The Finn Edge

The English Migrant’s View

Having moved here to Espoo with my lovely Finnish wife in late September 2012, I was looking forward to the adventure of setting up home in a new country.  I had visited previously in 2006 with a group of my business and agricultural students which was unforgettable particularly as we drove a minibus all the way from the UK and back.  We also had a holiday visiting M’s family after our wedding in August 2012 so a total of three weeks experience in Finland does not really help to grasp even the basics of the language.

However, often I have been pleasantly surprised, like the Dutch, the Finns are more than happy to speak English and everyone has been extremely helpful making up for my lack of Finnish.  In fact, I find it very embarrassing that I only have to say a few words of Finnish and I get a response in English – so how do I stand a chance of learning Finn? I bumped into a kindly older couple who were very pleased to speak English with me but then they came over all sorrowful saying what a terrible time of year to arrive here with the poor weather and long nights. Happily, I replied how I love winter sports and the daylight hours did not seem to be any worse than the North of Scotland.

Winter

In Finland, the snow over the Christmas period literally; is always brilliant.  We can walk the dogs at 7.00am in the forest using the reflective glow of snow and not rely on torches.  We do love the snow in our family. May be it is because in the UK we do not see enough of it or possibly I am of the generation brainwashed by Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. Where I used to live, we had a good amount of snow about once every ten years. The biggest dump I can remember was in December 1981 when our lane was filled level with the hedges (2 to 3m high) and the coldest UK temperature on record was minus 25.6 degrees Celsius.  In Finland I have noted that as soon as a few millimetres has fallen the fleets of snow ploughs are out keeping the roads clear.  Whereas in the UK road maintenance spending has had big cut backs for many years and the snow ploughs and retained contractors were allowed to decline with warm winters. In 1981 it took a couple of days to dig out the main road to the village and then we only had one carriageway open for weeks. On motorways in the UK they rely on salt grit to prevent the snow from building up. However this usually backfires when the temperature drops or the traffic is so heavy after gritting it is flung onto the roadside.  A heavy snow shower combined with high volume of traffic may stop the snowploughs and the motorway becomes a freezing car park. Of course most UK drivers are not prepared for snow.  Winter tyres are virtually unheard of, it is illegal to drive with studs on a public road.  Most drivers have little or no experience of driving on snow and ice and so combined with the lack of snowploughs, a few jack-knifed lorries, the roads soon come to a standstill. The British railways complain of the wrong sort of snow or points icing up leaving passengers stranded. Once people can not get to work, nothing much opens.  Schools are closed because teachers live far away. It is easy to see why a little snow in the UK brings the country to a chaotic stop.  Unlike the Finns where every day of the winter mostly carries on as normal, the Brits have forgotten how to manage a proper winter.