Since I seem to be concentrating on posts about Finnish matters these days, it’s worth reminding you that Sunday is St. Urho’s Day. I trust you will all be  clad in green and purple, and prepared to drink up all the liquor before the Irish hit the bars on Monday. And feel free, as you imbibe, […]

I haven’t been posting much, because for the last week or so I’ve been wrangling all my tax information, all the cheeks and the stubs and the little receipts, into a form coherent enough for my accountant to make sense of.   It’s the kind of repetitious detail work that I’m not at all good […]

Clearly you were all so completely entranced by the Finnish music video I posted a couple days ago that, by now, you’re totally slavering  for the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. Which, thanks to Australian performance artist Scott Sandwich, you can now experience in eight minutes. Eight minutes for a national epic!  How can you resist? […]

I’m in one of those dark Nordic moods, and so I need to listen to soul music, which— given my heritage— would be Maria Kalaniemi, virtuoso accordion player, and her composition “Skimningspolskan.“ Listen closely, close your eyes, and you can just about see the dancing dwarfs lurching to the music on the shores of the […]