Seriously, Beware Finland

Time for a little quotation, I think!

Still, they despise themselves. Shaftoe thinks it’s because they eventually farmed out the defense of their country to the Germans. Finns excelled at an old-fashioned, personalized, retail style of Russian-killing, but when they started running low on Finns, they had to call in the Germans, who are more numerous and who had perfected a wholesale Russian slaughtering operation.
Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon

My grandmother gave me two pieces of advice: Never fall in love with a Norwegian and never get in a drinking contest with a Finn

Other Finns dominated the American Communist Party: Link. The Jews thought it was them, but it wasn’t.

Finns also founded the state of Delaware — though again, the Swedes claim that they did it. Why anyone should brag about founding the state of Delaware, I don’t know.

The officer pulled over Mr. Rytsola’s car and issued him a speeding ticket for driving 43 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. The fine: $71,400. The staggering sum was no mistake. In Finland, traffic fines generally are based on two factors: the severity of the offense and the driver’s income

That isn’t close to the record, which is around $225.000, though I heard it was reduced after appeal

The fines are quoted in terms of “day’s earnings” – as in: your fine is 28 days’ pay – so that everyone is punished to the same degree. After all, the law is supposed to be equal for all people and punishments equally severe, so you can’t have the financially fortunate being punished less than poorer people.

This might make us “socialist bastards”, but at least we’re fair socialist bastards

Given their suicide rate, i doubt we have that much to fear — although it appears they have reduced this considerably lately so maybe we should be wary

The stats are indeed impressive. But remember, Russia has always excelled at killing her own people — with or without other nations’ militaries as agents.

They are Russians, except they like dry steam in their bathhouses and use a dialect no one understands.

Sorry, I meant no disrespect. Stupid joke, that’s all.

one of the best dressed people i ever met (and we swedes are no slouches) was a young finnish exchange student. he also had one of the darkest, most laconic senses of humor i ever came across. both rhetorically and literally, i would not want to cross swords with a finn in battle – probably because he or she would bristle me with arrows like a pincushion before i could even draw.

we did enjoy a few jokes at the expense of the norwegians, but for some strange reason i can’t remember any of them. (i do remember learning some of them from my one norwegian friend at the time.) nor do i recall how i ended up unconscious in my front yard naked. now that would NEVER happen to a finn. probably not to a norwegian either because they’re too boring. but of course i jest.

Oh, almost forgot: has anyone here read Martti Larni (I hope it’s the right link), The Fourth Vertebra? It’s freakin hilarious, but for some reason completely undiscovered by the Anglophone world. Weird.

@Nordic Mousse + abb1: On a slightly more serious note, the real links are between the Finns and the Swedes, not the Finns and the Russians.

As it turns out, both the former Swedish PM Tage Erlander and the former England Manager Sven-Göran Ericsson descend from Finns who emigrated to Sweden waaaay back (the family is called Suhoinen). Just how many Swedes who can claim a Finnish ancestor, is an interesting question.

Many places in Norrbotten in Sweden have names that are of Finnish origin (if they are not Sami). The sauna (bastu in Swedish) is as integral a part of daily life in Northern Sweden as in Finland.

In any event, the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has a navy and an army. That makes Finnish a language and Meänkieli a dialect.

As far back as Swedes can be traced, there were Finns with them. Examples include the Rus’ and Varangians in Constantinople ca. 800 AD, and the Swedish Delaware colony in America ca. 1630 AD.

Karelian is related to Finnish (sort of like French and Spanish) and traditionally have been the border people between Russia and Finland. (Some dialects of the languages are mutually intelligible.) But the gulf between Finns and Russians is big – different language family (Uralic versus Indo-European), different religion (Lutheran versus Russian Orthodox), different script (Latin versus Cyrillic), different orientation (Scandinavian versus Slavic).

I for one welcome our new Finnish overlords.