Why Finland?

Debra Rae Cohen and Robert Brinkmeyer

This was the question that I and my wife, Debra Rae Cohen, heard most when we began telling people in the spring of 1994 that we would be spending the 1994-95 academic year in Helsinki (I had accepted a distinguished Fulbright appointment, the Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki.) and despite some hesitations about how we would deal with the winter (particularly the long nights), we looked forward to an exciting and fulfilling year. We got that--and much more.

Maybe the best way to express our feelings toward Finland and the Finns is to say that now, several months after our return to Mississippi, we are still homesick -- homesick for Helsinki and more generally for Finland. Helsinki is a beautiful city -- graceful, stately, bustling, clean, and safe. It's a great place in which to hang out, with cozy cafes and clubs, museums, and cultural activities and performances of all variety, from opera to rock 'n' roll .

The everyday for both of us meant primarily being faculty members at the University of Helsinki. I had a joint appointment in the English department and the Renvall Institute, an interdisciplinary research/teaching institute that included American, Russsian, and Nordic studies. My office was at Renvall, located on several floors of an older building that was cramped, busy, and, well, lived in--just my sort of place, as anyone who has been in my office at the University of Missisippi knows. Debbie (who was working on her dissertation and teaching in the English department) and I felt immediately at home both at Renvall and in the English department.

The University of Helsinki is very selective, and we quickly became aware of how talented the English and American Studies students are, both in their general intelligence and in their mastery of English. We also just as quickly discovered how fascinated Finnish students are with America in general and the South in particular. Finnish students in American Studies seem to be broadly grouped (with some exceptions, of course) into three areas: immigration history; Native American Studies; and Southern Studies, particularly Afro-American culture and the civil rights movement. The first area is understandable enough: the interest in the migration history primarily of Finns and other Nordic peoples to America. The other two categories are predictable enough for another reason: the fascination with aspects of America foreign to the Finnish experience, most obviously multiculturalism and minority studies. Finland, notwithstanding the Lapps (who have mostly stayed in Lapland, the northern reaches of Finland and the rest of Scandanavia), is an incredibly homogeneous society, with few non-Finns or people of color who are permanent residents. Finland is unquestionably a tight, fairly closed society. And so American Studies students remain fascinated with everything that Finland is not, which in part explains their interest in the South, the region of America where race is most embedded in culture and history.

My Southern literature survey course was a case in point. The class was packed, about 65 students, standing-room-only in a classroom meant for about 55. Student interest in the reading was extremely high, particularly for Afro-American writers and white writers who dealt with race. Class discussions almost always ended up focusing on matters of race. Along with the racial issues the texts raised--or avoided--my students were fascinated with how American Studies read race. They wanted to know how blacks and whites, in the same classroom, responded to texts charged by racial dynamics, particularly those, like Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children, that were violent and inflammatory. In my introduction of myself during the first class, I told my students of my 11 years teaching at North Carolina Central University, a historically black institution in the North Carolina university system. My experience at N.C.C.U. only added to the Finns' fascination with me, a professor from the Deep South; probably the most frequently asked question during the semester was how my Afro-American students at Central responded to one or another of the texts we were reading.

In my seminar on Southern intellectual history, there was a similar fascination with race, but also with regionalism, not only with Southern distinctiveness but also with more general theories of regionalism and regionalist identity. One of the most intriguing classes focused on what "Southernness" means, both in America and elsewhere. I learned from my students that Finland has its "South" (a region isolated, rural, poor, and provincial), though it is located on Finland's western, not the southern, coast. Two of the students in the class were Finnish "Southerners," and like many American Southerners living in big cities outside the region, they had mixed feelings about their origins, a blend of pride, defensiveness, and embarrassment.

