Of Finland and the Law

[I was going to write about my experiences last weekend in Longford at the best music festival ever, but I think I promised another one about Finland first, so Daveness will have to wait...]

The Finns and the Irish have a lot in common. Or so I was told by a barman in the Whiskey Bar in Turku. He had spent a few weeks touring Ireland and had concluded that we, the Irish, are culturally very similar to his own compatriots. I asked him to expound on this subject and he thought for a while, then answered that both nations like to drink copiously.

I was, of course, unable to deny this, especially as I was in a Whiskey Bar at 3am when I had a conference to attend the following morning at 8:00. Not only that, but I had a drunken retinue of Americans, Belgians and Dutch seeking advice from me on which were the best whiskeys to try (the poor fools!). As for the barman, he had been clearly drinking since he started his shift and was somewhat unsteady of hand as he measured out the Middleton and the Black Bush.

And it is true. Like in Dublin, Turku has a number of clearly drunk, apparently homeless people hanging out on its streets during the day. The only difference is that in Turku they don't wear tracksuits. Just like our very own Liffey, the banks of the river Aura are to be found sprinkled with small groups of unwashed old men imbibing cans of cheap beer by the crateful.

There were a couple of music festivals on in Turku while I was there and so the drinking was particularly pronounced. Much like Dublin on St. Patrick's Day, a walk from my hotel to the river often involved circumnavigating a group of men drunkenly trying to revive a fallen comrade lying sprawled on the pavement.

The difference is that Turku manages to maintain its charm. The sight of an unconscious man in a tracksuit accompanied by a woman, in a similar tracksuit, screaming at him to "gerrup, willya" is a reminder of everything that I dislike about Dublin. In Turku, it is a break from the norm and so it is more of a novelty, almost like street theatre!

The fact is that the Finns are, in my experience and for the most part, incredibly law-abiding. I never once felt unsafe walking around Turku, by day or by night. I never saw anybody fighting or yelling or otherwise being aggressive. In fact, the opposite was true. I found that people were particularly friendly. While I was there, I attended a concert as part of a punk festival. I was alone and it was a particularly hardcore crowd and yet, within the space of twenty minutes, somebody had struck up a conversation with me and invited me to join his friends and he for some beers.

There are none of the usual signs of a city that requires control measures to keep the citizenry from committing crimes. The parks didn't appear to close at any time. There wasn't a noticeable police presence, even after dark (in fact, I couldn't recall ever seeing a Finnish policeman). People loitered without being asked to "move along".

And the population is clearly quiescent. The most striking example of this is the fact that nobody seems to lock their bike to anything. A very significant number of Finns appear to get around by bike, and so there are plenty of designated bicycle parking areas, and yet a lot of them don't have any sort of frame or bar to lock the bike to. Most bikes have a kickstand and they are left much as one would park a motorbike. The only concession to the possibility of theft is the fact that the back wheel (not the front one) is chained to the frame. Of course, this could equally be a measure to prevent the wheel from turning and the bike from falling over! Certainly, the chains used are flimsy enough that they could probably be cut using a swiss army knife.

I would estimate that an enterprising thief with a truck could lift 2000 bikes from the banks of the river Aura in the summer time.

A particularly unusual trait of the Finns is that they never jaywalk. They will only cross a road at a crossing and when the light is green. I have stood with a large group of Finns at a quiet road in the late evening, with no cars in sight, and waited with them until the light turned red.

It is quite pleasant to walk through such an environment, but also disconcerting as one wonders what one would have to do to a population to make it so instinctively law-abiding.

Based on all this, I have devised a plan to raise the crime level in Finland. Because they are so well-behaved, the crime will have to be pretty serious, for purposes of balance, and so I have settled for murder. Or manslaughter. We'll let the judge decide...

The plan is simple, and it is actually based on an experience I had on my last day in Turku, when I was 15 minutes late meeting some friends for dinner. I was waiting to cross one of the busier roads and the light was taking a long time to change. As I was in a hurry, I waited for a gap in traffic and crossed to the other side, although the light was red. I was immediately followed by two or three Finns. They are clearly so used to nobody jaywalking that they assume that any movement must be the result of a green light.

I hastened to the other side of this road, because I had picked a small gap in traffic. The unsuspecting Finns behind me were ambling across, confident in their right of way. It wasn't until the cars blew their horns and braked hard that they jogged to the other side of the street.

And so my plan is as follows: Find a very busy street at a time when traffic is dense, yet fast-moving. Wait until the pedestrian light turns red and a crowd gathers at the crossing. Walk over and stand waiting for 30 seconds. Then suddenly take a few steps forward at a leisurely pace, slow enough that you could be easily overtaken. As your victim draws near to you, and before you reach the flow of traffic, bend down and tie your shoelace, then look up and see the carnage. Stand up, look distraught and call for help. As the crowd gathers around the corpse, melt away. You might never be caught.

You just might become the most successful serial killer in the history of Finland.