Wednesday 29 April 2015

A Finnish Spitz - my first wonderful dog Peni

A Finnish Spitz (Finnish language: Suomenpystykorva) is a breed of dog originating in Finland. The breed was originally bred to hunt all types of game from squirrels and other rodents to bears. It is a "bark pointer", indicating the position of game by barking. Barking also makes the game animal focus on the dog, not on the hunter. Its original game hunting purpose was to point to game that fled into trees, such as grouse, and capercaillies, but it also serves well for hunting moose and elk. Some individuals have even been known to go after a bear. In its native country, the breed is still mostly used as a hunting dog. The breed is friendly and in general loves children, so it is suitable for domestic life. The Finnish Spitz has been the national dog of Finland since 1979.
 
 History
Finnish Spitz from 1915
The Finnish Spitz developed from selectively bred Spitz-type dogs that inhabited central Russia several thousand years ago. Isolated Finno-Ugrian tribes in the far northern regions bred dogs according to their specific needs. These small clans of woodsmen relied on their dogs to help them obtain food, and the excellent hunting ability of the Finnish Spitz made it a favorite choice.
By 1880, as advanced means of transportation brought diverse peoples and their dogs together, Finnish Spitzes mated with other breeds of dogs, and were becoming extinct as a distinct breed. At about that time, a Finnish sportsman from Helsinki named Hugo Roos observed the pure native Finnish Spitz while hunting in the northern forests. He realized the many virtues of the pure Finnish Spitz breed and decided to select dogs that were untainted examples of the genuine Finnish Spitz in order to try to revive the breed.Thirty years of careful breeding resulted in the modern Finnish Spitz; the dogs are descendents of his original foundation stock.

Appearance

The Finnish Spitz resembles a fox. The proper conformation is a square build, meaning that the length of the body is the same or slightly shorter than the height of the withers to the ground. The length of the body is measured from the point of the shoulder or forechest in front of the withers to the rump. Females are usually a little longer in the back than males. Both sexes should appear slightly longer in the leg than the back.
Dew claws can appear on front and/or back feet. If back claws appear, they should be removed. The front dewclaws can be removed, but they generally are not since they are usually small.

Coat

The Finnish Spitz has a typical double coat, which consists of a soft, dense undercoat and long, harsh guard hairs that can measure one to two inches (2.5 to 5 cm) long. The outer coat should not exceed 2.5 inches (64 mm) at the ruff. The coat should be stiffer, denser, and longer on the neck, back, back of thighs, and plume of the tail, shorter on the head and legs. Male dogs should sport a slightly longer and coarser coat than female ones, who have a slightly more refined coat.
The pluma of the tail is important to the overall look of the dog but should not be too long. Feathered long tail hairs without sustenance can give the dog an unkempt look. Additionally, the tailset is important and the Finnish Spitz should be able to move its tail from one side to the other. Most Finnish Spitz have a preferred side and this is not incorrect.
Proper care of the coat is most important. The Finnish Spitz blows coat or loses its undercoat twice a year. It is imperative that owners brush out the old undercoat so the new coat can grow properly. Although a dog may look fluffy and full, excessive undercoat may be causing serious skin problems.
In the show ring, the coat should be shown as completely natural; a brush through the coat is acceptable, but no trimming is allowed, not even of whiskers. However, any excessive undercoat should be removed. Some exhibitors choose to show dogs with excessive undercoat to make the dog's coat appear more lush. Failing to shed undercoat is considered neglect by some judges who prefer a clean and combed coat. Another exception is the hair under the bottom of the feet. The hair under the feet as well as the toe nails should be nicely trimmed for show.

Color

1989 postage stamp depicting the Finnish Spitz
Puppies are often described as looking similar to a red fox cub. They are born dark grey, black, brown, or fawn with a vast amount of black. A fawn-colored puppy or one with a large amount of white of the chest is not preferable for show purposes. The color of the adult dog can be assessed by an experienced breeder at birth, but even then, the color may change slightly as the puppy grows.
The adult color is typically a golden-red with variations from pale honey to dark chestnut. There is no preference for a particular shade as long as the color is bright and clear with no hints of dullness. The coat should never be a solid color. It should be shaded and without any defined color changes. The coat is usually at its darkest shade on the back of the dog, gradually getting lighter around the chest and belly. The undercoat must always be lighter in color than the topcoat, but is never allowed to be white. A small patch of white, no more than 0.6 inches (1.5 cm) wide, is allowable on the chest, and white tips on the feet are acceptable, but not desired.
The nose, lips, and rims of eyes should always be black.

