Helena, Eli, and LynnAnne
Eli, LynnAnne, Helena, and Saija sing a Norwegian song during a performance on the all-folk-music "Folklandia" cruise between Finland and Sweden
Now the sun comes up at 8:45am instead of ten o'clock.Greetings from Finland!
We hope that this message finds you all well. We heard that you got no surprises on Groundhog's day. Finns also mark this time of year in some unique ways. We would also like to tell you about the highlights of some recent performances.
As we were consulting our crispy-fresh 2008 bought-in-Finland calendars, we noticed "Shrove Tuesday" on the calendar for this week. After some figuring, we guessed that this day is the equivalent of Mardi Gras. Lent, the season of fasting before Easter, has occasioned various pre-fast excesses in different parts of the Christian world. In some countries, the festivities are called "carnival" which means something like "good-bye to meat." Traditionally during Lent, animal products like butter, milk, and eggs were not to be eaten. So, if you weren't allowed to keep these items in your house, would you throw them out? No! Party!!! Many traditional pre-fast foods use large proportions of these items. The traditional Shrove Tuesday meal, for example, is pancakes. In Finland at this time of the year, people celebrate "Laskiainen" by eating a certain excessively-delicious pastry and sledding excessively.
A "laskiaispulla" is a softball-sized sweet cardamom roll with the top cut off (think - like a pumpkin), and filled with either almond paste (common in Sweden) or raspberry jam (more common here), and a large dollop of whipped cream. Then the top goes back on, and the whole works gets dusted with powdered sugar and drowned in warm milk. We are getting fat on our own homemade ones today. (Well actually Eli is as skinny as usual, and LynnAnne looks forward to the excuse to ride her bike more.) Here is more interesting information about them, including a recipe:
http://www.axis-of-aevil.net
Has anyone heard of the annual Laskiainen sledding festival held in Palo, MN? We didn't realize until now that the sledding festival is part of the pre-lenten festivities in Finland. So after they eat fattening pastries, Finns assuage their guilt by burning off the calories while sledding. Maybe sliding down a hill was the most festive thing that Finns of old could think of. Or maybe they thought it was "all downhill from here" until Easter. A sauna must be involved somehow. Finns take their sledding very seriously, as the photos on this website attest: http://www.2camels.com/photos
Finns go sledding on plastic disks for fun, but they use a different type of sled to get around town. We have noticed a recent proliferation of kick sleds ("potkukelkka"). On a typical jaunt around town, we might see one outside the library, two outside the grocery store, and three rosy-cheeked ladies happily kicking along the bike path. Finns take this type of transportation seriously; when people kick along the secondary roads like the one outside our house, they always go on the left side of the street, like a pedestrian. The roads have a nice hard-packed icy surface since the secondary roads are not sanded or salted. Most of the snowplows in this area are farm tractors with snowplow attachments. Drivers usually drive cautiously so as not to skid or hit any kick-sledders. It is not surprising that many people have stored their bikes for the winter and gotten out the kick sleds. In fact, Finns like their kick sleds so much that during the snow-free part of the year, some ladies go to the grocery store on a four-wheeled version. If you want to know more about kick sleds, here is a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
The most kick sleds we have seen in one place was outside the "Pelimanni" restaurant / bar after our gig there last week. When we got there (early for our performance), one bike and two kick sleds were parked outside. When we left, only two more bicycles had joined the original one, but at least eight kick sleds were lined up in a neat row right outside the door.
So our bar gig went well. For a typical gig, the two of us, our two classmates, and our teacher perform all together or in different configurations for different songs. In addition to playing Finnish fiddle music, we also sing ancient Finnish poetry in song form, often to the accompaniment of the kantele or jouhikko. All of us take turns playing the stand-up bass. Some of our repertoire comes from Sweden and Norway, and LynnAnne has been learning to make and play the overtone flute which has a long Norwegian tradition. One of the people in the audience at the bar was Pehr Henrik Nordgren, a well-known Finnish composer who has lived in Kaustinen for many years and has found inspiration from the region's folk music. He was particularly intrigued with the nyckelharpa since he had never seen one up close, and he and LynnAnne looked at it and talked (Swedish -- his first language) after the concert. Eli was invited to play as a special surprise guest during a concert on Saturday. Eli has learned to replicate the local style so well that people are often surprised and amused to learn that Eli is not from here after hearing him play.
In addition to performing at the bar and in several school concerts, we have also attended several concerts this past week during Kaustinen's 30th annual Chamber Music Festival. The Festival organizers, wisely suspecting our need to spend money cautiously, encouraged our class to participate by acting as ushers for concerts held in the Folk Arts Center. Several of the concerts featured string or woodwind quartets. We also enjoyed hearing the Central Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra. We had already seen them once in concert. An enormous dynamic range of expression, superb intonation, and meticulous ensemble sensitivity are but a few of their qualities that we appreciate. On Sunday, Finland's "Meta-4" string quartet performed works by Alban Berg, Haydn, and Grieg.
By far our favorite performance of the week included more than music. A dance company from Helsinki produced "Suur Perhe," ("Big Family"). The performance featured a mix of theatre, dance, and circus with a message. Inspired by the works of renowned Finnish artist, Outi Heiskanen, the production emphasized the connections between people all over the globe and the human connection to the natural world. Many of the artist's works are dream-inspired. We found the message to be very timely and down-to-earth, and the dance company brought the message to life in a way that compliments the visual art. We were also happy to note that no Finnish was spoken on stage (aside from some babble from the monkey at one point), so we could understand just as much as the rest of the audience. At one point, the bear sidled up to the three musicians and started playing the violin. That got us thinking..... maybe...... not. We have been humbled by the world-class level of talent circulating here this week, and we are also grateful for the inclusion of many forms of musical expression.
We are also enjoying the return of light to Finland -- now we have daylight about like in Minnesota during December. Finns have a rhyme that goes with this time of year. It starts: "Aurinko, aurinko lettuja paistaa, hauska on auringon lettuja maistaa..." We don't understand all of the words, but we think there is a connection between the sun (aurinko) and pancakes (lettuja) beacuse the Finnish verb "paistaa" means both "shine" and "fry."
Happy Shrove Tuesday and don't eat too many pancakes.
Eli and LynnAnne
