On my first evening in Helsinki, my young Finnish friend Andreas took me to, of all things, a game of salibandy. Otherwise known as floor hockey, this is a sure-fire cure for the blues. It’s played in an indoor rink with a small plastic ball with holes, and is easily the fastest game I’ve experienced. The action zoomed back and forth at breakneck speed. This is true. Take me, I came home with a sore neck. And all I did was watch.
Not many countries play floor hockey (though, after my return, Andreas wrote to tell me there is apparently an Indian federation for the game—in Lucknow). Finland has some of the world’s best players. Andreas, a serious amateur himself, tells me that a friend’s team just won the world junior championship in Prague.
That kind of success fuels the phenomenal popularity the game enjoys in Finland: 500,000 flying Finns are registered as players. Mull over that: 10% of the population, as many players as there are soldiers in the army. All competing in professional, semi-professional and amateur leagues, playing a minimum of a gamea week, performances meticulously documented and statistics analysed on dozens of websites. Check www.salibandy.net, but brush up on your Finnish before you do.
We watched the Helsinki HIFK team play the Vantaa HaKi (this is not a fortuitous corruption of “hockey”, but a fortunate acronym of Hakunilan Kisa, the team’s full name). And, as far as this Finnish-challenged spectator from India was concerned, HIFK is an even more fortunate acronym. It expands into—ready for this?—Helsingfors Idrotts Foreningen Kamraterna, and at least one of those innumerable vowels has a slash through it, or two dots on top, or something like that. Try putting that on your game wear.
The long and winding name notwithstanding, HIFK was clearly the quicker and more organized team on the day. Though they conceded a goal within a couple of minutes, they dominated thereafter and won by 7-4. After the game, a young beauty handed out prizes to the three best players, all of whom were agonizingly tongue-tied when asked to say a word or two. Was that because of the strenuous game? Or the unnervingly tight clothes the beauty had poured herself into? I don’t know, but instead of speaking, one of the awardees pulled her into a too-long, too-tight hug. Not too tired, after all. Does the Indian federation promote such post-game festivities? If so, hey: I’m willing to spectate. Play, even.
When not playing salibandy, Andreas studies archaeology (it strikes me that I can probably count the salibandy-playing archaeologists on this planet on one hand). He took me to a recent dig on the outskirts of Helsinki. The site is on a gentle hillside in a rolling farm landscape. It’s also close to the junction between two arterial roads and, curiously, those roads made the dig possible.