When I came to Finland I was privileged. Privileged in wanting to get a project off the ground, which meant that I did what I always do in this case, I reached out to people I knew / thought could / would help and built up a network before even arriving in Finland. It worked in that by the time I got here I had a place to live, people to meet and an idea of where I should go and what I needed to do in order to achieve my goal, which was to gather as much information as possible and from there shape my project into what I wanted it to be. 

Socially it worked, though the cynic in me would be the first to tell you that people are always ready to jump on board when it comes to being attached to something that will be seen by a larger public. But it was also a vibe. Back then Finland seemed to be, not so much the land of plenty as a vast territory to happily explore. Slightly over a decade but less than two ago, there seemed to be an awakening coupled with a sense of acceptance that Finland was making waves outside its own borders. There had always been sports, but now music was gaining tract and more and more Finnish bands were being recognized abroad. And when I say recognized I mean visible on the covers of music magazines in the UK and played – seemingly on a loop – on music channels in Germany. I knew about both countries because I was splitting my time between Manchester and Berlin and my first stop when leaving and touching down was always the airport bookshop to stock up on newspapers, magazines and books. I discovered two of my favorite books this way – Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian and Arnost Lustig’s Lovely Green Eyes – which gives you more clues about who I am than any in depth essay could ever do justice. As a rule I hated books about Dracula, but combined with the legends and myths of the countries Kostova was describing it became a whole new ballgame. I’ve always loved getting deeper into legends and beliefs, and The Historian hit the sweet spot with that.

Looking back on it now, I might have intuited how much I’d yearn for and miss newspapers and magazines from the places I was directly dealing with. I was still boycotting a certain popular newspaper in the UK because someone on their staff made me lose a job I had my heart set on, but thankfully there were countless others that could easily take its place. I know going digital is much better for the environment, but there’s something about lying on your couch on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with your roommates spread about and just idly thumbing through the papers while keeping up a running commentary on what it was you’d just read. It was hard to recreate that in Finland, because I didn’t have the same cultural reference points everyone else who’d grown up there had. I wasn’t aware of the movies they’d watched or the shows they’d had, other than the popular international ones. It’s a similar story in France, where I was dipping in and out of the culture at various times, but even when I had a TV all to myself, I was more interested in watching MTV Europe when it was still happening, than immersing myself in cultural knowledge via a popular TV show everyone else seemed to be watching. I know the most about US and UK culture, and one is a culture I’m deeply connected to while the other I got to know more by proxy until I moved there. 

Finland was a playground on which I got to explore different sides of the proverbial coin – in this case life in Helsinki and its surrounding areas – and I was a most welcome guest. After all, who doesn’t like witnessing the process of creativity, especially when it comes to getting swept up in the highs (the lows remain nicely packaged up because they are never witnessed by those not in the know). But somewhere deep inside me I knew that this could not last forever for the simple reason that nothing in my life ever did. Which isn’t to be melodramatic, rather it’s a reflection of what my life is, was and has always been: a sense of coming and going, being in and out of different places, getting a good look in and even becoming part of the fabric (a picture for posterity here, a post or an article there), but always in the knowledge that I would not be staying forever. Earlier or later I would have to move on, whether it was because I chose to do so willingly or because I was “forced” to by higher powers: the Universe, God or just the mere fact that it had become impossible to make a living. 

In a twist of irony which comes as absolutely no surprise to me, it almost seems to me that my initial desire that brought me here was finally granted, to experience the country and its people the same way as Klaus Mann would have done, which resulted in him writing Flucht in den Norden, a novel that not only perfectly describes the Finnish social landscape and mentality of the time but also showcases the passion and hatred for Nazi Germany as it was attempting its rise to power present within the same family in so many households across the Finnish nation. Mann was already writing his novel with one foot out the door before he embarked on his life as an emigre, never to see his childhood home, except when he came back as a soldier of the US Army, engaged  (chiefly) for his knowledge of Germans, their language and mentality towards the end of the war. In many ways this was as true when he visited Finland in 1932 as it was when he wrote and published the novel the following (two) years. The irony of experiencing this in 2023 does not escape me any more than the English title does, especially if I decide to embark on my own Journey into Freedom away from this place that for so many years spelled home.

It took less than two decades but more than one for me to find out and less than a century for history to repeat itself. The Nazis have a different name this time around, but the message and the delivery are very much the same. And with more and more of those affected leaving, so is the outcome.