finns aren’t into culture. They are into trees.

The Estonians are into piimasuup
On a more serious note, it may be a reason that the Estonians are so high up because they feel that their culture exists in a less secure setting (Russian influence, although ebbing, having very much been a threat in the past days). Therefore, they may value “culture” in a somewhat nationalistic way and feel it therefore needs more support as a way of asserting “Estonian-ness”(, which would be entirely understandable if you ask me.)
Speaking with my finland-swedish hat on, it could be interesting to know if when asked, we replied more favourable than the general non-language specific Finnish respondents. I would imagine we would, as our micro-culture exists with the perceived threat of it diminishing and of being overswamped by the finnish-language culture and our newspapers and organisations are often very much concerned with ensuring the survival of e.g. Swedish-speaking theatres and so on. This again could result in a higher “worth” given to “culture”.

#9 Quite correct. As is Phil, in his way. What is WRONG with this topic as presented is the fact that:

It (once again) takes a small sound-bite out of a large report and tells us readers nothing about the concepts of “culture” being put forward by respondents in these countries. It also give us readers no access to the original documentation or methodology. It gives us just one, (rather vague) question – No. 3 out of a total of more than 20 – and gives the impression that this is what it is all about: “Finns are lukewarm on culture” (despite all that money being poured into it by a wasteful and overbearing government, etc, etc, etc).

We can resolve this problem by linking directly to the original report, which of course Phil SHOULD have done, but he was too busy scoring points against things like “government support of the arts” (a favorite hobbyhorse of his).

Here’s the Eurobarometer report in all its 167-page glory.

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/quali/ql_eu_cultural_values_en.pdf

Particularly interesting, in the light of JG’s remarks, is the fact that people in Northern Europe, including Finland, show a very high association of “culture” with the performing and visual arts and correspondingly high levels of attendance at such events – opera, theatre, cinema, art galleries, etc. – and in MAKING art and culture themselves (See QA2 and QA4 – pages 7 – 25).

Conversely, people in Southern Europe rate “knowledge and science” or “the family” a great deal more highly on the culture scale than the average European. Apparently those in the north take these things more for granted and see culture in terms of people on a stage or with a paintbrush in their hand.

Whether this slants the figures is anyone’s guess, but it is always important when examining things like this to have a full deck of cards to play with, and not just one ace that happens to take your fancy. Here I’d blame YLE and any other media outlet as much as Phil, by the way.

But then again, having all the information out there would hardly generate “winners and losers”, polemic, or a good argument, and since that is what Phil wants (that and to satisfy his own Libertarian prejudices, of course), I suppose we should not be surprised the debate is a bit narrow.

Finland culture = summer house, sauna, berry and mushroom picking, grilling pork marinated in red sauce, eating salad with thousand island dressing, rye bread, and drinking sour milk, and for the weekend, a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of vodka.

I am sure pigs and cows also have their own cultures.

The survey used a simple, subjective, entirely language-dependent question “how important is culture to you”. Not objective indicators like “how many times you have seen a domestic film during the last year”, or “– gone to the museum, theater, concert”, etc., or “how many euros/percent of your disposable income is spent on (the same)”.

Nevertheless, I believe Finns would still score low or very low, because of the low purchasing power, a cultural history of poverty, and elitism of the “cultured”.

As a proud Finnish American,I have more appreciation of Finn culture and history then many modern Finns nowadays,it seems….
I find that all Finnish Americans are also proud of their Finnish heritage,and we all call ourselves “Finns”.
Here in north central Massachusetts we have very large population of proud Finns..People of other ethnic groups refer to us as Finns.
Finnish Americans are highly respected for the many contributions we have made since the Finns started arriving here in late 1800′s.

We can resolve this problem by linking directly to the original report, which of course Phil SHOULD have done, but he was too busy scoring points against things like “government support of the arts” (a favorite hobbyhorse of his).

You’re right, I forgot to link to the report – But YLE didn’t do it either! And they’re the REAL news! Private news organizations like Hesari surely would have linked to the report, yet public-funded YLE did not.

“Private news organizations like Hesari surely would have linked to the report, yet public-funded YLE did not.2″ – Phil

If you haven’t noticed, YLE’s web presence has not been that great in the past few years. It has nothing to do with public/private entities, it had to do with management and how much financial resources YLE was putting into its web presence.

