Notes from the Finnish Underground #1

Visible Earth: Nordic Lights (NASA)

It was around 10 p.m. and our local Wanderer was on the move. Worried he might have to pick up the pace, he checked his phone. Instead, it was the Contact who would be running half an hour late.

The main road through the city had been under construction for about a year now. For our Wanderer, who did not commute, and had low tolerance for traffic, the project was a clumsily moving labyrinth. One day the crossing was there and the next somewhere else entirely. That type of uncertainty bothered him, but of course there was no stopping progress. It simply had to be made or else people would get bored. The construction workers in their safety green-and-blue neons at least had the decency to be building something worthwhile. They did it out here, where each day was shitty in a different way for reasons and seasons completely out of their hands. They did not even publicly complain about the reflector-decorated clown uniforms they had to wear. In America they were at the butt-end of sexual harassment accusations. As far as the Wanderer was concerned, they were working.

One time in the summer, in particular, as he was approaching and about to pass a worker on a side street, the two lazily caught eyes and the Wanderer found himself nodding in a stern and decided manner. If the decision had been made before the action, in the moment he was not aware of making it. It had been nothing over the top, of course, but the courtesy had caught the Wanderer off guard. Whereas in the army it had been a mandatory greeting to one's superiors, it had then and there been translated into an acknowledgement of another man's good work:

"Do continue, if you will."
"I shall, ty / perkele" (depending on the project's stage of development)

For the gainfully unemployed, the workers were respectable.

Trolley line construction (Hervannan Sanomat)

The main road project had slowed down as the winter came, but it never reached full hibernation. As the snow was falling, men, mostly, with just the occasional woman, were still operating heavy machinery to build a trolley line across the city. In the background; cozily indoors, another kind of progress was being pushed and enforced in the school and office environments - the kind and inclusive kind. But we will return to that later.

The evening was a Saturday, so nothing was being built. Surprisingly few people were out celebrating the weekend. The temperature had just risen to a degree that made the smokers outside bars more jovial. As the Wanderer descended towards the city center and passed through a tunnel underneath the railway tracks he noted that people were getting louder. He was passing by the main street's McDonald's and through the window saw that he would not be spending two minutes inside that building for a burger. He was too old to stomach the food or the environment. The guys outnumbered the girls 3-to-1. A few of your average Jonne boys were filling themselves up with junk, making some effort to socialize, but mostly just managing to make a mess and be loud. The majority was so multicultural that the fast-food joint resembled a chess board. Only the guys were diverse. The Wanderer concluded that as an aggregate the white teenage girls must be the most satanic of all. Individually they were not all bad, though some had abused their freedoms to become immensely annoying and sadistic, but as a group they were insufferable to be around.

Their ever-changing speech was repellently chaotic, high-pitched, and high-tempo. It contained infinite unfinished sentences, abstract social relations, and dangling or unclear references that no one could possibly care enough about to keep track of. A poor imitation of their collective fantasies; soap operas and reality tv. The school system had for years operated on rotten principles instead of fulfilling its obligations to educate and socialize Finnish children in a fair and competent manner. Parent-organized play dates had become the norm instead of letting the children's curiosity guide their exploration and play. The aim of the parents had been to increase surveillance and to limit the children's exposure to what they deemed bad influences by choosing their friends for them. Although some were still in touch with those childhood friends as young adults, that fool's errand of an experiment had mostly failed. It backfired when the overprotected boys and girls reached puberty and has continued to cause problems in the development of their personal, social, and sexual identities to at least early adulthood. The excuse in Finnish schools has always been safety and equality - neither of which has, or will ever be, reached with the policies that have been pushed further and further since the 1960s. Increasing rules and regulations, tattling, and supervised interactions. Safety drama has taken over healthy progress and natural development.