Height and weight

Height at withers (American Kennel Club breed standard
  • Males: 17½ to 20 inches (44.5 to 50.8 cm)
  • Females: 15½ to 18 inches (39.4 to 45.7 cm)
Weight:
  • Males: 26–30 lb (12–14 kg)
  • Females: 16–22 lb (7.3–10.0 kg)

Temperament

This breed is active, alert and lively. They need one or two long walks each day and will be fairly inactive indoors. This breed will not adapt well to a strictly kenneled living situation; they need a balance of outdoor exercise and indoor play time with the family.[5]
Finnish Spitzes are considered to interact well with people and they are especially good with children. They are always ready to play with children but if ignored, they will usually walk away. As with all dogs, young children and dogs should always be supervised when together. It is an independent breed and will be attached to its family while remaining aloof with strangers. The Finnish Spitz tends to be protective; males have more domineering traits than females.
Most Finnish Spitzes get along well with other dogs in the house. They are bred as a hunting dog and thus are unreliable around small animals, but on an individual basis may live well with cats.

Barking

The breed barks at anything perceived to be out of the ordinary. Barking is a major part of their hunting activities. In Finland, these dogs are prized for their barking abilities, which can range from short, sharp barks to many barks per minute that sound like a yodel. The Finnish Spitz can bark as many as 160 times per minute. In Scandinavia, a competition is held to find the "King of the Barkers."  In Finland, their barking ability in the field must be proven before a conformation championship can be earned.
When used as a hunting companion, the barking is a way to signal the hunter that the dog has located prey in the forest. They can be trained to reduce the amount of barking, although the barking does make them superb watchdogs.

Training

Finnish Spitzes are independent, strong-willed, intelligent dogs. They are best trained with a soft voice and touch. This breed will not respond well to harsh training methods. They should be trained with a light touch and positive reinforcement methods. With patience and calm yet firm handling, the Finnish Spitz can be a wonderful companion.

Health

The Finnish Spitz is typically a very healthy breed, with few general health concerns. However, breeders should be consulted to understand the prevalence of a specific disorder in this breed. Below is a short list of what is known to occur:
Median lifespan is about 11.2 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Spitz
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Tuesday 21 April 2015

El Camino - El Kamina its Juha Sipila / By Jalopnik

El Camino-Driving, Jalopnik-Endorsed Badass Elected Leader Of Finland

 
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4El Camino-Driving, Jalopnik-Endorsed Badass Elected Leader Of Finland1
 
Longtime Jalopnik readers may remember Juha Sipilä. He is a former telecom executive, politician, and builder of a badass El Camino that runs on wood gas. Also, as of last night, he is the prime minister-elect of Finland.
This El Camino runs on burning wood This El Camino runs on burning wood This El Camino runs on burning wood
Ridiculously, in America, the only acceptable vehicles for a politician are either U.S.-built…Read more Read more
Dreams do come true.
 
Sipilä is the leader of Finland’s Centre Party, which cruised to victory in Sunday night’s elections like a sweet, sweet wood-burning El Camino barreling down Route 66 spreading democracy and awesomeness in its wake.
 
I could use this space to talk about how Sipilä seeks to return Finland to economic prosperity after years of being mired in a recession, but that’s not really what we all care about. Instead, we care that Sipilä is a car enthusiast who specializes in wood gas conversions.
 
A few years back, he built a wood gas-powered El Camino called El Kamina — “The Stove” in Finnish — to show how biofuels can be done. The kickass muscle truck can run for up to 125 miles on wood gas power all the way up to a top speed of 87 mph.
El Camino-Driving, Jalopnik-Endorsed Badass Elected Leader Of Finland2
 
This is multiple kinds of awesome.
JayHova
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4
There is a lot of wood in Finland.
mtdrift
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5
Almost looks like something from a dystopian future where petroleum reserves have mostly dried up, leaving only just enough for automotive paints.
ranwhenparked
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And now, its builder is the Prime Minister of Finland. That’s awesome.
I wonder if he’s up for some kind of Chevy burnout contest with Joe Biden?
 