I have on very good authority that you will see a dramatic increase of content on YLE’s pages in the coming months, including streaming video of domestic and international news and other content.

Trust me on this one.

YLE have just (this week) updated their Swedish language news website (svenska.yle.fi/nyheter), the new version is horrible if you ask me. The Finnish Uutiset site isn’t great either.
I do like Yle internet’s new Areena service though.

I wonder why Google does not provide a Finnish version of Google News. There is a version for Sweden (which actually sucks up news from Svenska Yle and Husis occasionally). Norway has a version too.

I believe it all is a work in progress, Mr. Critical.

Yes, I am growing critical in my old age. I hope it does improve. I fear for Svenska Yle with the job cuts coming, seems extremely silly just as we finally get our proper own channel on tv and Tv-Nytt has seemingly improved a lot since digi-tv (I don’t mean the new studio and graphics – which is nice enough – but the important bit, i.e. the content seems to have improved quite significantly). And now they decide to cut jobs. Must be a slap in the face for the staff from the management.
Already regional programming on Radio Vega seems to have suffered (the Yle marketing campaign calls it in “improvement” to have a common regional mid-morning programme for the whole of Nyland – but it just means less local coverage in reality).
Dave, do you work at Yle? Please tell them, during these cut backs, to keep their hands off Aktuellt 17 on Radio Vega, if they don’t I will personally come down to Böle and punch someone. It’s the best and most comprehensive news/current affairs programme left in Swedish in Finland and is my essential daily listening!

I think you have more leverage as a devoted listener than I could ever have (if I indeed was employed there / or if I was not). Write them often and tell them you listen.

I know for a fact they pay attention to viewer / listeners carefully.

Being Austrian myself I am (negatively) impressed by the ranking of my country. However, the bottom ranking does not surprise me a bit. On the one hand Austria has an incredible amount of culture on offer in any type of art one can think of, which has resulted from glorious past. At the same time, after 1945 the country was left over full of stupid rednecks who only care about where their next beer and sauerkraut comes from. Unfortunately that hasn’t changed much. All smart people of Austria were killed if they couldn’t run away quickly enough. Those left over are the lederhosen jodlers who consider any other type of art as degenerated.

#29 Do you mean the same rednecks that preach hatred for anyone following Islam? Having read your views on migration in previous posts, the last thing I would have expected to hear from you was a complaint about the “rednecks” in your home country. Wonders never cease

To #32: You should maybe make an effort to learn about the life of Mohamed and also about the content about the Koran. Neither are very helpful to spread a lot of love and respect for neither women nor people who don’t believe in Islam. It is a historic fact that Mohamed let all the Jews and Christians of Medina be killed in between his raids on caravans and wars on Mekka. As a secular and non-muslim I am merely a dhimmi (and you too) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi), which is rather insulting and arrogant. Do you really want to state that is cool?

You know noting of me so don’t label what you don’t know. Also, don’t try to tell me what I should make an effort to learn. Generalizations like yours are the corner stone to the true problems facing the worlds cultures today. SIMPLETON

#34: Funny that in return you have no problems with making broad assumptions about me. SIMPLETON

Your anti-Islam redneck postings are more than common on this site. Anytime the word Islam is mentioned you go into some routine arguement about how these people come and do this and that to a society and how Finland should keep them out to avoid becoming like other European contrys blah blah blah….. You are an Islamaphob and for that reason highly offensive. Apart from that your other posts are generally well received and well written but get off the whole Islamaphob train.

To Punter: I am exactly as much anti-Islam as I am anti-fascist, anti-communist, anti discrimination against women, anti-totalitarianism, anti honor killings, anti forced marriage, anti theocratic dominance. The problem I have with Islam is that it has not gone through the fire of renaissance and does not tolerate pluralism, liberal arts, freedom of press and speech, equal rights of women, and a rational and open minded society of science. Hence I strongly feel it is important to defend an open society from yet another enemy. I don’t like that Imams in European Mosques preach that I am supposed to be decadent and bad because I don’t force my wife into carrying a head scarf. Additionally, I have never heard of converters to Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and so on who suddenly have an urge to blow up something including even themselves just because they want to please their newly adopted faith. Here a response to your redneck label for me. I grew up on three continents and Finland is merely the 6th county I am living in. So I have certainly not emerged recently for the first time from behind the mountains and forests. Can you claim the same for yourself.

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