Where damage has historically been done, if it was done by boys, the evidence has usually been solid and plainly observable. In fact, even the accidents with no malicious intent behind them result in so much noise and havoc that they can be difficult to ignore. The damages tend to be quantifiable in stitches or euros. Anyone with an ounce of sense understands that the viciousness of girls typically manifests in a less apparent way. It is a complex web underneath the surface governed by a poisonous spider. The aftermath is rarely as brutal as when males go dark, but no less horrifying. Yet fair play and complaining in schools had been reserved for the girls and the boys were the ones getting punished for noncompliance. Rules by females, for females - all in the name of equality. Too many boys had grown too awkward, afraid, or simply unwilling to play their games. Complaints on the sex issues and unnatural learning environments from boys had fallen on deaf ears. Males began dropping out of schools at rates never seen before. Needless to say, a lot of them had not dropped out due to deficits in intelligence or the ability to do good. They had not been given a purpose, but they had been given a name: 'syrjäytyneet', rejects, those outside the system. The previous generations still exist and are trying to get by. Mostly hanging around in those corners of the internet where females would never look for them. The system has not changed and it will keep producing lost boys here and in the West in general.

The more extremist types had been inspired by school shootings that were taking place around the world and chose to go balls deep themselves. They took some classmates and faculty on their way out and offed themselves in the end. Many of these shooters in the West had left behind very well-written essays explaining exactly how they felt, what was going on, and why they did it. Simply put: they had had enough of the school system and the relentless social bondage. Due to their murderous actions the messengers were declared insane and the message was lost. Years later, the society is again looking to lock men up in mental institutions and taking their guns away in an attempt to cure violence.

The collective standards of women have always made each individual in a group of girls unapproachable to anyone except the bravest warriors. The society had forgotten Nature when they locked kids up in schools. Unrelated boys and girls had now been stuck together six-to-eight hours a day, five days a week for sixty years. Such a massive revolution in social relations requires a long phase of careful consolidation with steady but minor adjustments to the system to keep up with the changing world. Those adjustments had been lacking and the media took over the socializing function of the schools. At its core, the school system has been rewarding feminine traits and behaviour while punishing masculinity for both its vices and virtues. The overwhelming majority of teachers has been, and will be, female. However, this does not necessarily need to be an issue of sex if an increase in competence can be achieved. Women obviously wish to be teachers and so they should be properly educated and trained as teachers, not converted to postmodernism. But the schools for both, boys and girls, cannot keep running entirely on feminist principles, condemning masculinity, while publicly claiming equality as their highest goal. Schools of every level are producing increasingly weak and confused individuals who are not properly socialized and equipped to take on the realities and responsibilities of life outside of school.

A Finnish forest (Metsätieteidenlaitos)

Traditionally, Finnish men had not been warriors at all. There had been a lot of land and fresh water, but not many people. The few men had spent most of their lives hunting in the woods in solitude. If a man, against all odds, ran into a woman instead, and she did not look too much like a wild boar, the main thing was to not scare her away. Then to offer her food in the hope that she can cook and maybe clean a wound. The Finns still have family cottages in the forest, especially near the lakes. There the men had their responsibilities and the women had theirs, but there was no Government. Nature was trying to kill them both, but it offered vitality. The forest-dwellers shared shelter, warmth, and food. Some had neighbours whose families had been around the same lake areas for ages. They had traded, fished, drunk, and saunaed with them regularly. But listening to Kimi Räikkönen had made the Wanderer think they had talked very little.

A log cabin by the lake (Karoliina Iso-Ropo)

Eventually farms and villages became more common. With Christianity came Government. Neighbours were still few and far between, but most villages had a Church in the center. The Bible was in Latin, so at the time nobody really knew what the fuck it meant. Only the priests could read the Bible and even they did not seem to get it. Families took care of their farmlands and the Church took a tenth of their profits. The people ate, sold, or stored the rest. The diet became largely grain-based for the first time. Men had to become more clean and cooperative as the population increased and the Church grew. Soon afterwards Finland came to be under Sweden's rule for hundreds of years. At the time nobody really knew what the fuck that meant either. The Wanderer speculated it might have had something to do with the priests and the Swedes having common homosexual interests. The Finns had very little interest in learning their language, but the Swedes had insisted on making their declarations in Swedish anyway. The Swedes were happy to talk amongst themselves, so they stayed. They built Svenskaklubbens, yacht clubs, in the South and the West, and did business with Sweden. Once the Industrial Revolution finally found its way to Finland, people began moving into cities after work. Even the biggest cities were no more than villages, although the country is quite large.

