Kurz und gut, es geht um junge Leute rund um den Globus, die sich so sehr für die finnische Kultur und Sprache interessieren, weil die Musik doch so kul ist ;) Früher waren es Ökotypen, die hierher wegen der Natur gekommen sind....A new breed of Finland fanatics
Music exports are attracting a small but dedicated bunch of Suomi enthusiasts on the Internet message boards
By Miska Rantanen
In the 1970s the few Suomi-fans in the world would arrive up here from Central Europe. The women had long Indian cotton dresses, the guys had full beards and velvet loons. On their backs were rucksacks, and in their eyes the keen glare of the nature zealot.
What they sought from Finland was a closer proximity to nature. For many, this country represented the final frontier, the last totally unspoilt wilderness, whose simple lifestyle and equally simple - no, beg pardon, "exotic" was the word of choice - inhabitants appealed to these proto-Green saviours of the planet.
It has all changed now. These days, people become Finn-fans because of pop music that crosses national borders. The new boosters of Finland and things Finnish are to be found not here in the north but from the online forums of the websites erected by our export bands.
And now it is our turn to be baffled at the exotic creatures.
Who, for instance, are all these Vardas and Regjes and Kiviis, who manage to write dozens of messages in a 9-page thread about the hairstyle and look of Perttu Kivilaakso, one of the three (formerly there were four) classically-trained cellists who make up Apocalyptica? Don't these young Dutch and French people have anything better to do?
And what about Amber d, from New Orleans? She was all made up and *swooning* last month at the release at the end of November of an album of melancholic Finnish songs sung in Finnish, on which one of the vocalists will be - who else but? - Ville Valo of love-metal band HIM.
The greater part of the message-board users' astonishing interest in Finland can naturally be put down to the normal idol-worship.
It could also be that Finnish rock attracts a rather special kind of fan. Our export magnets do not, after all, really represent the musical mainstream: Nightwish, melodic black/death metal act Children of Bodom, gothic metallers The 69 Eyes...
The fan worship takes on some intriguing features as seen through Finnish eyes when the bands' devotees actually start to get seriously interested in the country, the culture, and the language of the musicians.
"Hi! I'd like to have lyrics of ‘Jäätelökesä', a Finnish song [by] Club For Five. Could you help me?" asks Andrea Italian Boy on the Värttinä forum in the section under Finno-Ugric Music and Culture.
Some kind soul provides the Finnish lyrics, with the title presented in the partitive form, where it becomes "jäätelökesää". Andrea Italian Boy is confused, and asks: "But I thought Jäätelökesä was with an ä, and not Jäätelökesää...what is the correct form?"
This is getting dangerously close to taking a beginner's course in Finnish.
But there is more to come. The national epic had been discovered.
"Yes! I have a copy of the Kalevala! It is so cool...The Kalevala is just too neat...The first poem really is just...dude...awesome. As far as literature goes, I'm workin' on The Unknown Soldier, but the Kalevala is what I'll finish first", gushes Sisu from Seattle on the Värttinä site.
wie wahr, wie wahr
