Finland

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

The Land of Finns (Finnish: Suomi) is a country with a Uralic language that borders Sweden, Norway, and Russia. It is known as the place where the inhabitants sing, dance, and find romance in the true Scandinavian way. It is populated almost entirely by ducks, who share their country with an estimated 7000-7500 goats.[1]

Contents

[edit] Geography

The Gulf of Finland lies to the south, separating Finland from Estonia which is populated with "Baltic Finns."[2]

Finland has lots of ice, snow trees (yes, snow trees), and dirt. They also have 188,000 lakes and, in summer, 3.23x1083987 little flying bitey things, which they export to Sweden and Estonia. Also, spirits (the drinking kind) cost a fortune, which isn't that big a deal since native Finns generally get drunk very easily. They are also known to occasionally deal with said alcohol prices via the home brewing of a foul concoction of fermented sugar aptly named kilju (pronounced kill-you).

The capital of Finland is Helsinki and the second largest city is Espoo. Nokia is responsible for one quarter of all Finnish exports[3] and generated 3.5% of the Finnish GDP.[4]

[edit] Politics

Bleh... I don't feel so good... Just look at those disgusting umlauts diareses. Oh... Blaaurghlrphtpthbplech...

The area of what is Finland today was conquered and ruled by Sweden until 1809, when the Russian Empire took over. After some failed rebellions the Finns won their independence in 1917 while taking advantage of the Russian Revolution. Russia tried to retake it during the 1939-40 Winter War, but only succeeded in getting about a tenth of it because they weren't prepared for the cold temperatures or the Finnish resistance. In particular, they weren't prepared for Simo Häyhä.[wp]

[edit] People

Finns are considered the shyest people on earth.[5] Aww. :)

Despite this shyness most Finns are satisfied with their lives and the United Nations’ World Happiness Report ranked Finland the second happiest nation after Denmark. They leave a large ecological footprint.[6][7]

60 Minutes once aired this story about their one (and it would seem their only) social event: the tango.[8]

The language of Finland is Finnish (though there is a small Swedish-speaking population, of which Linus Torvalds, who started the Linux project, was part before moving to Oregon), which is proof of alien visitors looks somewhat like the alphabet throwing up. This is largely because instead of using diacritics to show a phonemic long vowel or consonant, they decided to duplicate the entire letter. The Latin alphabet, spread by Protestant Christianity, is in use, so we are allowed to blame the Church for any illnesses caused by looking at the orthography, although they probably won't listen.

A major part of Finns are irreligious or non-practising but registered Lutherans. They follow the antics of various USA-based fundies with mixed feelings of amusement, schadenfreude, and disbelief; such is their fascination with the exotic Yankee Whackadoodle that Finland manages to be the second largest reader of Conservapedia in the world.[9] Member of parliament and later Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen[wp] has recreated some relatively tame American Conservative antics on Finnish soil, which has resulted in the Lutheran church losing thousands of members each time.

[edit] Education

Finland is often praised for its high quality education system, and Finnish students are often ranked as the best in the world. Finnish schools do not teach intelligent design, nor do they teach the controversy. Biology books, for one, establish evolution as one of the 8 primary conditions for life and the Big Bang is referenced constantly as the origin of the universe. Religion is taught mostly for the students to understand and tolerate world religions, and Christianity is mostly dealt from a philosophical perspective.

[edit] Cranks and wingnuttery

Popular wingnuttery in Finland revolves mostly around racism, Russo- or Islamophobia, and revanchism over territories lost in the Second World War. Euroskepticism is also very popular in modern Finland and is one of the main attractions for the main nationalist party Perussuomalaiset (they would like to be known as "the True Finns", but are literally "the Basic Finns").

In a bit of historical revisionism, Finland often downplays its allegiance to Nazi Germany during World War II, and Cold War sensibilities gave rise to the idea that Finland was involved with the German invasion of the Soviet Union through sheer bad luck and coincidence. Nowadays it is common to completely ignore the presence of over 200,000 German soldiers in northern Finland (including Waffen-SS) and instead lower the bar by emphasizing Finland's lack of direct involvement in the Holocaust. While Finland did deport 8 foreign national Jews to Germany where they were exterminated, Finnish Jews were equal to everyone else and actively served in the Finnish military. Also, hey, no official alliance with Hitler. That's something, right? Many Finnish war memorials also list Finland's involvement in the war as lasting from 1939-1944, thus ignoring the short war between Finland and Germany in 1944-1945.

Finland is home to Pentti Linkola, the hardest of the hard greens, infamous for his praise of events such as the Holocaust, 9/11, and pretty much anything with human casualties.

[edit] Exports

[edit] Ulkopuoliset linkit

  • Actually, "Finland" is a song by Michael Palin of Monty Python.
  • Visit Finland! (But don't make eye contact!)
  • Finland also makes a brief appearance as a village in Monty Python's Spamalot. It was not originally scheduled to have a role in the play, but was pushed onstage due to poor hearing on the part of the backstage crew.

[edit] Alaviitteet

  1. http://www.vuohet.net/vuohi.html (Finnish)
  2. See the Wikipedia article on Baltic Finns.
  3. In 2003
  4. In 2004.
  5. Some say that making eye contact with a Finn is akin to physical assault.
  6. Finland ranked as world’s second happiest country
  7. Finland, happy Planet Index
  8. See the Wikipedia article on Finnish tango.
  9. Conservapedia: We Love You Finland!
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support