Lecturing on Finnish language
and culture in Seattle

Heljä Nurmela

 

Instruction in Finnish language and culture is offered by a number of universities and other institutions of higher education around the world. In 1999 courses were offered at about 90 universities in 26 different countries in Europe, North America and Asia. There are over one hundred university teachers who teach Finnish Studies at foreign universities and more than 2,500 students have included Finnish in their study programmes. One of the lecturers in Finnish language and culture is Heljä Nurmela, who teaches in Seattle.

As a student I thought, as so many people do, that I would never become a teacher. My own schooldays were fresh in my memory and I did not know teachers could earn their bread and butter in other places besides schools. I worked in PR and journalism for years. However, in 1987 chance took me to the University of Gdansk as a lecturer in Finnish, and that sparked off my interest in teaching. I was a visiting lecturer in Poland for a second time in 1992-95 in Poznan. For the past two academic years I have taught Finnish language and culture to American students at the University of Washington in Seattle.

I have many times wondered what makes people want to work in a foreign country. You have to leave your work, your relatives and your friends in Finland, pack up your whole home. Moving to the United States has its own difficulties, as the distance is great and the bureaucracy fairly copious. No-one becomes a visiting lecturer in Finnish language and culture for the money or career prospects. The salary is about the same as the normal salary for university lecturers in Finland. Depending on the country there is also a tax-free housing allowance. But the truth is, at least in America, that the whole salary goes on living expenses, and is not always adequate. When we left Finland, my husband and I took quite a risk, leaving our permanent jobs. As a visiting lecturer I now live one year at a time on a temporary contract. My husband works on a temporary visa, which took almost a year to obtain. After three years in the United States we will face visa problems, so we will have to return to Finland and look for new jobs and a new home within the next year.

Seen from Finland, Seattle is far away: the time difference is ten hours. The flight is quite draining even for fit adults, but travelling between the continents and spending 18 hours in boxes is a real ordeal for our two dogs.

We had to wait nearly two months for our stuff from Finland. Many a night we spent at the kitchen counter, eating dinner off mismatched plates borrowed from Finns living in Seattle, and then sitting on the carpet in front of the fire in the empty living room. What a happy day it was when our furniture, clothes and dishes finally arrived! Only then did our house become a home.

Renting a place to live in Seattle is not a big problem in itself. There are plenty of flats and houses to let, but the rents are sky-high, and dog owners have a hard time. Many Seattleites seem to have dogs, but nobody wants to let their place to a dog owner. Fortunately we met Susan, who works at the University library, and we are now living in her house. She herself wanted to try a different form of living and moved to a houseboat.

Our house is in the best possible location, as I can walk to work at the University. Buses to the University and downtown also leave from just around the corner; the grocery store, post office and bank are within walking distance. For an American city, Seattle has arranged its public transport well. So far we have been able to manage without a car of our own.

My workplace, the University of Washington, is a state university and a large part of its funding comes from Washington state. However, more and more sponsorship money is needed, and the University has a whole office responsible for fund-raising. There are well over 30,000 students and almost anything can be studied at the University, from piano playing and Chinese to architecture and business. The campus is huge and during breaks, when thousands of students move from one building to another, the area resembles a busy ant hill. There are a lot of Asians among the students: Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese in particular.

Finnish sisu needed

Finnish is taught in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, which celebrated its 90^th anniversary this spring. The department is one of the smallest ones at the University. Besides Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, the department teaches Baltic languages: Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. There are ten full-time teachers and a number of graduate students work as teaching assistants, teaching first year language courses, as is the custom in the Department. The working language is English, and Scandinavian languages are actually heard quite seldom. However, I try to speak Finnish whenever there is an opportunity.

I think that teaching Finnish in the Department of Scandinavian Studies makes good sense on historical and cultural grounds, but sometimes it does cause problems. As Finnish is a different, non-Indo-European language, it is often left alone, and colleagues teaching Scandinavian languages do not always show enough interest in the teaching of the Finnish language or teaching on its culture and society. My job therefore also involves promoting the interests of Finnish studies and fighting for resources. Finnish sisu (guts and determination) is certainly needed.

One of the benefits of a small department is that you quickly become acquainted with your colleagues. We meet in the corridors and at departmental meetings, but there is little actual co-operation, and informal meetings between colleagues are fairly rare. Everybody plods on with their own work. The work of a visiting lecturer is basically quite lonely, even though you work with other people, so being able to cope with loneliness is an important characteristic for a visiting lecturer. But on the other hand loneliness is balanced by independence, an aspect that I learned during my years in Poland.

