Can anybody help?

[British and Proud]

I once saw a picture online, of an African woman wearing a traditional Finnish dress. I wished I'd saved it, as I cannot locate it anywhere. I may have come across it on Skadi, but a search there has proved fruitless. I believe the image was a poster on the side of a building, if that helps at all.

Any help would be appreciated.

ps. I'd like to write a greeting on my blog in Finnish - something like 'Greetings fellow nationalists'. Can anybody transalate this please? I'd like to have it in all European languages eventually.

[Skandi]

Tervehdys isänmaan ystävät!
(Greetings to Friends of the country)
Trying to avoid nationalist, which is the same word.

[Eldritch]

I once saw a picture online, of an African woman wearing a traditional Finnish dress. I wished I'd saved it, as I cannot locate it anywhere. I may have come across it on Skadi, but a search there has proved fruitless. I believe the image was a poster on the side of a building, if that helps at all.

Sorry for the late reply.

I know exactly what you mean, but I don't have the picture either, unfortunately. It's a picture based on the Elovena oatmeal package, one of this country's oldest trademarks and immediately recognisable to everyone here:



There probably isn't a single Finn alive today who hasn't had Elovena oatmeal for breakfast at some point in his/her life. Well, the leftist Swedish-language daily Hufvudstadsbladet (who hate anything typically Finnish*), when advertising for their new weekly Friday insert, dressed a black woman in the same costume and tacked on a slogan that said "dare to think differently" or something along those lines. When I saw the advert I immediately thought that if they really wanted to shake their readers they should have had a black St. Lucia, but that would be of course be going way too far.




*please let me clarify something so no-one gets the wrong impression: while I despise Hufvudstadsbladet, I do not have a problem with the approx. 7% of Finns whose mothertongue is Swedish. It is regrettably true that in Finnish nationalist/preservationist/whatever circles Swedish-speaking Finns are sometimes frowned upon, but I have always found this pointless, self-defeating and counter-productive.

And oh, Thrynheim is spot on in her translation.

[Phlegethon]

Here it is:

[Eldritch]

That's exactly right. It was outside the wall of the Forum shopping mall in dead-central Herlsinki. I walk past the place every workday morning and afternoon.