Loving Helsinki, city of water, knowledge and light

The ministry. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

By Tony Jackman

14 Oct 2022

Life is seasoned with food; food is leavened with stories. In Finland, life and food are salted and peppered with finesse, substance and an impeccable style all their own.

In the GLO hotel lobby in Kluuvi, central Helsinki, Neil Young’s Harvest Moon is mellowing us on the tannoy. The song stays in my head as I walk towards Esplanadi, a broad boulevard and park that runs towards the shore of the Gulf of Finland and the water that is blood and succour to Finns. In the centre island of the boulevard, a monument to knowledge and books is adorned by the moon on high; there’s a full moon risin’/ let’s go dancin’ in the light, Neil Young sings to me, as if privately. Light abounds, in the night and in the enlightened mind. The lives of Helsinki are encased in wood and aqua; the tree and the water are everything to them. But shining everywhere is the brightness of an intellect educated and nurtured. Everything is about knowledge, and the food that feeds it.

On this harvest moon in Helsinki, Neil Young sings to me. The statue towering above is of Johan Ludwig Runeberg, former national poet of Finland. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Finns conduct their daily lives with courtesy and respect, for themselves and for you, even if they have only just met you and will never see you again. You’re made to feel that you count. I find myself taken with the Finnish way, and wishing we were all like that, from the way they dress (in a style worthy of Paris but interpreted in a crisp, cool, Finnish way) to the clean environment and devotion to sustainability. Where others say it, the Finns do it and live it.

Books, honoured. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

But the first thing that strikes you, even before you land, is the water and the trees; when you look down from your ’plane window, wherever there is land there is water nearby, and forests everywhere of spruce, birch and pine; it is the land of the Christmas tree.

In the city, in among the trees that still entrance your eye, are buildings in styles just as neat and crisp as the fashions alongside others whose ornate design describes their antiquity; think the disparate architectural impact of Prague with blond wood finishes indoors and Parisian dress sense interpreted in Finnish fabrics and crisp, clean cuts. You’re struck by the impeccable dress sense of the professional Helsinki woman. And this is a society in which women are more than equal. The Helsinki woman is in charge of many things; and this is something that has long spoken to me. Men, everywhere, would do well to give up the reins to a nearby more competent woman. With the occasional exception, of course; this is not to suggest there are no competent males. But there is strong evidence for my theory here in Helsinki.

A corner of the Esplanadi by day. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Everything here is about generosity and sharing. Who else in the world exports not coal, deciduous fruit or wheat, but education? Among Finland’s chef exports is knowledge. They are so keen to share their expertise about education with us that they are happy to pay to export it to us. Our group of journalists have been invited by Finnish embassies the world over to learn about Finland’s world-beating school meals system and its role in their country’s education system, which is entirely free. We have come from Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa; Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, Korea, the Philippines and Nepal. We have real names – Dante, César, Margherita, Mahabir, Wossen, Laura, Esther, Jane, David, me – but we take to calling each other by our country names, with bonhomous hilarity (“Has anyone seen Korea? She missed the bus.”)

This is the thing: what must it have cost the Finnish government to bring us all here on planes from all over the world? Yet the price is worth spending to them, only because we are flying back to our home countries to write about what we have found. And this is no one-off. They do this regularly, and are happy to pay so that we, in our faraway countries with all our complex problems, might know just how splendid their education system is. Rankings have it that Finns are the happiest of all of us on the planet, and that their education system is peerless. If only the cold-hearted Russian will keep his hands to himself across that 1,340 km border over there, long may they thrive in their educated happiness. That’s a lot of border to share with a volatile neighbour.

So here I am within sniffing distance of Estonia and St Petersburg. Tallinn is not far across the water. I have flown over Amsterdam and across Denmark and Sweden to reach here. It is the closest I have been to Russia. Then, as happens once you’ve landed in any foreign country, you’re suddenly immersed in the ways of others.