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Sunday 19 April 2015

Networking naked with Finland's Diplomatic Sauna Society / The Atlantic

Networking Naked With Finland's Diplomatic Sauna Society

My strange and sweaty evening in Washington
 
Reuters
One recent evening, I went to a foreign embassy and got naked with about 20 strangers—mostly Hill staffers, journalists, and a few Finnish people. This was a formal, and very exclusive, event held by the Diplomatic Sauna Society, a Scandinavian-flavored networking club established by a spokesman of the Finnish embassy in D.C. to help the country’s diplomats forge connections with Washington heavyweights. As the founder, Kari Mokko, explained to a Washington Post reporter in 2010, “We needed something to catch attention.”
Saunas feature in all Finnish embassies, according to Sanna Kangasharju, a diplomat who now runs the society. But she told me via email that many are mainly for the use of embassy staff and can’t accommodate events. Still, she said, “Inviting guests to the sauna is an old Finnish way of hospitality, and whenever possible, we like to offer this hospitality also when living abroad.” The D.C. embassy sauna is unique in taking this practice to the next level—for instance, it’s the only one that issues “sauna diplomas” to guests for basically spending an evening in a steam room with some Finns. And it also, through the Diplomatic Sauna Society, holds monthly gatherings to promote the culture of the sauna—and, by extension, the culture of Finland.
Little says Finland quite like a sauna. The word itself is Finnish, and in the country of some 5 million, there are roughly 2 million saunas, an average of about one per household. Taking a sauna is a centuries-old tradition that started in the rural parts of the country as a way for farm workers to get a reprieve from the cold weather, and the practice gradually worked its way into urban areas. According to Finland’s official Sauna Society (a Helsinki-based group, not to be confused with the Diplomatic Sauna Society, whose purpose is to preserve and promote sauna culture locally): “At its most primitive, the sauna was probably a pit dug into a slope, with a heap of heated stones in one corner.” As recently as the turn of the 20th century, women in rural areas would give birth in a sauna; the room would also be used to prepare dead bodies for burial.

Saunas get hot by means of a stove that heats a basket of rocks. Ladling water onto the rocks, with an instrument the Finns call a löylykauha, creates a wave of steam, or löyly. It’s typical for the temperature of a Finnish sauna to reach as high as 190 degrees Fahrenheit. And Finns evidently love it: It’s been reported that 99 percent of them use a sauna at least once a week. They also tout the benefits of a good steaming—one recent study from a Finnish university found that men who used saunas seven or more times per week were less likely to die of heart disease than men who used a sauna once a week. This is not to say there’s no such thing as overheating; at the 2010 World Sauna Championships—a competition hosted in Finland over who can sit the longest in extreme heat—a Russian contestant died after spending six minutes in a sauna heated to 230 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Diplomatic Sauna Society dates back to 2003, when the Finnish embassy invited Kevin Maney of USA Today to sit in the sauna with some other journalists and write about the experience. The society matured into its current form by 2008, when Mokko took charge of organizing the monthly meetings. His zeal is credited with elevating the event to the status of a tradition. He was widely acknowledged by my fellow sauna-goers to be “a great guy” with a great sauna “presence,” which sometimes included dousing the sauna rocks with beer. Mokko has since left D.C. to become the director of communications for the Finnish prime minister, but he left plenty of disciples behind.
Sauna diplomacy is not just a quirk of D.C.’s Finnish embassy. Urho Kekkonen, a Cold War-era president of Finland, was reputed to have used the sauna to soften up the Soviets. Legend has it that when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev came to Finland for Kekkonen’s 60th birthday, the two stayed in the sauna until 5 o’clock in the morning. As Finland’s then-Secretary of State Pertti Torstila recounted the tale at the 15th International Sauna Congress in 2010: “At the end of the visit a communiqué was issued in which the Soviet government expressed its preparedness to support Finland’s desire to integrate and cooperate with the West.”

Torstila noted in the same speech that Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, also employed the tactic as Finland’s ambassador to Tanzania in the 1970s: “The Tanzanian Foreign Minister John Malecela, who later on became Tanzania’s prime minister, was a regular visitor in the Ambassador’s sauna.” Torstila explained: “Decisions and negotiations take less time in the high heat. Sauna cools down overexcitement and melts away political differences.”
Serious negotiations inside a sauna are rare, however. In the D.C. embassy, the sauna serves as more of a medium for cultural exchange. Kangasharju herself curates guest lists of up to 25 people a month to visit it, and she tries to get a coed mix of Washington professionals, mainly journalists and politicians, particularly those associated with the Friends of Finland Congressional caucus. Almost everyone there when I went was between 35 and 55 years old; at 26, I was both the youngest and least-established person at the event. (I had heard about the society from a stranger in a coffee shop and phoned the embassy to ask whether, as an Atlantic employee, I could attend and write an article about it. The person in charge of cultural relations turned me down, so I tried my luck with the person in charge of press relations, who turned out to be Kangasharju. She said the guest list was full, so the sauna would be “cramped,” but she would “squeeze me in.”)
As a networking soiree, the event was simultaneously sweatier and less slimy than others I’ve attended. Guests were first treated to “flowers”—specialty drinks composed of Finlandia cranberry vodka mixed with pink lemonade. That was followed by an authentic Finnish dinner of gravlax with mustard sauce, smoked salmon, potato salad, beef meatballs, and glazed carrots, with a dessert of cheesecake topped with fresh berries.

