Pekka and Matti: what do Finns think about Dmitry Medvedev’s jokes

Let us recall that in August Pekka and Matti discussed the reasons for Finland’s accession to NATO in Dmitry Medvedev’s telegram channel:

— Pekka, why did our country join NATO?

– The Russians are threatening us.

– Why are they threatening us?

— Because, Matti, we are joining NATO.

Now the Finns Pekka and Matti were talking with Dmitry Medvedev on the social network about the T-72 tank near the Finnish Parliament and crossing the border on bicycles:

– Pekka, did you hear? Ours placed a damaged Russian tank near the parliament to humiliate the Russians.

“I’m not sure, Matti, that some cunning Russian wasn’t hiding in it to shoot at our legislators.” Besides, they broke through our border on bicycles anyway.

We asked our compatriots to translate these jokes into Finnish and show them to their Finnish friends.

“My Finnish friends appreciated the irony,” says IT specialist Alexander, who has lived and worked in Helsinki for seven years. – This is all the more surprising because we still have a different mentality. For example, many of their jokes do not seem funny to us. I remember back in a group of students at the table, one of the Finns told a joke: “An American and a Finn are walking through the forest and see a mammoth. The American thinks, oh, what a big animal, and mentally calculates how many steaks he can cook from it. When Finn sees a mammoth, he thinks, “Do I look good, I wonder what this animal will think of me?”

Alexander says that everyone laughed then except him. Only a few years later, moving among the Finns, he realized how concerned the residents of Suomi were about what one of their colleagues, neighbors, relatives, significant others, and strangers – just passers-by on the street – would think about them… Such concern really seems to be reflected in public opinion later funny.

Olga works as a pharmacist and has been living in the Finnish city of Lahti for 11 years.

“My Finnish friends are thoughtful people who have critical thinking, they perfectly understood Dmitry Medvedev’s message,” Olga shares. — We sincerely admired the creative move that the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council came up with to assess the currently difficult Russian-Finnish relations.

— Do the Finns feature Pekka and Matti in jokes?

— I remember this joke: “Toivo and Matti went fishing. They sit silently in the boat all day long, casting fishing rods. It starts to rain.

“It’s raining,” notes Toivo, throwing up his hood.

In the evening Matti says to his wife:

“I won’t go fishing with Toivo anymore, he talks a lot.”

As our interlocutor says, Finns are quite reserved people, many of them are really taciturn. It takes time to become friends with them.

As for Pekka, as Olga notes, he also appears in Finnish jokes. Most often, this is a simpleton, like our Ivan the Fool.

Our interlocutor recalls the following anecdote: “Pekka is painting her house and is in a hurry. The neighbor is interested in:

– Why is it in such a hurry?

— I want to finish painting the house before the paint runs out.

Olga shares that there are a lot of jokes where the residents of Turku laugh at the residents of Tampere, and vice versa.

– For example, it is known that the edible calling card of the city of Tampere is blood sausage – mustamakkara in Finnish, literally translated as “black sausage”. It is made from pork, blood and rye crackers. And they eat it with lingonberry jam, washed down with milk. Needless to say, the people of Tampere love their sausage. What the people of Turku often laugh about. I remember this joke:

— How can you drive a Tampere resident crazy?

– Lock him in a round room and say that there is blood sausage in the corner.

Olga says that Finns from different regions, united, make fun of the residents of the village of Laihiala, who are known for their tight-fistedness, if not greed. There are a huge number of jokes about the Laihialayans. For example, like this: “Do you know how they heat the hospital in Laihiala? They transport patients with high fever from ward to ward.”

“I heard this: “A resident of Tampere meets his friend from the village of Laihiala, after saying hello, he asks:

– What is the fate of our city?

– Got married, honeymoon.

– Where is your wife?

— She stayed at home, she was already in your city.

Foreigners most often write jokes about the slowness and sedateness of Finns. For example, Russian-speaking residents of Suomi like to tell each other the following joke:

— Why do Finnish racers go so fast?

