Forum für Finnen-Fans

Silent and moody: the enduring image Germans have of Finns
Finnish and German researchers examine national stereotypes

This is something we all know: the Finns are a nation who are silent in two languages.
The anecdote is a familiar one, but what is less known is that it is a part of a poem by playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht called Finnische Landschaft (“Finnish Landscape”) from the spring of 1940.
In the poem Brecht is not really describing the national character of the Finns. Instead, he is criticising the political conditions prevailing in the country at the time. Brecht is criticising the fact that neither the centre-right country nor the country's Social Democrats had come face to face with the Finnish Civil War, or Finland's foreign policy, which - in Brecht’s view - was the reason why relations with the Soviet Union had suffered.
Nevertheless, the quote has stayed alive, and is repeated as an image of what kind of people Finns are.

“The stereotypical Finnish man was cemented by Zacharias Topelius in his book Maamme (“Our Country”) already in 1875", noted Professor Outi Tuomi-Nikula at the Finnland Institut in Berlin, where a two-day symposium was held under the title “Two Hundred Years of German Infatuation with Finland”.
Nearly 30 German and Finnish experts dealt with the image that Germans have of Finland from many angles, but it was the stereotypes that were linked with the nation that were the most fascinating.
Tuomi-Nikula pointed out that the archetype of the Finnish male has become Topelius’s description of a man from Häme - not a talkative Karelian, the quirky Savo native, or the Ostrobothnian, with a propensity for rash outbursts of violence.
The stereotype has withstood time excellently, as many of the Finns who have become familiar to the German public in recent times are renowned for their lack of verbosity: figures in the popular films of Aki Kaurismäki, as well as stars from the world of sport, such as racing drivers Mika Häkkinen and Kimi Räikkönen, and ski jumper Janne Ahonen.
Many German experts on Finland concede that there is something to the stereotypes.

“Not all Finnish men are sullen, but there are more such people among Finns than in other nations. Stereotypes make it easier to differentiate”, said German historian Bernd Wegner.
Robert Schweitzer, a researcher at the Aue Foundation, which convened the symposium, suggested meanwhile that the prevailing image of Finns is undergoing a change, because the reality has changed through urbanisation and technological upheaval.
“Today’s Finns talk quite a bit - on their mobile phones”, he said, recalling his experiences on a Finnish tram.
And what about the image that Finns have of the Germans?
For Finns, a German is often a man in Lederhosen with a mug of beer, or then a disciplined Prussian.

The myth of German efficiency might still live on, but only in the minds of those who race through the country on an Autobahn, managing to avoid interaction with German authorities or the service sector.
So how does a German see the Germans? “A German is not sensitive to nuances. We’re either on or off. We focus tremendous amounts of attention on some matter - usually the reaction is one of astonishment - or then we don’t notice a thing”, Robert Schweitzer says.
Many of those present proposed that a separate symposium should be organised to consider the image that Finns have of Germany.
It is in this kind of persistent harping where the Germans and Finns find each other the easiest, someone said: two nations with a sense of uncertainty about themselves.

Quelle: http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Silent ... 5241393549

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