After dinner, my male dining companions and I headed for the main event. (The women took their sauna separately.) The sauna itself was so dark and foggy that I couldn’t see more than three feet in front of me. The room was a double decker, and all but two of the men sat on the second deck. After a toast with Bud Lights (Kippis, as the Finnish say), we went around the room introducing ourselves and explaining how we ended up at the Finnish embassy that night. A few of the men were founding members of the society, on Mokko’s original guest list. Others were either Finnish nationals, journalists who had interviewed Finnish diplomats and were subsequently put on the guest list, or Hill staffers whose connections to Finland were never clarified.

All seemed to be there to unwind, and the conversation did in fact revolve around Finnish culture. I learned that the American ambassador to Finland, Bruce Oreck, is the unique diplomat who has tattoos and body piercings. I also got confirmation that Finnish people generally only greet each other once a day; an American expat in Finland recently recounted in The Atlantic his experience being corrected for greeting a colleague he had already said “hi” to earlier.
Clearly, then, the event achieved its goal of enhancing knowledge about Finnish culture. Kangasharju explained to me her belief that sauna diplomacy works because of its relaxed nature, and in fact it was easy to see how the locker-room-like setting could facilitate trust in a way that can’t be achieved in an austere conference room. Maybe other diplomats could learn something from this. In the meantime, I’ve earned my sauna diploma
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Friday 17 April 2015

Aker Arctic and Vyborg Shipyard have confirmed a contract for the design of two new icebreakers

 

Aker Arctic’s icebreaker design selected for Gazprom Neft’s Novy Port project

 Aker Arctic and Vyborg Shipyard have confirmed a contract for the design of two new icebreakers based on Aker ARC 130 A design. The icebreakers will be used in the oil terminal operated by LLC Gazprom Neft Novy Port in the Gulf of Ob.

The new icebreakers represent a further development of the Aker ARC 130 icebreaker concept originally developed for the Finnish Transport Agency. The new design, Aker ARC 130 A, will utilize similar propulsion concept consisting of three azimuth thrusters – two in the stern and one in the bow of the vessel. The propulsion power and ice strengthening have been increased according to the operational requirements of the Arctic seas. The vessel is designed to break 2-metre level ice with 30 cm snow cover in both ahead and astern directions, operate in thick consolidated brash ice, and have excellent maneuverability in all ice conditions.

The icebreakers of Aker ARC 130 A design are about 122 m long overall and have a beam of 25 m and design draft of 8m. The vessels have a diesel-electric power plant and the combined propulsion power of the three azimuth thrusters is 21.5 MW. The new icebreakers will be classified by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping and their ice class will be Icebreaker8.
The novel design represents the newest development of icebreaking technology that Aker Arctic has now adapted also for Arctic vessels. Vyborg Shipyard is an experienced builder of ice-class vessels and the new order will strengthen its position as the builder of demanding vessels for the Arctic conditions.

For more information:
Reko-Antti Suojanen, Managing Director, Aker Arctic Technology Inc, Tel: +358 400 738 123, reko-antti.suojanen@akerarctic.fi
Arto Uuskallio, Sales Manager, Aker Arctic Technology Inc, Tel: +358 50 5715808, arto.uuskallio@akerarctic.fi
Aker Arctic Technology Inc (Aker Arctic) is an independent company that specializes in the development, design, engineering and testing services for the ice-going vessels, icebreakers and offshore marine structures and ports. Aker Arctic’s head office is located in Helsinki Finland. www.akerarctic.fi

Vyborg Shipyard JSC (VSY) is a corporate member of United Shipbuilding Corporation having a vast experience in construction of icebreaking and ice-going vessels, offshore support vessels of various purposes, semisubmersible drilling platforms, topside modules for fixed offshore platforms and big-size grand blocks for onshore facilities. VSY head office is located in Vyborg, Russia. www.vyborgshipyard.ru
 
Aker Arctic   Merenkulkijankatu 6   |   FIN-00980   |   Helsinki   |   Finland   +358 10 3236 300   info@akerarctic.fi
 
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Ateneum exhibition - Photographer Ismo Hölttö documented Finns in the 1960s and ‘70s

 

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Ismo Hölttö: Market Square, Suomenlinna ferry terminal, Helsinki, 1968. © Ismo Hölttö
 
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10.04.2015 - 31.05.2015
 
Photographer Ismo Hölttö (born 1940) documented Finns in their own living environments in the 1960s and ‘70s. A goldsmith, Hölttö photographed in his home town Helsinki whenever he could. He developed into a technically skilled and visionary artist at the Helsinki Camera Club. Hölttö also travelled extensively in Finland, capturing with his camera, the lives of people living in remote areas and the Finnish Roma minority among others. In the early 1970s he opened his own studio, where he worked for the next three decades.
 
