Meet detective Kyösti Pöysti from Pasila, a cult tv-series that relies on tight, absurd and idiosyncratic language and depressing the suspects until they give up. Now there are fan-made subtitles to introduce this gem to the english misspelling world. Reetta Ruusu, The Orphant Dogs, For and against, Key player and lots more in related videos. [more inside]
posted by Free word order! on Jun 22, 2009 - 5 comments

"How did the contact with Keane come about? / Completely randomly. A friend of the band's, bought one of my prints from a mutual friend's shop. The band saw the print in his house and said 'this is the person we have to work with on our next album artwork'." Sanna Annukka (previously on MeFi) discusses how she came to illustrate Keane's album, Under the Iron Sea, and singles, the artwork of which is playful, lonely, and folklore-like in feel. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on May 18, 2009 - 20 comments

Paavo Haavikko, one of Finland's (and Europe's) foremost poets, died earlier this week. As well as poetry, his seventy or so published works included essays, novels, plays for the stage, radio & TV, and opera libretti. (via) [more inside]
posted by misteraitch on Oct 9, 2008 - 8 comments

Finnish supermarket dominoes. (6 1/2 minute SLYT post)
posted by miss lynnster on Mar 15, 2008 - 34 comments

Anglo-Finnish artist Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.

She mentioned The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.

Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with three albums.
posted by klangklangston on Feb 25, 2008 - 23 comments

Hannu's Boatyard is a site by a Finnish guy who offers free plans for two dozen simple plywood boats you can build, along with photos illustrating the build process of each. He also describes basic woodbending technique and some of the design process, in a pleasing writing style that makes me want to get off the internet and make things. My favorites: Portuguese style dinghy; tiny stubby halfpea; round, Welsh-style coracle -- if you click on no other link today, click on the coracle link and scroll down at least to the black and white photo.
posted by LobsterMitten on Oct 12, 2007 - 31 comments

I'ts fun to stay at the... N-M-K-Y!
posted by miss lynnster on Aug 26, 2007 - 28 comments

Jyrki Kasvi is a member of the Finnish parliament from the Uusimaa constituency. He represents the Green League and his campaign website can be viewed in English, Swedish, or Klingon.
posted by fandango_matt on Mar 9, 2007 - 23 comments

I never realized how great Wikipedia was for quick-and-dirty guides to languages. For example, did you know that Esperanto uses affixes to cut the number of adjectives one must learn in half? Or that Finnish has fifteen noun cases, including six locative declensions? Or that Vedic Sanskrit was tonal? How about that Cherokee verbs each have 21,262 inflected forms? I could play with this forever.
posted by borkingchikapa on Dec 1, 2004 - 36 comments