Fighters In Finland

By Lex

Posted on February 21, 2005

I was invited to speak at a fighter symposium in Finland several years ago. I arrived in early March, tasked to give an unclassified lecture on 1v1 fighter combat. That’s a pretty short lecture, alas, but as I was there in conjunction with some other folks, we spent a week sightseeing and mixing with the locals. It was a great trip to a very foreign place, although it was very, very cold.

The kind of cold you read about in books, maybe. Jack London, “Call of the Wild” cold.

The Finns are fascinating people – serious in demeanor, almost grave, and yet much given to partying at late night discos and bars, none of which seem to close prior to 4 AM (I discovered this through personal observation and verification).

Sample Finnish humor: One day Pekka and Toivonen meet after a long time apart and they go to a sauna in the woods. They drink vodka for a couple of hours. Pekka asks how Toivonen has been doing. Toivonen says nothing, but continues drinking for a couple of hours. Then, slowly, he replies: ‘Did we come here to babble, or did we come here to drink?

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex