The Public Weal

The notion of public vs. private property in the US is sharply drawn. If an intruder enters one's property in the US, the first thing the owner asks is, "Can I help you?", in a subdued and sinister way, a notion alien to the max in Finland and Sweden.

The most direct and also the most highly symbolic implementation of the logic of the public good is something that Finns call jokamiehenoikeus or “every person's rights”. It is sometimes translated as “every man's rights,” but this is incorrect, since Finnish has no gender-specific pronouns. There is no “she” or “he” but only hän, which is used in place of both. And even hän seems to be a modern invention; one friend of ours comes from Lapland and speaks a dialect where objects, animals and humans are all indicated with the same generic pronoun se. So what is “every hän's rights”? Very simply, the law of the land allows anyone to travel across, camp and pick berries on anyone else's land. That is, all Finnish territory is Finnish society's land. Finnish society has defended it all these years from both foreign and domestic encroachment, and has also organized and enforced an intricate system of private stewardship that attempts to safeguard it in perpetuity.

I have a Swedish friend who educated me on this notion of private stewardship and why it's a good thing, something this nation should learn to abide by but won't as for the Public Good has gone the way of the dodo bird, a concept never to be embraced by the populace of this so called "exceptional" country. 

As for the sign, the Finish response is priceless.

And what would happen if someone bothered to put up a sign such as the one at the top of this article? (Quite an astoundingly large collection of these is available from Google image search!) Would there be a scandal, or an arrest, or a lawsuit, or a fine? Probably not; chances are, the person in question would be called using a certain choice foreign loan word, one of the few in the Finnish language: idiootti. Because the actions of any one idiootti, or even an organized group of them, would not be sufficient to create a system of private property. The decision would have to be society's as a whole. And that's simply not happening.

Any questions?