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HELSINGIN SANOMAT INTERNATIONAL EDITION - HOME |
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| You arrived here at 17:05 Helsinki time Monday 22.3.2010 |
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OLGA is an Ingrian Finn returnee, one of those Russians hailing from the once-Finnish areas north and south of the basin of the Neva River, near St. Petersburg. Olga trained as a scientist-cosmonaut at the USSR Academy of Sciences, and she also won a relay bronze medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. However, Olga is so grateful to her real fatherland for granting her the right to return that she would rather work as a hairdresser in a suburb of Espoo than take jobs away from gifted native Finns. TRYGGVE is a doctor from Tromsø in Northern Norway. He has specialised in paediatric cardiac surgery. Having amassed a small personal fortune on the oilfields of the North Sea, this tall and dashing physician-philanthropist has donated EUR 4.2 million out of his own pocket to the Friends of the University Children’s Hospital - rather more than NHL star Teemu Selänne and pop musician Riki Sorsa have raised between them. GUNILLA is a language teacher from Sweden, who left her tenured position at Uppsala University in order to teach children with developmental disabilities in Pieksämäki. Gunilla is a great admirer of the "Miracle of the Winter War", but firmly believes that the military campaigns of King Gustavus Adolphus (in which a good many Finns served and died) were a mistake. Gunilla supports the Finnish national ice hockey team and regards the Swedish Olympic victory in Torino (3-2 over the Finns) as a complete fluke. Furthermore, she enjoys listening to Finnish rockers Popeda and Leningrad Cowboys. MADS-GUNNAR is from Jylland [Jutland] in Denmark, and is a former chef de cuisine at the Danish Court in Copenhagen. He has settled in Finland, establishing an organic vineyard and game restaurant in Forssa. Mads-Gunnar left Denmark after becoming increasingly disgusted with the ecologically unsound intensive farming of his homeland, and he only buys ingredients for his restaurant from local farmers who have committed themselves to restoring the old "swidden" or slash-and-burn cultivation methods. SIR NEVILLE is an eminent British geneticist and a seven-time Oxford rowing blue who stroked his eight to victory in five Varsity Boat Races, but the lofty reputation of Finnish high-technology research drew him to Kuopio University. In his spare time, Nev coaches a junior soccer team of marginalised tenement children from the notorious Petonen district of the city, but he admits occasionally to missing his old friends at the bridge club - and decent real ale. JONAH hails from Utah in the United States, but opposes the War in Iraq, George. W. Bush, McDonalds, Limp Bizkit, and American football. On the other side of the coin, he was already able on his arrival in Finland to make the traditional Savo dish of kalakukko (fish baked inside a loaf made of rye flour), and showed a natural talent for rune-singing in the archaic trochaic tetrametre of the national epic Kalevala. Jonah plans to study sustainable forestry and silviculture. Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the weekly supplement NYT on 28.9.2007 More on this subject:  Towards a slightly more tolerant approach
VILLE SIMILÄ AND ILKKA MATTILA / Helsingin Sanomat
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