The hand that moves the cradle also wields the gun

A Babel of clear, crisp, windy blue skies

As you might have noticed by now, the white written lines that used to crisscross the midnight-blue background of this blog no longer sport the tongue of Cervantes. Indeed, I have decided to swap onto English and I can’t really say it’s been much of a conscious decision. I might have danced along the streets of Helsinki for the span of mere two weeks but already do I feel like home, safe within this Babel of sorts; a Babel of folks come from all about the globe. It just doesn’t make sense anymore to greet the Canadian guy, tickle the Italian girl, shake hands with the Portuguese bunch, dance with the Greek lady, smirk at the more-than-dubious English of some of my Finnish teachers (not all, thankfully)… and then sit down and revert back to español. Both for the good and the bad I’ve already gone beyond that particular invisible threshold and right now I stand someplace entirely different. Someplace different indeed, but also cozy of sorts.

"There is just no apparent end to the magic of the country of the thousand lakes"

Was there ever a green so pure, a gold so vibrant?

Thankfully, the days no longer race by in an indistinct blur of first impressions, hands to be shaken, papers to be signed, and have somewhat slowed down to a manageable pace. I no longer see Helsinki with the eyes of a dazzled newcomer but rather those of one who has come to accept, beyond every doubt the mind might have nursed, the unlikely truth: I am in Helsinki! And not gonna leave anytime soon. This semblance of routine – dare I use the word – should not fool anyone into thinking the enchantment is over; every day, as I take care of all the mundane tasks of an Erasmus student, this city manages to surprise me over and over. Be it through the dull gold of the leaves spiraling down from the trees lining both sides of Mannerheimintie, the magnificent cotton-like vastness of a crisp autumn sky (whatever the calendar might say on the matter, it is autumn already in here), the steely bite of a wind that wrenches the scarf off my neck however firmly I try to knot it… There is just no apparent end to the magic of the country of the thousand lakes.

"Finnish feel frustrated at times by having been stereotyped so heavily by the ignorant, outer world"

A dark day in Hietaniemi, Helsinki
(Source: Helsingin Sanomat)

As with any other unresolvable riddle, every time I get hold of a piece of truth about Finland a thousand new others appear, confusing me further and further. The higher the flame blazes, the longer the shadow becomes and there is definitely a dark side to this country of light and color; a secret one senses, more than hears in truth, in the wind that howls outside the windows every night. It is not something Finns gladly chatter about, not even when there are beers to be had and the barriers lower somewhat. Perhaps frustrated – and rightfully so – by having been stereotyped so heavily by the silly, ignorant outer world; perhaps because they could never relate to this sour-faced, gloomy walking type who wears nothing but black and attempts suicide at every possible turn, Finland’s inhabitants never seem at ease when discussing the challenges the country is facing. Challenges, however, not far removed at all from the ones we’re accustomed to down in the sunny south.

The building at Bulevardi where the alleged facts took place
(Source: Helsingin Sanomat)

During one of my first nights in here, browsing through Helsingin Sanomat’s web archives my eye was caught by this story from April 2012. According to Finland’s main leading daily paper, a Finnish family of four met a dire end in two separate incidents: one, in Porvoo, where the father died on the spot after driving – intentionally, or so the ongoing investigations claimed – his car into the path of a truck; the other, in Helsinki, where the police officers who knocked at the family’s house door at Bulevardi to bring along the grim tidings were greeted by the macabre spectacle of three corpses: the mother and her two children, three and one-year old daughters. Although there was no evidence at the time to speak of – no apparent conflicts within the couple, no divorce on the menu, no physical violence, no obvious financial downturns – the man became the main suspect within a few hours. I found myself at a loss.

"Documenting these cases heavily on the media might have a 'pull effect' on potential murderers who are already toying with the idea"

But a bigger surprise yet awaited as I scanned the page further down and stumbled upon four (four!) links leading to four other similar family killings, three of them having taken place in the span of a year. While coincidence does exist and while I wasn’t morbidly ready to depict this country as some stereotypes do – much to the contrary, I was genuinely surprised and saddened by this discovery – my instinct, however flawed it might be at times, did ring the alarm bells. This wasn’t normal. While in Spain we are no strangers to random violence within a domestic environment, it almost invariably is a case of the man physically or verbally abusing his female partner, often up to the point of death, unfortunately. But luckily enough, in our particular Mediterranean interpretation of the home-based deadly waltz, the children are almost never the target of the abuse. I guess it is both pointless and macabre to wonder at the reasons behind these cultural reissues of the same phenomenon – one old as the human race itself – that is the violence exerted to the weak and helpless.

Woman at a gathering in protest for violence against women, Helsinki
(Source: Suomen Kuvalehti)

But still I wondered, and did so for long. Before I could even register them all, a plethora of new questions sprouted within seconds in my mind: Why could this be? Mere coincidence? What values might lie in the Spanish way of life that sheltered kids from the violence that kept stamping them out in Finland? Perhaps this could be connected to the economic crisis and increased pressure on every home to pay the bills? Or perhaps the blame lay at the door of the surprising amount of guns circulating in Finland? The country scores first as far as firearm possession goes in Europe and third worldwide, a fact many of us foreigners ignore unless we delve a bit into the country’s traditions. However, I strongly suspected of an underlying reason behind this streak of murders, one also often explaining man-to-woman violence back in my home country: the ‘pull effect’ that documenting these cases heavily on the media could have on potential murderers who were reading their morning paper and already toying with the idea. Unsurprisingly, the Finnish media, a step ahead as ever, had already been considering that possibility and discussing the implications at length, as was reported on this article in Helsingin Sanomat. Pull effect or not, though, as journalists we do need to report and bring this reality to the public’s attention; anything else leads to hushed silences and stigma growing all about an issue no one wants to talk about. As Atte Jääskeläinen, news editor in public-based Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) very well put it: 'we need to strike a balance between two big interests - the mission to give out information, and the bearing of responsibility.' 

"As a newcomer, I can only count on my instinct as the compass to navigate the murky depths of Finland's dark side"

Even if that might help explain the cumulative tendency of these murders, though – and we can’t even be sure of that -, it doesn’t take us any closer to the core of it all, to the real motives lying underneath. I suspect I’ll never get to the bottom of this but I never expected to; after all, I’m but a newcomer and as such I can only count on my instinct as the compass to navigate the murky depths of Finland’s dark side. My instinct, yeah, but also the views of others wiser than me, far more versed in the wheels of Finnish society than I could ever hope to be. I will let them do their job and stop the endless bantering for now. My mind can already smell the aroma of freshly cooked pasta wafting from a few corridors away; got an appointed date with Italian gastronomy, one I wouldn’t dare leave unattended after weeks of cereal, fruit, juice, yoghurts, yoghurts, yoghurts. Write to you in a few days!

Gris