Heterosexual attraction in Helsingfors* (aka Helsinki)
Havis Amanda is a nude female statue in Helsinki, Finland. It was sculpted by Ville Vallgren (1855-1940) in 1906 in Paris, but was not erected at its present location at the Market Square in Kaartinkaupunki until 1908.
Havis Amanda is one of Vallgren's Parisian Art Nouveau works. It is cast in bronze and the fountain it resides in is made of granite. She is a mermaid who stands on seaweed as she rises from the water, with four fish spouting water at her feet and surrounded by four sea lions. She is depicted leaning backwards as if to say goodbye to her element. Vallgren's intention was to symbolize the rebirth of Helsinki. The height of the statue is 194 centimetres and with the pedestal it stands 5 metres tall. According to Vallgren's letters the model for the statue was a then 19-year-old Parisian lady, Marcelle Delquini.
Vallgren himself simply called the work Merenneito (English: The Mermaid), but it quickly started to get additional nicknames. The Finland-Swedish newspapers dubbed it Havis Amanda and the Finnish Haaviston Manta or simply Manta. Havis Amanda is the common name used in brochures and travel guides.
It was unveiled on September 20, 1908. The work drew a lot of criticism at first, especially from women. Its nakedness and seductiveness were considered inappropriate. Not all groups objected to the nudity per se, but putting it on a pedestal was thought to subjugate women by making them appear weak and create sexual objectification and belittling of women (equal and common suffrage was introduced in Finland in 1906). Some women's rights groups criticised the look of the figure as plain and some even as "a common French whore", lacking pristine and innocence. The sea lions, with their human tongues hanging out, were said to represent men lusting after the mademoiselle. Vallgren considered himself a worshipper of women. Many in the cultural elite of Finland considered Vallgren an outsider and had judged his work even before it was finished. A good friend of his, Albert Edelfelt, was instrumental through his influence in getting the work ordered. Thanks to a small group of mainly Finland-Swedish supporters, the work gradually started gaining wide acceptance and natives started seeing it as the spirit of the city. Today it has been consistently voted the most important and most beautiful piece of art in Helsinki.
Every year on Vappu, Manta serves as a centrepiece for the celebrations. Students of the local universities put a cap on the statue in an elaborate ceremony. For many it is a "must see" event[citation needed].
There is also an urban legend that Havis Amanda patronizes men's sexual potency. Some men believe that washing one's face with water from one of Havis Amanda's fountains and shouting thrice "Rakastaa!" (Finnish verb "love") increases men's sexual ability.
* Helsinki (Finnish pronunciation places stress on the first syllable: Finnish pronunciation: [ˈhelsiŋki]), is used to refer to the city in most languages, but not in Swedish.
The Swedish name Helsingfors ([hɛlsiŋˈfɔrs] or [hɛlsiŋˈfɔʂ]) is the original official name of the city of Helsinki (in the very beginning, spelled Hellssingeforss). The Finnish language form of the name probably originates from Helsinga and similar names used for the river that is currently known as the Vantaa River as documented already in the 14th century. Helsingfors comes from the name of the surrounding parish, Helsinge (source for Finnish Helsinki) and the rapids (Swedish: fors), which flowed through the original village. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire it was known as Gelsingfors – a Russian adaption of the name.
A suggestion for the origin of the name Helsinge is that it have originated with medieval Swedish settlers who came from Hälsingland in Sweden. Others have proposed that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, a former version of the word hals (neck), referring to the narrowest part of the river, i.e. the rapids. Other Scandinavian cities located at this kind of geographical locations were given similar names at the time, such as Helsingør and Helsingborg. However, according to Klevius, the most reasonable explanation is that Finland-Swedes (bilingual Finns) brought the name.
The name Helsinki has been used in Finnish official documents and in Finnish language newspapers since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved to the town and the decrees issued there were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in the Finnish literary language.
The Finnish lion on the original flag trampling the islamic scimitar
Klevius wrote
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Klevius on Minna Canth's Day: Paving the way for women's rights against religion
The bedrock of "monotheist" religions is sex apartheid - and worst of them is islam
Did you know that the word 'God' comes from the Finnish word for home which is far older than any of the Mideastern "monotheisms"?
The ancient Persian (which is extremely young compared to Uralic) word for god 'khoda' connects to the even more ancient Finnish 'koti' and Finno-Ugric/Uralic 'kota' (=home/house/seed vessel - see Klevius definition of religion and the Vagina gate), Saami 'goahti'. German Gott (god) and Swedish gott (good) as well as Gotland (pronounced Gottland), the island in the Baltic sea that constituted a (the?) main Viking* hub in their slave trade with Jews and muslims. This very same Gotland belonged before the Viking age to Kvenland under the half mythic (but less so than the entirely mythic Mohammed) Finnish King Fornjotr.* see also The oldest textual use of the word 'Viking'
Linguistic sex apartheid
As Klevius has pointed out for decades, in Finnish (as in most other languages) there is no sex segregation. A person is 'hän' regardless of sex, not the stupid he/she apartheid Europe has inherited from sexist Mideastern "monotheisms".
Is this why Finland became the most progressive country in Europe more than a century ago? And do note that full (i.e. also electable etc) voting rights for women in Finland was the result of non-socialists. Partly social-democratic Sweden had to wait 14 years to achieve the same.
The bilingual Minna Canth street sign in Helsinki reflects not only 600 years as part of Sweden but, according to Klevius, perhaps even more so the time before, namely as Kvenland (Queenland) the home of the Goths and the Vikings.
Minna Canth, born Ulrika Wilhelmina Johnsson, 19 March 1844, Tampere/Finland - 12 May 1897, Kuopio/Finland) was a Finnish-Swedish writer (i.e. mother tongue Swedish*) and social activist who wrote her most important works against religion and the treatment of women in Finnish. She inspired the proposal 1997 in the Finnish Parliament (actually same year as she died).
* in Finland both Swedish and Finnish are official languages since long ago (also see Kvenland/Kvinnoland/Queenland)
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