In terms of my own research, thinking and writing about the South in Finland was of course quite different from what it is in Mississippi. The South seemed as far away as it actually was; Mississippi's summer and its dog days were almost imposssible to register imaginatively during Finland's long polar nights, for instance. I can't remember when I felt more detached from the South and its life, and this detachment certainly affected my perspective on Southern culture and literature. My work actually dovetailed with my experience abroad in a strange way. Much of my research during the year was on William Alexander Percy and other Southern conservatives, many of whom saw themselves as inheritors and protectors of traditional European life, a way of life that had given way to the modern industrial state everywhere in the Western world (including Europe) except in the American South. What better position for me to be in for studying these thinkers? If they imaginatively had one foot in the South and one in Europe, I did, too, and the entire issue of understanding the South in an international context--what the conservatives were calling for--is precisely what I wrestled with the entire year I was abroad.

Teaching and research were significant aspects of Debbie's and my education abroad, but far from all of it. Early on, we vowed not to spend all of our time in the library and office, avoiding the vibrant cultural life about us. Most wonderful for us, above anything else that happened that year, was getting to know a number of Finns as close friends. A whole new world opened up for us. Contrary to the stereotype of Finns as being grim and unfriendly, we found most Finns open and warm, particularly once we got past initial introductions. One of our fondest memories is spending Christmas at the home of Iiri Heinila, the mother of one of our best friends in Helsinki, Maarika Toivonen. Iiri had never met us, but opened her home to us in the country for three days of traditional Christmas joy and feasting, including a visit from Joulupukki, the Finnish Santa Claus. Another memorable visit was to the parents of another friend and colleague, Seppo Tamminen, who handles the operations of the American Studies program at the Renvall Institute. Once again, we were treated as family from the moment we entered the farmhouse. Another friend and colleague, Markku Henriksson, one of Finland's leading Americanists, provided more rugged hospitality, inviting me and several other men for a "macho" winter wilderness weekend, complete with long walks through the woods, a four-hour sauna (punctuated with dousings by frigid lake water drawn up through a hole Markku had cut in the ice), and much beer and sausage. The generosity we experienced on these visits for the most part characterized our everyday lives in Helsinki as well.

During our year abroad, there was also much opportunity to travel outside Finland, both for pleasure and business. A vacation trip to Southern Spain during the gloom of the Finnish winter was a godsend for both of us, a much needed recharging of the batteries. We threw ourselves into the sun and the rich Spanish culture. As a Fulbright professor, I had a number of opportunities to lecture outside Finland--in Poland, Spain, Austria, Greece, and Norway. As in Finland, my hosts were welcoming and enthusiastic; and, as in Finland, everywhere I lectured there was an intense interest in American Studies and particularly Southern Studies. Not surprisingly, Walker Percy, a writer deeply steeped in European literary and philosophical traditions, was very well-known and popular; and so were a number of other contemporary Southern writers--particularly Jayne Anne Phillips, Richard Ford, and Bobbie Ann Mason--as were Afro-American writers, including Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and of course Faulkner.

It wasn't long into our stay in Finland that Debbie and I agreed that the worst thing about being there was having to leave. We stayed on until the last possible moment and now look forward to returning in May for a conference and after that as often as we can. And of course we look forward to entertaining Finnish friends in Mississippi. We've already seen four friends from Finland in America and will see several more this spring. In June, I will be hosting, under the sponsorship of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, a group of Finnish teachers of English in a tour of the Deep South, including forays to Memphis, the Mississippi Delta, Louisiana Cajun country, and New Orleans. Almost every day, we correspond by e-mail with friends and colleagues in Finland and the rest of Europe. We've clearly established a number of long-term relationships that promise ongoing friendship and cultural exchange.

There are many people that deserve our thanks for making our year abroad so wonderful. It would be impossible here to list them all, but a few special folks deserve mention: Leila Mustanoja, the director of the Fulbright office in Helskinki; our host family, the Vihrialas; Eino Lyytinen, Director of Renvall, Seppo Tamminen, coordinator of American Studies in Renvall, and the entire Renvall family (hugs and kisses to all); Matti Rissanen, Chair of the English department and all of the English faculty at the University of Helsinki; our hosts at other universities, in Finland and elsewhere; the cultural affairs staff at the American embassy (hey, there, Leslie!); everyone at Digelius Records; and all of our students. And everyone else in Finland and the rest of Europe who were so gracious during our stay. You know who you are. We know who you are. Thanks, friends. Y'all come visit.

Bob Brinkmeyer