Finnish has been taught at the Department since the early 1990s. The first visiting lecturer sent from Finland began working in Seattle in the autumn of 1996, and I am only the second lecturer in Finnish. A visiting lecturer serves two employers; a little over a half of my salary comes from Finland, where my employer is CIMO, or the Centre for International Mobility, and the other half comes from the University of Washington. The Department also has a lecturer in Danish on a similar con-tract. Without the help of the Finnish Government, there would not be a lecturer in Finnish at the University of Seattle, because Finnish is such a marginal language from the American point of view.

My closest colleagues are Tom DuBois, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature, who specialises in folklore and Kalevala in particular, and teaching assistant Andy Nestingen, who is preparing his doctoral thesis on Finnish literature and film. However, next year everything will be different, as Tom will move to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Andy will continue his research in Finland.

An expert in every field

I teach second-year Finnish, and specialist courses in Finnish language and culture to more advanced students. I can choose the topics of the special courses myself. I have had discussion groups on Finnish customs and everyday Finnish life, and also presented Finnish music and taught word formation. During the past winter I taught a course in English on Jean Sibelius and his contemporaries, and the students included not only students of Finnish, but also of other Scandinavian languages and music. Because the visiting lecturer is the only Finn in the department, he or she has to be an expert in every field, when the occasion demands. Nothing should be alien to the lecturer. I was once again reminded of this when a colleague teaching the course "Sexuality in Scandinavian Arts" invited me to give a guest lecture on Tom of Finland and his homoerotic art.

The students and interaction with them represent by far the best side of the teaching job. At the moment about twenty students study Finnish. Around a half of them have Finnish ancestry or are married to or involved with a Finn. There are always linguists who first study Finnish as the compulsory non-Indo-European language, and then continue after they have got a taste for it. Then there are those students whose interest in Finland stems from Aki Kaurismäki's films, Alvar Aalto's architecture or Finnish punk rock. Students of Finnish are usually a select group: diligent, dedicated and well-motivated. There are no so-called freeloaders; they can usually be found in the Norwegian and Swedish groups.

The students are usually in their twenties, but sometimes my groups include older people, who are second or third generation American Finns. My oldest student has been the 82-year-old Aili Moody, whose mother and father had emigrated from Finland as young people and married in the US. The language of Aili's childhood home was Finnish, but connection with the language was severed after her parents died young and she married an American. After many decades Aili plucked up courage and came to my classes last spring, and we succeeded in digging so much Finnish from her memory that she began to speak Finnish daily to her cat and to dream in Finnish.

In the beginning I was annoyed by the fact that some of the boys sat in class with baseball caps pulled down tightly on their heads, so that I could hardly see their eyes. Now I have become accustomed to it, but on the other hand, my students have also learned that sitting with one's hat on indoors is not a Finnish custom, and they are now willing to part with their caps while in class. The way of dressing is different from Finland in other ways too: it is not at all rare even in winter for students to walk around in shorts and sandals, when Finns are wearing winter clothes and still feel cold.

In the first and second year Finnish is taught for 50 minutes every day. At first the tempo seemed strange and too much like school - I felt that one day in between would have been good for the students as well as the teacher. The school-like atmosphere is heightened by the ringing bell that announces the beginning and end of classes.

The yearly cycle of the University also differs from the Finnish one. The academic year consists of three quarters, each 10 weeks long. In the autumn the teaching starts in late September or early October and the academic year ends in the first week of June. The tempo is hard for teachers and students alike, since there is only a week or two off between the quarters.

My teaching workload looks reasonable on paper, but there is a lot of work and often the work days are quite fragmented. Besides students attending lectures, there are students who work independently on their own projects and come in weekly for my supervision. This kind of instruction produces good results, but takes up a lot of the teacher's time and energy. Once a week I get friends of Finland and the Finnish language together for afternoon coffee. This get-together, which I call "the Finnish table" is a good way for students of Finnish to meet exchange students and researchers from Finland.

I am also in close contact with the Finnish community in the area and their clubs and associations. Support from the Finnish community is valuable for the Finnish language programme and its development. The Finnish community also forms a personal safety net _ our best friends and help in many practical problems have come from among the Finnish community.

Seattle is famous for its high rainfall. However, one gets used to the rain, and in other ways Seattle is a good place to live. The University offers interesting guest lectures and excellent opportunities for sports. Seattle has a good symphony orchestra and we are regular visitors to its new home base Benaroya Hall. We also have season tickets for the opera. Besides classical music, Seattle offers a wide variety of popular music. It is, after all, well known as the home of Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.