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by Marja-Leena

Vappu and May Day

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Ah, it’s May Eve, as Helsingin Sanomat reminds me. Almost anywhere else on the planet this would not be so very significant, but in Finland it means “Vappu”, a kind of Finnish “Mardi Gras meets the Rite of Spring”, with some historical political overtones and a strong youth and student flavouring. With the time difference, the party has been underway for awhile and will carry on into May Day tomorrow.

Since I wrote a year ago about this celebration with its pagan origins, please go read that if you missed it. Wikipedia has more on May Day, including Vappu and its origin in Walpurgisnacht. I wonder why we don’t have any May Day celebrations in western Canada, a little pagan fun might be what the doctor ordered as antidote to our depressing politics, hmm? Maybe something like these dancers in Norfolk?

So, dear Finnish readers, Hauskaa Vappua! and a Happy May Day to English readers! I wonder if Walpurgisnacht is still celebrated in Germany, if so, have fun!?

Addendum May 1st:
As some of the links in my post of a year ago don’t work anymore, it was neat to come across a recipe for the traditional Vappu treat tippaleipä at Axis for Aevil**. (Literally translated it is drip bread.) I remember my mother’s were much thinner than in the photo and we ate them fresh. (I really should make some after all this but I don’t like deep frying – memories suffice!)

And at Chocolate & Zucchini I learn that in France it is Labour Day, and that “May 1 is also La Fête du Muguet, and the tradition is to give the ones you love a little bouquet of lily-of-the-valley, for good luck and to celebrate the arrival of spring.” I’m going out to pick some lily of the valley from my garden right now!

** link no longer available

April 30, 2005 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena 3 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Geist’s maps of Canada

Oh, I must share this find from my morning blogstroll! Today, while still in fairy tale mode after yesterday’s post perhaps, a link to The Fairy Tale Map of Canada piqued my interest at plep.

It turns out to be at the site of Geist, a Vancouver-based literary magazine of Canadian ideas and culture. There are more “maps” of Canada based on thematic place names – some are really quite funny, cheeky even a bit naughty, so go and enjoy yourself! Browsing through some of the essays, I had another chuckle over the story of a mushroom-gathering foray titled Gribnicki, and some bittersweet memories reading Apricot Platz.

Oh, and do read the more serious and insightful Cautionary Tales for Children by Alberto Manguel – “Some years ago, Susan Crean amusingly suggested that nations might be defined or understood through their emblematic children’s books and according to whether the protagonist was male or female.”

April 18, 2005 in Culture by Marja-Leena Comments Off on Geist’s maps of Canada

by Marja-Leena

Easter

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Axis of Ævil* is an interesting blog by an American expat who married a Finn, moved to Helsinki and writes irreverently about life there. Being the Easter weekend, I wish to point out a post called The Fazer Chicken* that really interested me because I’m fond of Fazer, an old and major chocolate, candy and bakery company in Finland. She writes about Fazer’s Mignon eggs, “… are the neatest Easter chocolates ever. These are real eggshells filled with an almond-hazelnut milk chocolate.” Made since 1896, “they are filled by hand, all 2.5 million of them each year”. Visit the links she’s provided to learn more about these wonderful hand-filled Easter eggs. Yum, I’ve had them occasionally a long time ago, wonder where in Vancouver I can find them?

More about Easter in Finland* and Easter cards* one hundred years ago.

Hauskaa Pääsiäistä, Joyeuses Pâques, Frohes Ostern, Happy Easter!

UPDATE January 2014: *Sigh, all links have gone kaput and have been removed. If interested in Fazer, I suggest a search – quite interesting!

March 25, 2005 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Art in Greater Vancouver

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A common complaint amongst art bloggers in North America is how little coverage the visual arts is given in mainstream newspapers. Here in the Vancouver area, our biggest paper the Vancouver Sun has a weekly listing of some of the gallery shows around Greater Vancouver. I suspect the galleries themselves don’t always make full use of this service, minimal though it is. Some big-name shows may get a promotional write-up, and we may see a seasonal “what’s coming up” article. Critical reviews themselves are almost non-existent.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find an almost full two-page spread “Art Thrives in the Suburbs” by Glenn Bohn, in the Vancouver Sun on January 26th, about the public galleries in the communities surrounding the city of Vancouver. The main focus is on the Burnaby Art Gallery in the city of Burnaby, Surrey Art Gallery in the city of Surrey, and the Evergreen Cultural Centre in the city of Coquitlam. Several colour photos catch the eye, a large one of the BAG’s curator Darrin Martens and three photos of prints from their recent print exhibition. The sidebar has a long list of all the public art galleries in Greater Vancouver with addresses and opening hours.