— Because when turning, they don’t have time to take their foot off the gas pedal.

Our compatriots also use this short joke: “The Finns really love to watch sloths frolicking in the trees…”

Olga recalls how one Finn once told another the following joke: “Did you hear that in a casino in Helsinki a stripper fell asleep on a pole?” The one who listened added: “She was probably from Savo.” Both laughed for a long time.

— The Finns themselves consider the Savolais to be “slow.” They are traditionally the object of ridicule.

Another of our compatriots, Kirill, who lives in the Finnish city of Espoo and works as a production technician, shares that he showed jokes written by Dmitry Medvedev to one of his colleagues when they were sitting in a bar on Friday evening.

“In my opinion, he didn’t understand anything, he only noticed that politics should be left to politicians, and told his joke: “One friend asks another:

— If you have to choose between Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, which would you prefer?

– Of course, Parkinson’s. It’s better to spill your beer than to forget where you put it.

As Kirill says, Finns, like Russians, love to tell jokes about blondes.

— A couple of weeks ago, a student neighbor, while we were repairing his motorcycle, shared: “A blonde came to a fabric store and told the seller that she was looking for curtains for her computer. He was surprised:

“You don’t need curtains for your computer.”

“But I have windows there,” the blonde was surprised.

Kirill recalls another anecdote that he heard once in a company:

– Why does the blonde drown when she falls into the water?

– Because the sign says: “Swimming is prohibited.”

But, at the same time, as our interlocutor notes, it is often the wife who rules in Finnish families. There is a joke about this: “A father says to his son:

– Isn’t it time for you to get married?

– How is it? – exclaims the son.

— The life of a married man is much easier; you don’t have to think about what to do and what not to do. It is enough to simply say: “Yes.”

— Do Finns write jokes about Russians?

“I once heard this joke:

— What is the difference between a funeral and a wedding in a Russian village?

“There’s one less drunk at the funeral.”

Although the Finns, as our interlocutor says, are not fools to drink.

— What’s surprising is that they drink without snacking. Preferring to drink alcohol. One day we gathered to celebrate the birthday of a work colleague. There was some trout and potatoes on the table. After dinner, all plates with leftover food were removed from the table. The owner took out vodka, which those present washed down with beer, now increasing and then lowering the degree.

Kirill says that more than once he found himself in a company of quite decent people, where they were passing around a bottle of vodka. They drank “Sorokogradusnaya” directly from the throat. There were no snacks.

Our interlocutor shares that he once heard a joke about how a Finn, an Estonian and a Russian travel. From the trip, each brought his wife a set of cutlery as a gift. The Finn had an engraving on the spoons: “To my beloved wife,” the Estonian: “550 years of the city of Turku,” and the Russian: “Helsinki Railway Station.”

— Finns also like to laugh at our domestic cars. For example, there is this joke:

— How to double the price of a Lada?

— Fill the tank with gasoline.

Or this:

— What do Lada and a bathtub have in common?

“I don’t want to get out of either one in public.”

But even more, as Kirill says, Finns love to laugh at the Swedes, in particular, at their free morals. He remembered this joke:

— Why couldn’t Christ be born in Sweden?

– Because it was impossible to find three wise men and one virgin there.

The Swedes, in turn, ridicule the excessive cleanliness and love of order of the Finns.

Kirill tells an anecdote that he himself laughed at for a long time: “Finn returns home from a flight ahead of time and finds his wife with a stranger. The guest begins to rush around the apartment in a panic, jumps into the bathroom, grabs a towel, and wraps it around his hips. The husband shouts in rage: “No!..” and rushes after him. The wife is horrified, she thinks, well, now he’s going to kill him. The husband continues in a pained voice: “No! Not this! This is for the face!

In conclusion, Kirill says, if this joke seems funny to you: “A visitor in a restaurant turns to the waiter: “My soup is so cold that even a fly will slip,” then you are practically Finnish in spirit. It will be easy for you to adapt to Suomi.