The works displayed at this exhibition date from the 1960s, when Ismo Hölttö worked as a goldsmith. He spent his free time touring the streets of Helsinki and the Finnish countryside, including North Karelia, Savonia and the Oulu Region, with his 1962 Rolleiflex at the ready. An active member of the Helsinki Camera Club, he is self-taught in the techniques of photography and developed his expression further. He is a master of light and intuitive composition, which has won him accolades in many competitions, such as the 1967 European Photographer award in West Berlin. In the same year, he also won the photographic competition marking the 50th anniversary of Finnish independence.
As a photographer of people, Hölttö forms part of the humanistic photographic canon, dominated by an interest in people and the environment and circumstances in which they live.

The curator of the exhibition is Riitta Raatikainen.
 
The artist’s work is supported by the Kone Foundation and Patricia Seppälä Foundation.

HOK-Elannon asiakasomistajapäivä
 

 
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Thursday 16 April 2015

Toroidion 1MW concept electrifies Top Marques Monaco with 1,341 bhp

Toroidion 1MW concept electrifies Top Marques Monaco with 1,341 bhp

Toroidion 1MW concept electrifies Top Marques Monaco with 1,341 bhp
Toroidion 1MW concept at 2015 Top Marques Monaco
 

 Comes from Finland

After a teaser published in February, Finnish specialty marque Toroidion has unveiled the 1MW electric concept at 2015 Top Marques Monaco.
The retro-styled fully electric supercar with gullwing doors comes from Finland and promises to offer 1,341 bhp (1,000 kW), hence the “1MW” designation. Other details are scarce at the moment, but on the company's website we found out the vehicle will have high-performance lightweight batteries with rapid swap capabilities.
Matching the output of the Koenigsegg One:1, the Toroidion 1MW is a hand-built concept that promises to offer "scalable performance" and was built with lightweight components. The company says it's fully street-legal and has been designed, developed and built entirely in Finland.
The startup was established back in 2011 by Pasi Pennanen with the bold objective of developing an all-new electric powertrain suitable for the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race. They are probably envisioning a racecar with hot swap batteries just like this 1MW concept.
More details will be revealed about the "innovative patented powertrain and lightweight concept car" after conducting a series of tests.
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Monday 13 April 2015

The Anglo-Finnish Society founded 1911 - very interesting books on Finland by Tony Lurcock

The Anglo-Finnish Society 

No Particular Hurry: British travellers in Finland 1830–1917
by Tony Lurcock
British Travellers in Finland 1830-1917
The nineteenth century saw the beginning of tourism to Finland. Travelling was no longer a survival trek: the railway network was spreading, and steamers operated on the larger lakes. Visitors marvelled at the glories of the scenery, the comfort of travel, the excellence of Finnish education, and in particular at the remarkable independence of Finnish women. Travelling sometimes without escorts, English women recorded many things which escaped the notice of most male travellers.

But not all visitors came for peaceful purposes. Because Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia, the Russian War of 1854–5 brought the British fleet into the Baltic, and sailors and marines wrote of their often surprising experiences. From the end of the century nearly all British writers showed concern for Finland in its prolonged struggles against ‘Russification’.

Selected passages from the accounts of nearly thirty travellers, together with Lurcock’s informed and entertaining commentary, chart the varied responses of British writers to the making of modern Finland up to 1917, the year of independence.
Tony Lurcock grew up in Kent, and studied English at University College, Oxford. He became lecturer in English at Helsinki University, and subsequently at Åbo Akademi. Returning to Oxford, he completed a D.Phil. thesis, and taught there, and in America, until his recent retirement. He is the author of numerous review articles, mainly on eighteenth-century literature and on biography.
Also by Tony Lurcock:

Not So Barren or Uncultivated: British travellers in Finland 1760–1830

British Travellers in Finland 1760-1830
‘This fascinating survey of the British in Finland’
– Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement
‘Impeccably researched, written in an accessible, lively and lucid style, this is a gem of a book which will delight the scholar and the general reader alike’
– Mara Kalnins, Notes and Queries
‘At once both an anthology of extracts from British travel accounts and a rich mini-encyclopaedia of personalities, routes and destinations’
– Rainer Knapas, Books from Finland

Get the book

Both books can be ordered direct from www.cbeditions.com.