Listening to the pilot and crew’s announcements on board the Finnair flight from Heathrow has been my first true taste of the language; there are no commonalities with any European language I know. I am lost in it. The language is extremely strange to most other ears. It is nothing at all like Swedish, not a hint of French, Italian or even German anywhere, even though they have links with Germany in their common past; Finnish is closer, they tell me, to Hungarian and the language of a region of distant Turkey.

They do call themselves Nordic, but nevertheless feel separate, very much a nation apart from others. They feel a certain isolation from the world; a world to which they are eager to send what they have learnt in their isolation. The roots of this are deep. Independence came to them in 1917, just 105 years ago. Then, in the early 1940s during World War II when Finland suffered greatly, they started building a welfare system and introduced school meals; and these have a great meaning to the Finns; it’s far more than just food. It’s the foundation for every part of life and has everything to do with the future success that they worked hard to achieve. They refer to those earlier decades post-independence as times of relative poverty, of struggle to build a nation that might one day thrive. And that is the nation they have since built and earned. They are extremely proud of it, and have every right to be. These diplomats who give freely of their time to talk to us readily admit to having come from humble backgrounds themselves.

The Finns are the best example I have seen of how we can all be, how we can live, how we can behave; and looking around my own country at how very badly we have done by comparison brings only one utterly clear solution: that we would be foolish not to take advantage of their generosity. Their Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Ville Skinnari, visits our country in November. Opportunity presents itself to the South African education authorities in this visit, but not only in learning everything from the Finns that they are willing to teach us about learning and, yes, teaching. They are masters of these arts.

In our meeting with Skinnari on Wednesday in a boardroom at the Ministry of Education in Helsinki, he smilingly and charmingly shared many things, but I picked up on two things in particular, quite apart from the school meals and education system which were core to every talk. One of which is highly pertinent to South Africa.

Finnish Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Ville Skinnari and, to his left, his Diplomatic Adviser, Mikko Autti, talking to international journalists at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the capital. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The first was cellular technology and how Nokia started it all; the Finns smile wryly when someone says, “Oh, we thought Nokia was Japanese.” “Everyone thinks that,” is the swift reply. But no, Nokia is Finnish. And, questioned as to how badly Nokia had been knocked by the advance of iPhone technology and others, he explained how Nokia was deeply involved in core technologies that underpin much of the world’s cellular technology, and others.

The ministry. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The other thing, more pertinent to us, was Finland’s biochemical technology for the production of fashion from recyclable wood. This is something that Sappi, the South African wood and paper company, is already exploring, and a meeting with Skinnari, Sappi, Mondi, Tongaat and others in the South African forestry and paper industrustries would seem opportune, given how very keen the Finns are to share their expertise with us. Think, not least, new jobs.

But first, Finns shared, and continue to share, knowledge with themselves and with their children. And they do it through food; school meals, in particular, which are free to every child. This is paid for by taxes, and the return in a child’s knowledge of many things, from a sense of well-being to how to behave, socialise and thrive in society, is considered well worth the investment in every Finnish child. There is much more to it than these basic results.

At the end of a day that had started with a stroll along the Esplanadi to get a first dawn taste of the city, a day during which we attended many talks by well-dressed women (and the crisply suited Mr Skinnari) of expertise which evidently had been shared among themselves (it was clear there had been much preparation for the talks), I went out to buy an adaptor from an iStore (so that I could write this) and found myself opposite the city’s famous Stockmann Department Store. Down a level or two and I was in the food market and heaven. Scores and scores of whole wheels of cheeses of many kinds; endless variations of vacuum-packed cold meats (rabbit, duck, elk, among the more familiar Italian, French, and Spanish varieties); I chose to leave, fast, and only visit briefly later with a limited budget. This is far too much temptation for a Karoo boy.

I’m heading this afternoon to the food market at the bottom end of the Esplanadi, which I have not had time to visit yet. And meals to come throughout the weekend. For now, this quick, small taste of my first impressions of a city and people I have quickly come to appreciate. Much more yet to come in my next two days … see you all next week. Love from bright, light Helsinki. DM/TGIFood

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is available in the DM Shop or, if sold out, directly from him. Buy it here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks. Share your versions of his recipes with him on Instagram and he’ll see them and respond.

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