Blogging, summing up

I began writing blogs in 2008. The first blog is from 19 Oct. of that year. It is titled "Yksilö vaikka jos sortuisi..." (Even if an individual fell down... ), a quote from a revolutionary song. The blog is about the totalitarian regime of Belorussia, and about the murder of Anna Politkovskaja. 

The number of blogs per year has varied. In 2008, I wrote 26 blogs, a year later 37, in 2010 only two, in 2011 I took a time-out, and during 2012, I put 64 blogs on the Internet for you to read. By the end of December 2012, there were 128 blogs in total. Summing up, the blogs have been viewed 5084 times, last year in average 300 times a month. I do appreciate that you take your time to read what I have had in my mind.

 

There are no statistics as regards what language my readers know. I guess that some of you may be using translating programmes in order to clear out of the linguistic barrier. However, there are statistics on in what countries you reside. It seems that most of you are Swedes and Finns. Since the beginning in 2008, these blogs have been read 1935 times in Sweden, 1917 times in Finland, 373 in Russia, 228 in the U.S., 90 times in Germany and the Netherlands respectively, 77 in Ukraine, 41 in France, 33 in South Korea, and 29 times in Danmark. 

I have had no readers in Africa or in South-America. That is a pity but understandable. Well, I do not write about themes that are of relevance in these parts of the world. This said with three reservations: on Jan. 10, 2009, I wrote in Finnish an obituary in commemoration of my Argentinian comrade Amanda Peralta; on Sept. 9, 2012, in Swedish on the U.S. supported coup d'état in Chile, and on 18 Sept., 2012, in English, Spanish and Finnish on "Fiestas patrias", a grand national commemoration day of the beginning of the Chilean independence process in 1810. Chile has been an important country to me, because one of my three sisters is living there, and because some of my good friends in Sweden, my home country, come from Chile.  

In my blogs, I seldom use a language of wider communication such as English. Finnish is the main language of these blogs, and as we know, Finnish speaking people have not grounded larger Finnish language colonies overseas. Apart from Finnish, I have written blogs in Swedish 13 times, once in Esperanto, and 6 times in Russian.

 

The most popular blog has been "Äidit vain nuo toivossa väkevät" from May 6, 2009 (appr. "Only mothers in hope so strong", a quote from a poem by Lauri Viita, a renown Finnish poet). It has been visited 391 times. The blog is a reaction to what we could read in the report State of the World's Mothers. It is a heart-rending report. (For updated information, see here.) The work carried out by organisations such as "Save the children" is extremely important for the sake of humanity. 

 

It seems that readers have liked some of my linguistic blogs, and especially texts where I compare Finnish with Swedish. The blog on metaphors ("Kieli - eläimellinen kasvihuone" / Language - an animalistic greenhouse, Apr. 29, 2009) has been visited 134 times, and the comparison of the two languages ("Suomen ja ruotsin kielen vertailua"/ Comparison of the Finnish and Swedish language, March 17, 2009) 64 times.

 

I have noticed that Swedish speaking people at times think that Finnish is an "udda språk" (odd language). It concerns prejudices due to the fact that Swedes do not learn at school what kind of language Finnish is. Note that the language is one of Sweden's five national minority languages. (For more information see here.) In Finland, on the other hand, Swedish is one of the two official languages, and an obligatory subject at the Finnish schools.

 

Finns for their part sometimes want to make their language more strange than it is perhaps in order to get it sound exotic. Even if it may sound odd, the fact is that Finnish is fairly close to Swedish insofar as the meaning side or semantics of the language and several syntactic features are concerned. Nearly 30 percent of the Finnish vocabulary derive from Germanic / Swedish words. Living in Sweden, I have felt that I have to tell people, irrespective their first language, that Finnish is not an "udda" phenomenon but a language among other languages, for its semantic contents quite Scandinavian at that. Naturally, this tenet has been reflected in my blogs. 

 

Another theme that is dear to me concerns Russian and Russia. History of Russia is long and full of dramatic, occasionally horrible periods of time. In this connection, I come to think of Mauno Koivisto, the president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He has written a book "Venäjän idea" (The idea of Russia) where he discusses various aspects of Russian history. Visiting Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Russian journalist asked him: "What is the idea of Finland?" Known by his witty humour and laconic statements the president replied: "To survive." 

 

Of course, in the first place, Finns have themselves to thank for surviving as a nation. But the role of Russia has also been important and not at all solely negative. We may think of the period from 1809 to 1917 when Finland was a Great Duchy under the Russian czar. (You will get more information on this topic in English here.) Then, industrialisation, urbanisation, folkschool education and many other things vital to a civic modern society were started. Finnish, the language of the majority, got a legalized status as an official language beside Swedish, which up till then had been the language of administration and higher education. 

 

For the independent Finland, Soviet Union / Russia has been one of the main concerns. To gloss over a very long story, we may note that without mutual will to know each other and even learn from each other, there is no good neighbourhood. The blogs that are relevant in this connection are the ones in Russian, where I tell, among other things, how I came to begin studying the language. See "Расцветали яблони и груши... " или как я встретился с неизвестным пленником from 20.6.2012 ("Apple trees and pear trees were blossoming..." or how I met with an unknown prisoner of war). 

 

The blog "Ei elämää kuin peltoa voi ylittää / Жизнь прожить - не поле перейти" (March 6, 2009) is my homage to Boris Pasternak (1890-1960). The title is a Russian saying and the last line in Pasternak's poem Гамлет / Hamlet.
Я один, все тонет в фарисействе
Жизнь прожить - не поле перейти.
(I am alone, all sinks in Pharisaism, to live through the life is not like going over a field).
As we know, Boris Pasternak was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. However, he declined the prize because of the reaction of the Soviet State, as he stated in his resignation letter to the Nobel Committee. 

 

The world we are living in is a complicated, terrible and a wonderful place. There is lots of work to do for each one of us to make it a better place to live. Most certainly, you and I will never meet in person but still together we make what is called humanity, a mission we must care dearly.