 

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Thursday 9 April 2015

Professor Pekka Puska the Finnish Healthcare hero and genius by The Atlantic Dan Buettner

The Finnish Town That Went on a Diet

In the province of North Karelia, an unorthodox doctor defied conventional public-health wisdom to successfully overhaul regional cuisine and improve heart health.
Apr 7 2015, 9:19 AM ET
 
    
Boreal forest in the region of North Karelia, located in the far eastern part of Finland (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
In 1972, an international team of academics identified a new and terrifying public-health crisis. In a far eastern province of Finland—North Karelia—middle-aged men were dropping dead of heart attacks at the highest known rates in the world. Until then, public-health officials focused on infectious disease like flu epidemics and polio; if someone died of a heart attack, it was an untimely consequence of old age. The Finnish Minster of Health at the time recognized the novelty of the problem and appointed a 27-year old physician with a master's degree in social sciences, named Pekka Puska, to lead a pilot project in the region to tackle the problem. Not because he was good, but because he was young and the problem was going to take a long time to solve. He made the right choice. In the ensuing decades, Puska pioneered a strategy that lowered male cardiovascular mortality in a population of 170,000 Finns by some 80 percent—an unparalleled accomplishment. And he achieved it by breaking established rules of public health.
When Puska began his career in public health, the first international studies were showing that diet and smoking were somehow connected to heart disease. Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physiologist, had been promoting his hypothesis—controversial at the time and still attacked by some today—about the association between eating animal prdioducts and heart disease. (Tobacco was already a well-known culprit.)
By 1972, North Karelian men achieved the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of heart attacks in the world.
In what would become known as the Seven Countries Study, Keys, the epidemiologist Henry Blackburn, and their colleagues recruited groups of middle-aged men for a long-term project not only in Finland, but also in the United States, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Each subject in the study was asked questions about his diet and given a battery of physical tests. Duplicates of everything they ate were collected, frozen, and sent to a University of Minnesota lab for analysis. Then, at five-year intervals, the study checked in on the subjects again. A pattern soon emerged: The farther north the men lived, the more animal products they consumed and the more heart attacks they suffered. In Greece and Italy, where people ate mostly a plant-based diet, men were largely free of heart disease—an observation that eventually informed our understanding of the value of the traditional Mediterranean diet. (Keys has been criticized for omitting government data on diet and heart disease from certain countries that he compared early on. But Keys had good reason to leave out the data: Death certificates were undependable, and World War II had disrupted the food supply in those countries.) In places like North Karelia (the study’s northern extreme), conversely, men were 30 times more likely to die of heart attacks than in places like Crete. In fact, North Karelian men on average were dying 10 years earlier than their counterparts in the south. It got so bad that, by 1972, North Karelian men achieved the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of heart attacks in the world.
To Puska and the researchers, the roots of the disease were clear. Before World War II, North Karelian men were largely lumberjacks whose diets revolved around hunting game, picking berries, and fishing. Besides the occasional bear mauling, their main health concerns were tuberculosis, infectious diseases, and death at childbirth. After the war, veterans, as part of their compensation, were given small plots of land. Lacking agriculture skills, they cleared the land to raise pigs and cows. Predictably, pork and diary consumption skyrocketed. Butter soon made its way into almost every meal: butter-fried potatoes, buttered bread. Even traditional fish stew was half butter. They had fried pork or meat stew for dinner, chased with buttered bread and milk. Vegetables were considered food for the animals. Adding to the problem, GIs had returned home with a new habit: By 1972, more than half of all men smoked.
* * *
Pekka Puska, a professor and the former director general of Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare, spearheaded the North Karelia Project (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
I interviewed Puska in his Helsinki office on a cold June afternoon not long ago. He had recently retired as the director of noncommunicable-disease prevention for the World Health Organization; wall photos of him with heads of state and diplomas recorded a stellar career. “In my wild youth I was very active in student politics,” he told me, gesturing expansively. Now 68 years old, he looked decidedly non-wild, wearing a bureaucrat’s khaki pants and crooked knit tie, but still retained Steve McQueen good looks with limpid blue eyes and sandy brown hair. “That was the time for thinking you could change the world.”
When he first arrived in Joensuu, North Karelia’s capital, instead of hiring seasoned public-health workers, he organized a team of like-minded idealistic young people. He consulted Geoffrey Rose, a British epidemiologist who argued statistically that it was more cost-effective to prevent disease than to cure it. In Rose’s opinion, hospitals and doctors could no more solve the problem of general ill health than famine relief could solve the problem of world hunger. He was the first to show, using epidemiological data, that the number of people who died of heart disease was directly proportional to the average blood-pressure levels of the whole population. He also calculated that for every percentage point you lowered cholesterol in a population, you lowered heart disease by two points. Whether you lived a short, sick life or a long, healthy one, Rose argued, was a function of the population you belonged to more than the quality of your doctor or hospital care. Puska applied Rose’s thinking to public health. “I could see the whole system needed to change,” he said. He shifted the focus from trying to change individuals to improving the physical and social environment.
