How to Fail at Being Finnish: Chapter 4

A Very Finnish Midsummer

Midsummer, 2020

I am in a small dark room on an island off the coast of Finland. To my left the local chief of police is flogging himself with a whip he’s fashioned from a bunch of birch leaves. He does, I should add, appear to be taking great pleasure from this. He is an absolute butcher’s block of a man. He is long, thick and his wrinkled face looks li…