Kaapelitehdas (Cable Factory) in the 1930s (Helsingin kaupunginmuseo)

Russia had claimed ownership of the Finnish territory, but at the time nobody really knew what that meant either, as they had insisted on making their declarations in Russian. The Swedes had very little interest in helping out. The Russians had agreed to let the Finns have their autonomy and language in exchange for handling their foreign policy. As long as they would not have to learn Russian, the Finns did not care. The Church was now in charge of domestic policy and Russia of foreign policy. As factory work and standardized education were becoming the norm, top-down rules and regulations began clawing into the shoulders of the Finnish Maiden. Meanwhile the Church had their sausage fingers around her waist. The Russian influence increased in the beginning of the 19th century and is joked about to this day:

"The enemy is advancing from the East, if it's sighted coming for any other direction,
we must have been flanked by the enemy advancing from the East."

Simo Häyhä, also known as 'White Death', was a Finnish sniper in WW2 who holds the record for the most confirmed kills (505) in any major war.
When asked what he felt when killing an enemy soldier, he responded:

"The recoil."

Finland had gained its independence from Russia in 1917. This was followed by a civil war as the newly independent country first tried to get on its feet. Russia had backed the working class Reds while Germany had backed the upper class Whites. It should be noted that this had nothing to do with race as the entire Finnish population was white at the time. The class divisions were based on wealth. Most of the Finno-Swedes were on the wealthier side. The Reds ended up losing the civil war against the better equipped, armed, and organized Whites. Germany had provided the Whites with weapons and military training. They would later send German Jägers to defend against the advances made by the drooling Russia during the Second World War. Afterwards, they refused to leave. They did leave, eventually, and left Lapland in flames as they went. Stalin's Russia had demanded Finland to hand over key areas to help with the war effort against Hitler's Germany. Finland refused. Russia launched a propaganda campaign against Finland to motivate its troops. They falsely claimed that the Finns had shot at Russians near the Eastern border. Russia attacked in what came to be known as the Winter War of 1939-1940 and the Continuation War of 1941-1944. The united Finnish people were poorly equipped and lacked manpower compared to the Soviet Army but their willpower, creativity, and one world-class badass sniper kept the enemy troops at bay. The forests and cold winter had created exceptionally challenging fighting conditions for the advancing Russians. The Finns were on their home turf, hiding in the forest. "One Finn against ten Ruskies", was the saying. But they held their ground until Russia decided the effort was not worth the casualties. The Russian peace terms were garbage, but Finland agreed and retained its independence. The Russians pulled their soldiers and focused their war efforts on defending Stalingrad.

The Finnish women had been working in the cities since the beginning. They had gotten the right to vote before the rest of the world and decided to, for the most part, work separately from men - usually in better conditions. They laid out the foundations for the public health care and social welfare systems during and after WW2. The Wanderer took another look through the McDonald's window. He wondered if what took place inside the fast-food restaurant was the vision feminists had had in mind for their daughters. Half an hour had passed and he got back on the move.

The Tammerkoski rapids (Toni Repo, Aamulehti)

A message came from the Contact. They asked the Wanderer to meet them on the bank of the rapids that ran North to South through the city center. The Contact had failed to specify which bank and whether they were on the lower, middle, or upper section of the rapids. Apparently they were tourists. The Wanderer decided to follow the running water until he bumped into them or saw them on the opposite side. In the second eventuality he would yell at them to find a bridge.