At afternoon “longevity parties,” a member of Puska’s team would give a talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil.
Puska and his team approached the Martha Organization, a powerful women’s organization with several local clubs, to help spread the word. Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could.
Inspired by a former professor, Everett Rogers, who came up with the idea of “opinion leaders,” Puska next went from village to village recruiting “lay ambassadors.” Believing that the best way to spark cultural change was from the bottom up, he recruited some 1,500 people, usually women who were already involved in other civic organizations. He gave each ambassador an identification card, taught them simple messages about reducing salt and animal products, and encouraged them to talk to their friends.
In a region of dairy farms, the proportion of residents consuming high-fat milk has dropped from about 70 percent to less than 10 percent. (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
His small, underfunded staff tried everything they could think of to infiltrate the community. Puska spoke relentlessly at churches, community centers, and schools. He became the face of this new health movement, constantly recruiting people to the cause. (One of his mentors once told him that the only way to succeed in prevention is to “push, push, push.” His English-speaking friends later joked, “Now we know why your name is Puska!”)
Next, Puska started to lobby food producers. You could have the world’s best program to educate people about how to eat healthier, he figured, but if they weren’t able to obtain healthy ingredients, then what good was it? The regional sausage company, for example, loaded its products with pork fat and salt. Traditional breads were laced with butter. Karelian cows, developed from breeds known as Finncattle, produced some of the fattiest milk in the world, and dairy subsidies rewarded high fat content.
At first, none of the businesses were interested in formulating healthier versions of their products. Why should they risk their profits? In fact, the powerful dairy industry fought back, taking out ads bashing the project. But the ads backfired, because they sparked a public debate, raising the question of the connection between dairy and heart disease.
The ads backfired, sparking a public debate about the connection between dairy and heart disease.
North Karelians were also realizing that they needed to eat more fruits, but common fruits such as oranges or melons were expensive. They had to be imported from southern Europe, and they played no part in the Karelians’ traditional diet. Puska saw a homegrown solution: berries.
During the summer, blueberries, raspberries, and lingberries grew abundantly in the region, and North Karelians loved them. But they ate them only in the late summer, during the short berry season. So Puska’s team supported the establishment of cooperatives and businesses to freeze, process, and distribute berries. They convinced local dairy farmers to apportion some of their pastureland to grow berries and convinced grocers to stock frozen berries. As soon as berries became available year-round, fruit consumption soared.
North Karelians love their pork sausage and Puska understood he was not about to get people to give it up. So, he appealed to the regional sausage maker to gradually reduce salt and replace pork fat with a filler made from local mushrooms. Customers didn’t even notice the difference. In fact, sausage sales actually increased.
One of the local berry cooperatives Pekka Puska worked with as part of the North Karelia project. Their aim was to make fruit more accessible and affordable year round. (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
The project also successfully took aim at smoking. It convinced workplaces and legislators to adopt smoke-free policies. They provided smoking-cessation programs and then they pitted villages against each other in contests to see which could achieve the most participation.
Looking back 25 years, Puska’s project produced impressive results. Smoking rates dropped to from 52 to 31 percent. The mortality rate of coronary heart disease in the middle-aged male population in North Karelia has reduced by about 73 percent. Life expectancy for men rose by seven years, and for women, six years.
Even so, some academics criticized Puska because they said it was impossible to pinpoint exactly what had caused the improving numbers. Was it the drop in meat consumption? The rise in vegetable and fruit consumption? A rising health awareness among the general public? Perhaps the lay ambassadors created more social equity among these otherwise taciturn Finns? His medical colleagues ridiculed the project, calling it “shotgun medicine.” But Puska’s strategy worked: He may have fired a shotgun, but he unleashed a healthy blast of silver buckshot that saved lives.
* * *
After meeting Puska in his office, I visited North Karelia to see how this program had transformed people’s lives. I boarded a train in Helsinki and traveled 250 miles north, passing through boreal forests and pea-green fields that swooped and curved like curlicues on a paisley shirt. Homesteads dotted the landscape—cozy, compact houses painted bright red or burnt yellow, with medieval-looking plank barns out back. When I arrived in Joensuu, the sun was arcing low over the Scandinavian sky. A brassy light illuminated the city’s birch-lined streets, lakefront houses, and Lutheran churches.
