"They make fun of you and shove you aside. They’re not as humble"
By Pyry Lapintie in Turku, Minna Pölkki in Kuopio, and Marjo Valtavaara in Oulu
"People from Helsinki think they are so damn fine and tough. The biggest braggarts are those who have moved there from elsewhere. They think that if you can’t get someplace on the tram, you are in the countryside", explains Turku resident Kalle Suomela, 23, in microbrewery pub/restaurant Koulu, a watering-hole that is much envied by people in Helsinki.
While sipping his beer, Suomela criticises Helsinki residents for being selfish, because "everything that is nice in Finland should always be found in Helsinki".
"What bugs me most about Helsinki are hockey teams Jokerit, HIFK and especially that guy Hjallis [Jokerit owner Harry Harkimo]. Jokerit is a team that was artificially bought into Helsinki with lots of money. It had to be built because they don’t know how to play hockey otherwise. Now the same thing is going on with the Espoo Blues."
"What is typical for people in Helsinki is a belittling attitude towards other people. When I was in high school, I was looking for the railway station in front of Lasipalatsi and I asked several people where it was. Everyone told me they didn’t know, even though it was only 300 metres away. That goes to show the superior attitude of the people there."
"I lived in Mikkeli for a while and I have to say that the people there were more direct and spontaneous. Even strangers talk to each other when they queue in stores. In Turku, the going is a bit like it is in Helsinki. If you say something to a stranger, they ask you what the hell you are talking about."
Markku Lappalainen, 50, a Turku native who now lives in Parainen, sits enjoying a pint in Turku's Old Bank restaurant.
"I can’t think of anything that annoys me more about Helsinki than the fact that it is a small town from the East that took away Turku’s status as Finland’s capital city."
"It is hard to get a grasp on what it is to be from Helsinki", Lappalainen muses.
"But being a true Helsinki native is just as noble as being a true Turku native", Lappalainen comments after a brief pause for thought.
"They are always in a hurry", Kuopio native Jasmin Leskinen, 15, begins.
"When you try to ride the bus, they do not help you out. They just make fun of dialects and shove you to the side, out of their way."
Leskinen and her friends feel that Helsinki residents think people in other parts of the country are hillbillies and yokels.
"The Helsinki slang sounds arrogant. They probably don’t mean it, but the tone is that way", Leskinen remarks.
"But there are good things there too. I have relatives and friends there, and they are nice."
Tiia Tanskanen and Milla Korhonen continue: "We happened to have a friendly tram driver. And the Linnanmäki amusement park is a great place!"
Let us move on to the thirtysomethings, who reproach Helsinki residents for being indifferent, hurried, and prejudiced.
Ville Matikka remarks that Helsinki people turn out to be normal once you chat with them for a while, "and most of them are from Savo, anyway."
The pattern that emerges is that people from provincial cities tend to regard Helsinki-ites mostly as "ex-people-from-the-provinces" who have developed an attitude. There is probably a fair degree of truth in the view. Helsinki has been a traditional magnet for internal migration, although it is losing its power these days, partly through steepling housing costs.
"There is nothing wrong with them", observes Heikki Hentunen from Varpaisjärvi, north of Kuopio.
Really?
"Well, maybe in hockey circles sometimes. The games make people emotional", chimes in Mikko Ryynänen, also from Varpaisjärvi.
"Helsinki residents seem to be too full of being from Helsinki. They are not as humble as others", Oulu resident Mikko Koiranen sums up his views.
Marika Säkkinen agrees. People from Helsinki have left her with a distant and hard image.
"One good example is that up here in Oulu, when I board the bus in the morning, I always greet the driver. In Helsinki they would stare at you if you did that."
Aila Palo and Lasse Tikkanen sit down for a cup of coffee in the Oulu marketplace. Tikkanen suspects that people in the capital scarcely have time for such a coffee break. "The people seem to be so hurried, and the going gets pretty crazy."
Palo says that Helsinki residents cannot be compared to people from Northern Finland under any circumstances.
"We were in Vuokatti a while ago for some R & R. There were two people from Oulu, a couple from Turku, and the rest from Helsinki. We did not get along with the people from Helsinki, no matter how hard we tried. They were a gang of their own that was hard to penetrate."
"It is a big city with so many different kinds of people that you cannot generalise", Sanna Laurila points out.
"But you do get those comments there that we use reindeer to power our cars. It depends on your state of mind how you react to that sort of stuff."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.9.2005
More on this subject:
 A hatred of Helsinki unites the rest of the country
PYRY LAPINTIE, MINNA PÖLKKI AND MARJO VALTAVAARA / Helsingin Sanomat
pyry.lapintie@hs.fi, minna.polkki@hs.fi, marjo.valtavaara@hs.fi
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