HELSINKI - WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH KAUHAJOKI?

The big story yesterday, before it got overshadowed by the fact that the Treasury is about to sell the next generation down the river, was this balding dickhead who shot up his school in Kauhajoki, Finland. In case you've forgotten, it was a bad deal, there was a bunch of crap on youtube leading up to it, and it's Finland's second major school shooting in as many years. We were kinda going on the impression that everything over in Scandinavia was one big socialized, middle-class smile party (give or take the odd church burning), so we asked our Finnish music editor Sanna what the H is going on with his country.

I come from what they call the "Texas of Finland," real close to where the latest shooting happened in the southwest of the country. Since the civil war ended back in 1918, it's been a base for right-wing types (my grandfather fought with the Nazis in WWII). It's also really common for teenagers from one town to drive their families' tractors (you can get your tractor license when you're 15, versus 18 for a car) over to the next town to fight their teens with baseball bats. I did that a lot when I was young.

There was a big national discussion about 6 or 7 years ago about the fact that all the young people were moving to cities like Helsinki and Turku and Tampere, and the rest of the country was just getting older and sicker. Whenever I visit Vähäkyrö where I grew up (an hour up the road from Kauhajoki), all I can notice is how insanely depressed/depressing it's become. It's not a matter of unemployment either, there are plenty of jobs, just nobody to fill them.

A bunch of people have guns in the region, but that's no different from the rest of the country. There are probably as many guns in Finland as there are cars. Somehow I've made it through my life without ever seeing or handling a gun, but they're always around. The thing is, there is no no national debate or conversation about gun ownership/control in Finland, and never has been. You can bet it's coming now though.

The reason it hasn't been a real issue is people don't buy guns for the same reason they often do in the States, to protect themselves from other individuals. Finnish guns are mostly rifles and shotguns and, as you can guess, most of them are used for hunting. A lot of them are also used by men for shooting their wives and kids and then themselves. This is basically the national pastime in the north of the country.

Finns have a reputation for not really talking about their feelings, especially the men. Back in the early 90s Finland led the Western world in suicide rates (our male rate was more than twice Japan's. Japan!). It's tapered off a little since and we've been surpassed by all the ex-Soviet states, but it's still up there. There's also a history in Finland of open admiration for the US; I think we're probably one of the most "Americanized" countries in Europe, if not the world. Anyways, I think all this plays into what happened this week--kids like this crazy shooter feel like they've got no future where they're from, so they decide the best way to deal with it is to make their own Columbine massacre.

SANNA-MAIJA HANNUKSELA

Comments

[BUSTA NUT]

relatively informative - thanks

[Bjorn Against]

Sanna-Maija, you rock. Stacking your baseball bat in the back of your tractor and heading over to the neighboring village to beat up other kids for a laugh? That's the things you won't hear about in the news.

[billy]

this is from www.corrupt.org

Such is the case with school shootings, where we get to hear a long list of suspects -- video games, evil music, drugs, satanism, racism, homophobia, mental illness -- for what are sometimes quite rational acts. If you believe your world is headed toward inevitable decline, and that although this decline could be reversed easily, most people are too emotionally invested in being in denial to do anything about it, you might self-destruct to avoid the tedium. If you're going to self-destruct, don't go out alone; do some good, thin the herd, and send up a big red flag.

While some school shooters are delusional, and usually seek the attention, others like Jeff Weisse, Pekka-Eric Auvinen and now Matti Saari are of the ideological type, attempting to communicate through mass death what could not be said in words, because words can be ignored if inconvenient to the listener. This is what is most frustrating about civilization: it frees individuals to close their minds to the truth, yet depends on them (through democracy) for its leadership. It is like a partnership to deny reality, a handshake between drug addicts or a wink between snake oil salespeople. We maintain your right to denial so you will maintain our own. While we can deny any words, symbols or truths, it's hard for us to deny a physical act, like a Zen master's slap, a concentration camp or a school shooting.

Those who profit from the ignorance of others, usually because they have an ulterior motive to hide, will encourage us to see this latest event as the product of one of the above-mentioned scapegoats, or in the grand
tradition of all manipulators, blame Finland's relatively liberal gun laws, which has the added benefit of making us less able to defend ourselves against parasitic manipulators. They will want us to react emotionally, to construct our own abstract symbols unrelated to the actual causes of these events, and to blame anyone but the collective "we" that has allowed our civilization to slip so far into decay that school shootings are one of the few effective wake-up calls a student can issue.

[lajw]

finland ain't in scandinavia lads

[Finland is not a part of scandinavia]

finland is not a part of scandinavia.

[well then]

someone must have mislabeled this map

travelnotes.org/1800/Scandinavia/images/scandinavia.gif

and this one

learning.berkeley.edu/wciv/ugis55a/wc_maps/images/scandinavia.gif

and this one

freeworldmaps.net/europe/scandinavia/scandinavia.jpg

and this one

geographicguide.net/europe/maps-europe/maps/scandinavia-map.gif

and this one

alleuroperail.com/eurorailway-maps/scandinavia-railway-map-lg.gif

and this one

tkk.fi/Units/Transportation/SummerSchool/scandinavia_map.jpg

Oh look at that, that last one's even from fucking Finland.

[bergen]

even though it's pretty much true that "...everything over in Scandinavia is one big socialized, middle-class smile party" (at least compared to the horrible poverty you see in england and the us), there are of course psycho's up here too. no political system has yet stopped people from mental illness. and scandinavia has the highest suicide rates in the world, but that's because winter equals pretty much constant darkness for 3 months. add that to any normal depression and you get something hundred times worse than your average new york-breakdown.

[know ur facts]

scandinavia = denmark, norway, sweden, finland, iceland.. so go to schools fools!

[Miko]

Scandinavia is Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Including Finland or Iceland is optional; technically if you're including Finland it's "Fenno-Scandinavia" i.e. "Scandinavia and Finland".

[Marshall]

@Billy: Pertinent, insightful quote. Thanks.

@Sanna: Sanna, I liked your post very much, it's a good overview of what being Finnish feels like. I would also like to point out that your grand-father did NOT fight along the Nazis in WWII; he fought along the Germans. And fundamentally, against the Russians for geo-political reasons.