The Marmot’s Hole

2 Comments

1. Antti
   Posted March 21, 2007 at 6:50 pm | Permalink

   Yes, it’s always been rather interesting to explain to Koreans the circumstances of erecting the statue of a Russian emperor in the middle of Helsinki in late 19th century and preserving it through the years in a site that has all the important symbolic markers of Finnish statehood and independence around it. Unless the listener has been a scholarly kind of a person, I haven’t bothered to talk about the ideas of “unsuccesful modernization” (colonization, division etc.) vs. “succesful modernization” (independence and the succesful defending of it in wars, wealth) behind a statue of a foreign ruler not being a problem. And he was not a “foreign” ruler but our Grand Duke. There is a slight mistake in the article: the statue was not erected in 1863 but in 1894, 13 years after the czar was assassinated.

   Korean listeners get a somewhat good grip of the difference between Finland under Russia and Korea under Japan when told that unlike the gold medals of Son Kee-jung in ‘36 that were counted as Japanese, the medals from the ‘12 olympics are counted as Finnish even though that was before the formal independence.

   Heck, there is even a Lenin Museum over here - “the first in the West, and the last in the world” as they say.

   Did you know it was Linus’ father who at the time of his student radicalism in the late ’60s uttered the now legendary phrase “maybe we’ll have to execute someone.” Can’t tell exactly what the context was.

2. seouldout
   Posted March 21, 2007 at 8:10 pm | Permalink

   More importantly are there statues of Simo Häyhä and Sulo Kolkka?

   Probably off topic, but how often do two of the greatest snipers ever get their recognition?

   “We gained 22,000 square miles of territory. Just enough to bury our dead.” -Soviet General

   Respek, Flying Firing Finns.