Tag: Finland
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Down from Basswood: Voices from the Boundary Waters
A friend of mine recently moved to northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He said he’d been looking online for information about the region when he stumbled upon mention of an obscure book that was supposed to really capture the area well. It was the short story collection Down from Basswood: Voices from the Boundary Waters by…
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Päntsdrunk, baby box, Moomin, and Finland’s other official emojis
God bless Finland, my ancestral homeland. First, there’s the new book Pantsdrunk (Kalsarikanni): The Finnish Path to Relaxation (Drinking at Home Alone in your Underwear) by Miska Rantanen. From the publisher: Danes have hygge. Swedes have lagom. But the Finnish secret to contentment is faster and easier—”kalsarikänni” or pantsdrunk—drinking at home, alone, in your underwear. When it comes to…
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The point of coffee is to suffer
I can’t stop laughing at this comic: I started drinking coffee after college, and when I did I went straight to black, sometimes with sugar. It took me that long because my taste buds weren’t ready for the bitterness of black coffee. And yet when I did try to start drinking it regularly, it never…
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A Moomin and his typewriter
Life goals, courtesy of Moominpapa: (h/t Austin Kleon) Steve K has a nice write-up about the wide-carriage Olympia on display at Moomin World in Finland that’s meant to stand in for Moominpappa’s typewriter. It does look like a wide carriage in the above illustration, though in this one it’s of normal size:
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A Frozen Hell
Finland alone, in danger of death—superb, sublime Finland—shows what free men can do. —Winston Churchill And Trotter, the author of the superb book A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, shows what fine historians can do. Not sure how I found this book, but after visiting Finland last summer I wanted to learn more about…
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So Far Advanced
Here’s a funny bit in an otherwise unfunny but fascinating book called A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940. After Finland refused Stalin’s ultimatum, Russia initiated war and installed a puppet Finnish government that signed the “treaty” Stalin had wanted: Never change, Finland.
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Helsinki, July 2016
Just got back from a two-week trip to Scandinavia, through Finland, Sweden, and Norway. I posted pics on Instagram throughout, but first up here are my favorites from Finland: