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Friday 28 November 2014
Tuesday 25 November 2014
From Haparanda to Timbuctoo
"From Haparanda to Timbuctoo" was used as a slogan by Thomas Cook's in Victorian times to indicate that their ability to arrange travel was so comprehensive it even stretched to those bywords for exotic-sounding remoteness.
I've never been to Timbuctoo, but I have been to Haparanda, and I can't imagine Timbuctoo being any more exotic.
Haparanda is near the Arctic Circle at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, and it's two hour's drive from the nearest airport. I go there to teach at the folkhögskolan. A folkhögskol is a kind of cross between an adult education centre and a night school that they have in Sweden, but this is an appropriately exotic folkhögskol. For a start, it's the Sverige-Finska Folkhögskolan, the only one in Sweden, and they do residential and vocational courses. They also do the only course in Performance Art in the world that covers theory and practice and includes fine art, dance and theatre, which is what takes me there.
A combination of the strategic nature of Haparanda's geographical location and various accidents of history meant it has in the past occupied a position of an importance that seems incredible now.
A coincidence arising from that combination led to the last constitutional act of the Austro-Hungarian empire before it's dissolution manifesting itself in Haparanda churchyard.
The inscriptions are in German, Hungarian, Swedish and Turkish - the Ottoman Empire was on the side of the Central Powers in WWI, and two Turkish soldiers died on the way to Haparanda.
That's not a Red Cross symbol, by the way, it's the emblem of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now only used by the Slovenian arts group that gave us Laibach, and their magnificent cover of the 1984 hit by Europoodlepomp rockers Opus.
I've never been to Timbuctoo, but I have been to Haparanda, and I can't imagine Timbuctoo being any more exotic.
Haparanda is near the Arctic Circle at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, and it's two hour's drive from the nearest airport. I go there to teach at the folkhögskolan. A folkhögskol is a kind of cross between an adult education centre and a night school that they have in Sweden, but this is an appropriately exotic folkhögskol. For a start, it's the Sverige-Finska Folkhögskolan, the only one in Sweden, and they do residential and vocational courses. They also do the only course in Performance Art in the world that covers theory and practice and includes fine art, dance and theatre, which is what takes me there.
A combination of the strategic nature of Haparanda's geographical location and various accidents of history meant it has in the past occupied a position of an importance that seems incredible now.
A coincidence arising from that combination led to the last constitutional act of the Austro-Hungarian empire before it's dissolution manifesting itself in Haparanda churchyard.
The inscriptions are in German, Hungarian, Swedish and Turkish - the Ottoman Empire was on the side of the Central Powers in WWI, and two Turkish soldiers died on the way to Haparanda.
That's not a Red Cross symbol, by the way, it's the emblem of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now only used by the Slovenian arts group that gave us Laibach, and their magnificent cover of the 1984 hit by Europoodlepomp rockers Opus.
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