Old Town School – On The Road

Dispatches from the road from our wayfaring travelers.

Finnish Americana, Part I

The Finns are absolutely wonderful people. Many of them speak English well, most understand it better, and all are incredibly patient and helpful during our tortured attempts to communicate. I feel quite dumb, because I speak only one language and know only two Finnish words: kippis and kiitos. I learned the first word years ago as a toast, thinking it meant nothing more than ‘cheers’ or ‘bottoms up.’ It literally translates as ‘keep peace.’ Kiitos means ‘thank you.’ And if you say kiitos to a Finn after he has made the effort to help you in English, his face will light up. The Finns are a peaceful people.
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The Clayhill Boys do a gospel set at the Lutheran Church (click to enlarge)
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We’ve been hanging out with a bunch who are crazy about American old-time, bluegrass and country music. John and Mark have reported on our opening concert in Juha’s photography studio, and the jam session in the bar on our first night at the Ruotsinpyhtää bluegrass festival. I’m sure the others will weigh in with their take on our main stage set at the festival (we were frozen) and our night time set at the bar (there it was much easier to generate heat). We also did a nice impromptu gospel set in the octagonal shaped Lutheran church that dates back to the 1800s. And we participated in one long jam at the old west rendezvous scheduled in conjunction with the festival.
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DMT jams with the Blue Velvet Band outside the “saloon”(click to enlarge)
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The re-enactors, by the way, fed us with food cooked around their campfires. At the “Indian” camp we feasted on beaver (American beaver were introduced in the Baltic region some years ago when it was thought the European beaver was extinct). At the cowboy camp we were fed a kind of rice and bacon jambalaya that cried out for some spicy andouille sausage.
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(click to enlarge)
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But I digress. After eating we played for another couple of hours, then adjourned into the “saloon” where our “western” hosts continued to ply us with strong homemade beer and even stronger shots of other brown liquids. Plus they entertained us with a mock theater troupe and all manner of tomfoolery.
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The Finns are generally described as a reserved and quiet nation. And that is often true in one-on-one encounters. Collectively, however, Finns are full of spunk and passion. They love to have a good time. At the bar on Friday night, I found it remarkable that even though quite a few men were a bit wobbly after several hours of revelry, they handled it by withdrawing into themselves. There were no bellicose scenes observed, no hostilities expressed. Kippis! (Keep peace!)