This is a good thing, informing readers about the many visual arts centres around here will hopefully attract more people out to see the shows! Dare I hope that we may see a little more coverage in the future?

It’s too bad that this is not available online except to subscribers as I’m too slow a typist to copy it all out, though I’ve added a few links. The BAG and SAG websites are very sad, I must say!

February 4, 2005 in Culture by Marja-Leena Comments Off on Art in Greater Vancouver

by Marja-Leena

peaceful societies

Last week I made one of my visits to Via Negativa and found a very interesting series of posts that grabbed my own interest in “primitive” cultures. Dave Bonta announces the debut of the Peaceful Societies website

“Today marks the inauguration of a new website on Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. This is truly a ground-breaking site. There is nothing else like it on the web. Granted, I’m a bit biased. The site is largely the work of my father, Bruce D. Bonta, a retired academic librarian and peace scholar whose Peaceful Peoples: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow, 1993) was similarly a pioneering effort.[..] The heart of the website is the Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies, with twenty-five entries up and more on the way. I want to spend the next three days highlighting brief selections from these entries – things that struck my fancy for one reason or another”.

So he does on Friday and Saturday, concluding in part: “I should perhaps have made it clear from the outset that none of these societies are intended to serve as models for some ideal utopia. Personally, I think there are always trade-offs, and that some qualities we tend to value positively, such as bravery and personal ambition, may not be all that compatible with true social harmony.[…] And on a much larger scale, countries such as Iceland and Finland might now also satisfy the website’s definitions of a peaceful society.”

I’m familiar with some names including Inuit, Amish and Hutterites, but there are some unknown to me among the so-called primitives societies. I hope to see the S&#225mi people included in the list as it develops. One comment about Finland – while it is highly egalitarian and peaceful, it is still not without problems such as domestic violence due to alcohol abuse (that unfortunately common social disease!)

Fascinating, thought-provoking and recommended reading – it will keep me occupied for a while!

January 24, 2005 in Culture, Ethnicity by Marja-Leena 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

ArtsNow for Olympics 2010

The monthly Opus Visual Arts Newsletter (in print and online) provides useful information for artists such as calls for submissions, some arts news and, my favourite part, an always thoughtful and well-written editorial by arts advocate Chris Tyrell. Sometimes this newsletter seems to be the only source of some of the arts news in our province!

In this month’s editorial New Money for the Arts, Chris Tyrell details the cultural funding program that is now in place for Olympics 2010 being held in BC. Of special relevance to artists and particularly arts organizations is ArtsNow whose “mission statement is as follows: To strengthen and enhance the creative capacity of individuals, organizations and communities throughout the province.[…]They seek to fund projects that create lasting change for a better arts sector and/or community.” Please read the newsletter and the ArtsNow website for all the details.

Tyrell finishes: “This good news is timely. As I wrote in last month’s editorial, Opus has offered to host an artists’ forum later this month on what kind of collective action the visual arts community might take to coincide with the Olympic Games. Now when we meet, we will know that there are new funding opportunities for us should we decide to do something innovative. The meeting will also give the community the opportunity to discuss Artropolis, a tradition in need of help.

Opus’ public forum is on Wednesday, January 26th at 7:00pm in the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre (the Planetarium), 1100 Chestnut Street in Vancouver. The forum will determine if there is interest in a visual arts Olympic celebration, different models of showcasing visual art and about the future of Artropolis. It will be an interesting meeting, so please plan to attend and, as space is limited, please RSVP to my e-address below.” (ctyrell at shaw.ca)

Related link: Artropolis

January 16, 2005 in Being an Artist, Culture, Current Events by Marja-Leena Comments Off on ArtsNow for Olympics 2010

by Marja-Leena

the sixth day

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Six Geese A-Laying, Illustration by Jan Brett on a Christmas card, from the book The Twelve Days of Christmas, published by Dodd, Mead & Co., NY

A little bit of whimsy, forgive me, as some ever so slight relief from the heavy hearts we feel over this week’s immense tragedies….

A faint memory from childhood has been teasing me, an image of my mother saying that the Christmas tree should stay up until the twelfth day of Christmas. A search led to Wikipedia: The Twelve Days of Christmas are the days from December 26 to January 6, or the Epiphany, also called ‘Twelfth Day’, culminating that night in ‘Twelfth Night’.**

But, back then the tree was not put up until Christmas Eve. As adults now we usually put up ours about a week before Christmas, and many others put theirs up in the beginning of December. How traditions change!

So, according to the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas**, my true love shall be bringing me ‘Six geese a-laying’! An interesting fact about this song is that the total number of presents given (counting 12 partridges, 11 turtle doves…) is 364 which is 1 less than the number of days in a year.

Then this item jogged another memory from childhood of New Year’s eves, though Finnish not German:

In Germany people would drop molten lead into cold water and try to tell the future from the shape it made. A heart or ring shape meant a wedding, a ship a journey, and a pig plenty of food in the year ahead. I wonder if any Finns or Germans do this anymore today.

And so, friends, it is New Year’s Eve on this sixth day of Christmas. Have a healthy and peaceful, creative and giving NEW YEAR 2005! Let us hope for relief, restoration of life’s necessities and peace for all the needy in this world. (Ooh, my, I just realized that it is also six days since the earthquake and tsunami in Asia!)

UPDATED Jan.05.05 Just found out that Epiphany (Twelfth Day) is a national holiday in Finland. Now I understand why it was such a significant date for my mother!

December 31, 2004 in Culture, Folk Legends & Myths by Marja-Leena Comments Off on the sixth day

by Marja-Leena

Christmas Eve

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(My 2003 Christmas card of a gingerbread house made by daughter Erika)

It’s been sunny and cool here and we enjoyed a morning walk around our neighbourhood. I finished the last of the baking this afternoon, so this evening we decided to go for a stroll in Park & Tilford Gardens to see the annual Christmas light display – enchanting! The moon was visible in the clear sky, and it is getting frosty. As we were driving home, wisps of fog were moving in from the sea, giving the street lights a glowing halo. It may be a green and sunny Christmas. It’s almost Christmas Eve and some of our family will be here for dinner, singing and Santa’s gifts.

Again, warmest wishes to all for a Happy Christmas, Hauskaa Joulua, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux No&#235l and Happy Holidays ( or Bah, Humbug, as a few of you prefer 🙂 )…. and Peace on Earth!

December 23, 2004 in Being an Artist, Culture by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

winter solstice

The winter solstice is again upon the Northern Hemisphere, and though the year’s shortest day heralds the onset of winter it also promises the gradual return of the sun after a prolonged period of darkness. That there are holidays at the time of this astronomical event is no coincidence. Since ancient times, people have celebrated the solstice and observed it with many different cultural and religious traditions. Some of them survive to the present day though not always in the form you might expect. Read more at National Geographic News

Candlegrove.com is a rather interesting site describing some of the ancient origins of winter solstice and of Yule or jul (or joulu in Finnish), which may have originated in Scandinavia. Note also the references to some of the ancient solstice architecture around the world, such as Stonehenge, Newgrange, and Maeshowe in the UK and the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

Update Dec.22.04: Anna L Conti has some really neat solstice photos and links, especially the Chumash rock painting as a seasonal marker. (Strange that we are thinking similar thoughts and referencing each other here!)

And if this subject really grabs your interest, check out Doug Alder’s “Drivel” on the Yule and other pagan celebrations.

December 21, 2004 in Culture, Folk Legends & Myths by Marja-Leena Comments Off on winter solstice

by Marja-Leena

snowflakes & scary santa

Today’s blog travels yielded some seasonal treats like this lovely photogallery of snowflakes and some of the science behind these nature’s artworks.

In case you missed it, also have a look at something a bit related – frost fractals.

Thanks to Amy for the snowflakes link on the sidebar at Ever So Humble* along with many other neat links. Amy has been writing this month about winter’s wonders and christmas-y stuff, sharing her honest enjoyment of the pleasures of community, home and family. I should have added her blog to my list of favourite things about Christmas!

Then at mirabilis, another favourite blog, I’m reminded of the history of “joulupukki” – Finland’s Scary Santa.

Try out these suggestions for an eco-friendly holiday

UPDATE: Avoid buying these 10 gifts.

UPDATE: Dec.25.04 Another site about snowflakes and snow crystals

*this blog no longer exists, sadly

December 20, 2004 in Culture, Folk Legends & Myths by Marja-Leena Comments Off on snowflakes & scary santa

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