A Conversation for Kyykka - the Karelian Skittles Game
Sounds perfectly Finnish to me...
AgProv2 Started conversation Apr 1, 2007
.. an essentially pointless activity enlivened by lots of drinking and a fierce competitive interest engendered in something fairly trivial.
What's the word I'm searching for here... oh yes, "sisu".
Just a question, and forgive me if this prods anything delicate in the national psyche. (I know Karelia is important - Sibelius wrote the theme music)
Karelia is a region which today falls almost entirely in Russia. Finland has gone to war twice this century, at least in part over the vexed issue of who has this territory.
When it became clear in 1944 that in the face of determined Russian assault Finland could not hold onto it, was there a westward movement of displaced refugees , as was seen elsewhere in Europe where the Axis forces were retreating and the Russians were advancing?
If not, there must have been a lot of ethnically Finnish people who were trapped on the wrong side of what later became the Soviet border, and the kykkaa game must still be played in what today counts as Russia.
If not, did it travel West with any displaced people back into Finland proper?
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Sounds perfectly Finnish to me...
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