“We have two slogans that drive our work: ‘Face-to-face communication’ and ‘common interest.’”
I found the headquarters of the North Karelia Project on the sixth floor of a brick building that fronted the town plaza. It was a cramped jumble of four small offices furnished with Ikea-style desks and lined with 30 years of records in neat file folders. There, I met Vesa Korpelainen, a tall, serious man with sandy brown hair, blue jeans, and a red-checkered shirt. Since 1986, he’d been Puska’s man on the ground in North Karelia. He told me how he motivated his team.
“We have two slogans that drive our work,” he said. “‘Face-to-face communication’ and ‘common interest.’ It’s extremely important to get people involved. That means you have to be honest. You have to work with people—on the same level.” He described his team’s daily activities as “meetings, meetings, meetings,” and he attributed their success to a “relentless, congenial nudging” rather than any heroic initiatives.
As I listened to Korpelainen, the various pieces of the North Karelia campaign began to come together in my mind. Partly through trial and error, but also through tremendous dedication and persistence, Puska and his team had developed a winning strategy.
Traditional pocket pastries filled with rice porridge (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
To show me how these strategies had been put into practice in the capital, Korpelainen took me on a walking tour of Joensuu. We first visited a grocery store, where he pointed out products inspired by the project: rows of healthy butter substitutes and candies sweetened with xylitol, a sweetener made from birch sap. In an open market we saw row after row of berry and wild-mushroom vendors. There were only two holdouts from the old dietary regime: One vendor sold butter-fried smelt; another offered pocket pastries filled with rice porridge and about a half stick of butter each. After that we breezed through a restaurant and saw the prominent salad bar. Soft drinks were served in small glasses and customers paid for refills.
Outside of Joensuu, I met a couple in couple in their 90s, Mauno and Helka Lempinen. Mauno, a woodcutter, was splitting wood when I arrived. They invited me into their cottage for a lunch of rye bread and vegetable soup, garnished with cucumbers and tomatoes. The couple recounted how they had come to North Karelia in 1973 and soon adopted the local diet. They started their day with buttered bread and coffee, lunched on cold-cut sandwiches, and dined on pork stew.
In 1983 Mauno suffered a heart attack. Emergency open-heart surgery saved his life. I asked how that had altered their lifestyle, expecting a long list of healthy adjustments. “Oh, we didn’t change anything.” Helka said.
“Since when did you start eating vegetable soup?” I asked.
Helka looked down and thought hard. She had no idea. “It just happened,” Mauno said finally. “But I guess it saved my life.” It occurred to me that this comment summed up the whole North Karelia Project: It had changed people’s lifestyle, without them realizing it.
The North Karelia campaign had tackled the region’s health problem from so many different directions, its reforms were all but invisible. They’d simply changed the environment. Here was a rural community in far-flung Finland that had made deliberate decisions, changed its diet and habits, adapted to its traditions, and improved its people’s health. A small Finnish region is one thing—could this sort of transformation take place in 21st-century America?
Mauno Lempinen, a woodcutter in his 90s, serving lunch with his wife Helka (Michael Turek/Blue Zones)
Four the past five years, my colleagues with the Blue Zones Project and I have taken a similar system-wide approach to health in 23 American cities. We’ve seen decreases in smoking, obesity, and healthcare costs for city workers by combing influence in a city: The mayor, city manager, chamber of commerce, local CEOs, health department, restaurant association, and school superintendent all need to understand—and endorse—approaches to improving the health of a community. We help city planners envision streets design for people­–not just cars. We introduce tax-neutral polices and show communities how to make their streets safer, more walkable, and more bikeable. The average American burns fewer than 100 calories a day engaged in exercise, yet according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, you can raise the activity level of an entire city by up to 30 percent with designs that favor the pedestrian and bicyclist.
In America, the economics of health—for doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies—largely rely on people getting sick. From Puska’s North Karelia experiment, we learn that designing for health can yield powerful and measurable returns. The trick is to design an environment that helps make the right decisions for us, making the healthy choice not only easy, but unavoidable.
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Monday 6 April 2015

Finnish teacher training attracts talented young people - Good News from Finland

Finnish teacher training attracts talented young people - Good News from Finland
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A MUST VISIT - Old Kuopio Museum brings back the Kuopio of wooden houses

Brings back the Kuopio of wooden houses
The museum consists of eleven old wooden houses. The interiors show how people in Kuopio lived between the late 18th century and the 1930´s. Temporary exhibitions and Café.
Address: Kirkkokatu 22, 70100 Kuopio, Finland
Old Kuopio museum on the map

Tel. museum: +358 17 182 625
E-mail
korttelimuseo(at)kuopio.fi
Open
1.9. - 14.5. Tue-Sat 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sun-Mon closed
Closed 3.-6.4., 1.5. and 14.5.2015.
15.5.-31.8. Tue-Sat 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sun-Mon closed
Closed 19.-22.6.2015.
Admission
6,00/4,00 €, children under 18 years free
Guidance
Guidance by appointment, 60 €

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