My controversial documentary on Finland

By Enrique Tessieri

If I had access to a generous amount of financing and got the chance to do a documentary film on Finland, what would be the first images I’d show you?

I wouldn’t start with a long and slow scene of dragonflies and insects dancing in the summer air above a pristine lake, hugged by towering spruces, birches, firs and a few mountain ashes peppered here and there.

Wrong again. It wouldn’t be a full-bloom sunset radiating warmth to the sky in early spring, even if it is freezing outside. Nope, I wouldn’t attempt to picture how the full moon emits light as a soft pillow to lay your deepest thoughts inside a near-quiet autumn forest.

No, the documentary wouldn’t kick off with a scene showing modern architecture and of quiet and obedient buildings lined up in cities like Helsinki, Turku or Oulu. I wouldn’t even consider picturing a famous landmark like Finlandia Hall, or the paper mills of Tampere that must have inspired the late Väinö Linna, the author of the Unknown Soldier.

The documentary would definitely not start with the rude rumbles of war and of scenes showing Karelian refugees on foot abandoning their homes  but not their dreams.

Definitely not: I wouldn’t start by asking an obvious question to former President Tarja Halonen such as, “what would you like to tell the viewers,” never mind get into a heated debate with Finland’s last cold war President Mauno Koivisto. Forget Carl Mannerheim, Risto Ryti and Juho Paasikivi as well.

Possibly there could be at the beginning of the documentary sportsman like Paavo Nurmi, Lasse Viren or maybe it’s not such a good idea either. What about Jean Sibelius? Mika Kaurismäki? Eeva Kilpi? Mika Waltari? Lordi? What about a group of Finnish folk dancers entertaining a large crowd of Canadian Finns in Thunder Bay? No, no, and NO!

First scene

After the opening credits, the first image you would see is a truck transporting cut logs to a paper mill. As the forest industry of this country got more efficient and produce more money for their owners like the state, Finland didn’t become richer – but poorer.

Those old-growth forests that were once so abundant 50 and even 100 years ago, are today like rare tropical islands in the Pacific untouched by man and woman. Forests that are in their natural state or close to it cover 1.1 million hectares, or only 5.5% of forestland in Finland. Only 0.4 million hectares (2% of all land) are protected.

Forest companies have devised new catchwords to justify the devastation they reap: metsätalous, which means in general terms felling your forest so it will generate the greatest economic wealth to its owner at the cost of biodiversity.

What about if you don’t want the woods to look like enormous planted fields, where trees grow like wheat or other cash crops? What about if we long to walk in forests that still have free will and that can decide for themselves how they will grow, and die?

In the future, I fear, our grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to visit “nature zoos” in order to see how natural forests once looked like in Finland.

The next scene would depict how global warming is challenging our country and way of life. It’s December 23 and the camera is focused on a thermometer outdoors: At 10am it’s 4C, but at 2pm the temperature soars to 30C and finally rests at 36C at 4pm!

OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit about the weather, but temperatures have been steadily rising in Finland, increasing by 0.7°C during the previous century. By 2025 they are expected to rise by 2°C, and during 2030-80 by as much as 4-6°C, according to a study by Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Of course these are very tentative predictions. By the time we get to 2025 or even sooner, we may notice that matters are much worse than we expected.

Even though Finland will be hard-pressed by such challenges, our traditional way of life is being undermined by a similar type of “global warming,” which is forcing us to change the way we live in society.

One of the greatest threats to the soul of this nation – and that of many others as well – are the negative matters that globalization has brought, like excessive greed. Thirty years ago, Finland was another country ruled by different values that didn’t always revolve around money.

So add to this the lethal variable of global warming and our destruction of our forest coupled with our insatiable desire to accumulate wealth and comfort, and it is pretty easy to understand what is wrong with us.

Hopefully, when it is still not too late, we can look behind our shoulders deep into time and rescue bits and pieces of where our ancestors and culture came from to rebuild a more lasting society – and world.

Dear reader, as you can see, I would have totally misled you about what Finland is today if I’d only talk about the things I omitted at the beginning of the column.

In my opinion, the greatest challenge that our country faces is the destruction to our environment and biodiversity as well as our way of life.

So help us then save Finland – and don’t forget our planet.