A Quote by Saara Aalto

It's very Finnish to think you can't make it outside Finland. — © Saara Aalto
It's very Finnish to think you can't make it outside Finland.
In Sweden I am considered the Finnish-Norwegian, in Norway Finnish-Swedish, and in Finland Swedish-Norwegian. I've never really belonged anywhere.
Finnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970's winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake.
(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.)
I talked with labels and they wouldn't help with my international career. They said, 'Saara, if you're in Finland you just have to sing in Finnish.' That led to this situation where I felt very lonely. I was really sad and still I was doing gigs all the time. I'd go onstage crying but I was still trying to sing.
When you travel from your own country to another country for a long period, you do become aware of the differences. For example, verbal expression is much more important in France - in Finland people don't speak so much. Also, Finnish people say things directly; that kind of direct honesty would be very impolite in France.
The reason why Nokia has been built in Finland is simply because Finland was very far behind in terms of infrastructure, so it was relatively easy to implement new technology.
Digital Chocolate has 60% of its developers in Finland where the sun never sets in the summer and there is nothing to do outside in the winter, so we are very productive!
When you used to be able to express yourself as an adult in your own language, or as I can do in English, for instance, it's sometimes hard to switch back to very simple talking, like I am forced to do in Finnish. So a real conversation, when I really wanna tell something, I can't do it in Finnish.
In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds.
I tried to learn the Finnish language, which is really, really, really hard, and I realized that if I want to really learn it, I need to move to Finland.
To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age.
I grew up in Finland, so it's cold in Finland, we have ice rinks outdoors.
Virtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left - excluding arctic Lapland - 0,6 per cent.
They have a word in Finnish called sisu, which basically means guts. It’s the strongest word in the Finnish language. You tell a Finn he doesn’t have sisu, that’s like spitting in his face.
He saved the production a tremendous amount. Now they did the scene where Omar is on the horse and he's in the deep snow, they went to Finland to do that. That scene they went to Finland for a week. I wasn't around then.
I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.
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