Conscious Choice: Letter From Finland

July 2001 | Citizen at Large

Letter From Finland

by Jay Walljasper

It’s well past eight in the evening yet the Finnish sun lingers in the sky beyond the pine trees and high above the blue lake. The accordion player takes a seat in the outdoor theatre alongside the other villagers, all except the trio of older women clanging spoons and pots and dishes over at the food stand.

It’s time to get down to business. About half of the village of Ramsoo’s 220 residents are on hand this June night for the monthly meeting of the local Village Action Committee. Attendance spans all ages, including — shockingly — a healthy turnout of teenagers. Two women in their thirties run the meeting, but nearly everyone in the audience throws in their opinion at least once. I wonder where the stereotype of the reserved, nearly mute Finn comes from — these villagers are full of laughter and bursting with things to say.

The treasurer’s report heightens the meeting’s merry mood. The group netted almost $25,000 at last month’s village fair. People came from as far as Tampere — an industrial city in central Finland an hour’s drive through the forest from Ramsoo — to watch demonstrations of old farming techniques and equipment. They discuss using some of the windfall to rent a couple of buses and take the whole village to a favorite restaurant. There’s also great enthusiasm about staging another fair, only this time just for themselves. The women running the meeting don’t let it stop at that — they ask how many potatoes and how much salad will be needed. Hands go up from volunteers to furnish the food.

Platters of open-faced sandwiches, sausages, and sweet breads begin to appear on the counter of the food stand, but there’s still more to discuss. Everyone stays in their seats except a few restless kids who make their way down to the beach to hurl stones into the lake. Volunteers are needed for ticket-taking, parking supervision, and clean-up at the next theatrical performance, which takes place in this same spot several times a summer. The performance, featuring villagers in all the roles, is a pageant of local history that draws audiences from all over the area. More hands rise and names are taken.

"It’s very important to thank and recognize people because they get no salary for their hard work," says Arto Uusitalo, a young schoolteacher who moved here from Tampere a few years ago and now is president of the committee.

As folks dish themselves heaping plates of supper, the accordion music starts up again and jugs of traditional Finnish homebrew beer are brought out. Several of the men go over to inspect a restored old automobile that someone brought to show off . Kids continue pelting the lake with stones and a toddler wades under the watchful eye of his father. But people mostly eat and talk and drink and talk and laugh and talk as the sun slips very slowly in the direction of the lake and begins to cast a pink pastel reflection.

"Whatever we do," notes Uusitalo, "we try to make it fun."

That may be the most important purpose of Ramsoo’s Village Action Committee: to boost community spirit with festivities, cultural attractions, and cooperative projects. But the group can point to a number of other successes, too. Torsti Hyyrylainen, a professor of Regional Studies at the University of Tampere, notes that the village has gained 90 new residents since 1982 — mostly city people like Arto Uusitalo. This is all the more remarkable in light of the sad fact that the village has 50 percent fewer farmers than a decade ago. The activity of the committee keeps Ramsoo a vital and interesting place, and that’s what draws newcomers to the village. Because of its growing population, Ramsoo has been able to keep its school and post office open despite downturns in the traditional agricultural economy of the area.

Rural Finland finds itself in the midst of hard times as the government backs away from traditions of generous financial support for small farmers, especially now that the nation has joined the European Union.

In the United States, the current farm crisis is sending hundreds of thousands of rural people into metropolitan areas. The overall pricetag of driving people off the land in the name of agricultural efficiency with policies that favor large farms is never calculated . But American taxpayers must foot the bill for welfare and social services needed by rural people who lose their livelihoods.

Finland experienced something similar in the 1950s and‘60s as many displaced farmers moved to Helsinki, Tampere, and other cities. The costs of providing new housing, jobs, and other services for these people proved immense, along with the social upheaval that comes from people leaving their longtime homes for a strange, new setting. That’s why the government, which is already grappling with a high unemployment rate, is committed to finding new livelihoods for rural Finns so they can stay in their villages.

Unlike the United States where rural development often means factory jobs being pulled out from under city dwellers and shifted to the countryside, where employers can get away with lower wages, Finnish programs for rural revitalization emphasize the economic assets already existing in the villages. Handicrafts, cottage industries, telecommuting, sustainable agriculture, and tourism are all seen as areas for growth, and will be supported by government programs.

For instance, a farm woman with a reputation in her community for outstanding bread and cakes might receive a loan to start a bakery. Another farmer might get training in carpentry to make extra income working on city people’s lake cottages, or help in establishing a business in herbs, which develop strong flavor during Finland’s short but intense growing season. There are also plans to market Finland’s plentiful berries abroad and to capitalize on the nation’s reputation for environmental purity by exporting organic food to industrialized regions of Europe.

Village Action Committees like the one in Ramsoo have no direct connection with the government or its rural policies, but they may hold the key to keeping people in Finland’s countryside. There are roughly 3000 such committees across the country, up from just 50 in 1977, encompassing perhaps half of all Finland’s villages. They are now beginning to work together in a regional and a national network.

One of Tortsti Hyyrylainen’s colleagues at the University of Tampere, Lauri Hautamaki, was instrumental in spreading the ideas of the Village Action Movement. He was convinced that there was more to the decline of rural life than just economic conditions. When a village lost its stores or when television and other alienating features of modern life broke down the local spirit of community, it became a less attractive place to live no matter how prosperous or poor local people were. Villagers might not be able to do anything about global economic forces or government policies dictated from Helsinki, but they could use their collective creativity to revitalize their own community.

The first work of a newly-formed Village Action Committee, according to Hyyrylainen, is to build trust and cooperation among the residents. The next step is to talk about the community’s problems and prospects, and then to undertake projects to improve life in the village. This often includes cultural activities like dances or Christmas festivals as well as construction projects and economic initiatives.

At the root of all Village Action Committee’s work is talkoo, rural Finlanders’ traditional emphasis on voluntary community work. In a land of long cold winters, cooperation among villagers often meant the difference between life and death in the days before modern communications and social services. But now, when distant decisionmakers in Helsinki, Brussels, Geneva, New York, or Tokyo can bring economic disaster to a region almost overnight, this same spirit of cooperation might mean the difference between an entire village living or dying.

Small town America, which is being devastated by agricultural policies favoring factory farms and agribusiness, could find hope and practical solutions in a homegrown version of the Finnish village movement.

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