My First Moomin Postcard

Big day!  My first Moomin postcard from Finland, through Postcrossing.  I've mentioned before that the Finns, given the size and population of their country, are by far the most well represented country on Postcrossing, and that many people, in their Postcrossing profiles and postcard requests, wish for Moomin postcards from them.

I was particularly excited to receive this postcard because I've been familiar with Moomin for a long time, way before my involvement with Postcrossing.  My cousin, David, actually has what are probably first editions of Moomin books and and the figures/dolls that go with them from his childhood.  I remember his reading (and perhaps his dad or mom's voice as well), in a particular tone of voice, about "Moomin, Mymble and Little My."

I hope he likes this postcard, as he reads my blog.  (Hey, David & Nancy!)

I was also excited because my husband is 50% Finnish, which makes my kids of Finnish heritage.  It seems like Moomin is something they should know about.

Finland

For the size of its population, it seems as if the Finnish are particularly active Postcrossing people.  Per my Postcrossing stats (one of the features of the project), I've sent 32 postcards to randomly generated participants, eight of which have been to addresses in Finland and have received two postcards from there.  The above is one of those.  The other is here.

On both cards, the stamps have been particularly interesting or beautiful, so I tried to find out a bit more about Finnish stamps.   I didn't look that hard, but I did find out that the Finnish postoffice has a program in which you can upload your own images and for an additional fee on top of the postage, create your own stamps. 

I love the stamp of the Aurora Borealis on the above postcard but perhaps that's also because seeing the Aurora Borealis is on my bucket list. [I did see it once from the window of a plane flying over the pole from San Francisco to London, but I'm not sure that totally counts.] Other beautiful Finnish stamps can be found on-line for purchase but examples are stamps of fairies, and a booklet of stamps featuring sculptures in Finland.  [In looking at these stamps, I at first thought "Suomi" was a Finnish artist who had created the sculptures.  Turns out "Suomi" is "Finland" in Finnish.]

Finland is also a bucket list place for me for a couple reasons: 

1)  My husband is 50% Finnish, which makes my kids part Finnish.  Seems like we should all visit there at some point, just to feel it. 

2)  The Finnish language is one of only a few languages in the world (Basque being one of the others) that were originally considered to be  unrelated to any other language in the world.  This is known as a "language isolate".   At least I remember hearing that about Finnish when I studied linguistics in the 1970s; in looking up the term, either the current thinking has changed or I've been mistaken all these years.  (The shock!)  Turns out Finnish is classified as "... the eponymous member of the Finno-Ugric language family and is typologically between fusional and agglutinative languages".  [How's that for a mouthful on a Sunday morning?]  In any case, I've always been curious about the language, and would like to hear it in its own location.

Music in Finland

It's been mentioned before, but I can't say enough good things about Postcrossing.  Even the tag line is perfectly straightforward:  “send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!”

This postcard is a particularly good example.  In my profile, I mention that I enjoy music.  Kirsi, from Finland, chose not only a card that features the above pictured musical fountain in Lahti, Finland, the stamp chosen is musical as well, honoring the Finnish band, Dingo.

In the "Musikaalinen Suihkulande" ("musical fountain") the movement of the water is choreographed to the music, and everyday at 1 PM and 6 PM, there is a 15-minute concert.  The band, Dingo, was extremely popular in Finland, causing a phenomenom called Dingomania and inspiring a youth culture whose adherents are called "the Dingos"

These Dingos are not to be confused with the famous line "a dingo ate my baby".  I was aware of this line from both the movie starring Meryl Streep about the disappearance of said baby, and the conviction and subsequent acquital of the mother (played by Streep), as well as its use by Elaine in a particularly hysterical Seinfeld episode.  [You can watch the bit from Seinfeld here.  The expression on Elaine's face is priceless.]   I had forgotten one of my favorite Gary Larsen Far Side cartoons in which he shows a group of babies outside a nursery adjacent to "Ed's Dingo Farm" with the caption "Trouble Brewing". I did not know that the fictional band in the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was called Dingoes Ate My Baby, with Seth Green as the lead singer.  If you look at this wiki, there is a listing of many places illulstrating how much the line itself became a part of popular culture.