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Wife Carrying – the 120 kilogramme challenge
One friend in particular keeps asking me how I can have lived in Finland for so long and not learnt Finnish. He is convinced that I understand the language but pretend not to. The truth is, I have a number of excuses for not learning what is surely the world’s most difficult language.
Like most people who work from home, I like to listen to the radio - if I am in, the radio is on. In my case Radio 5 Live (24 hour news and sport) from England via the internet.
Last week on what must have been a slow news day, the topic of conversation was bizarre sporting events taking place around the world. One such event cited was the World Wife Carrying Championships in Germany! I immediately stopped what I was doing (window cleaning) and sent an email to the programme correcting their glaring error. Not in hurry to return to the window cleaning, I began to search on google where I found a story headlined “Irish woman seeking man for 120 liters of beer” in The San Diego Union Tribune, an American newspaper - hence liters instead of litres.
First held in Sonkajärvi in 1992 deep in the forest and a couple of hours' drive from the Arctic Circle, the World Wife Carrying Championships has its roots in the 19th century. Legend has it that a marauder, Rosvo Ronkainen, used to initiate raids on surrounding villages, with the express purpose of making off with someone else's wife. The competition has been somewhat modified over the years, for a start all wives now have to be returned. The present course is a 253.5m track made up of sand, grass and asphalt with added dry and water obstacles. In keeping with Finnish tradition, the winner receives the wife's weight in beer!
Motivated by the beer, Irishwoman, Julia Galvin, came to Sonkajarvi, in the hope of finding a man strong enough to carry her bulkly 120 kilograms over the finish line in first place. Although, she was able to find an Englishman (not me) prepared to attempt this impossible challenge, predictably they did not win. Afterwards she declared that she would keep trying until the title and the beer was hers. “I think I am worth carrying because I am a walking party,” she said.
Watched by some 5,000 people, in all, forty-eight couples from 13 countries, including Kenya, Australia and Canada, gathered in the remote Finnish village to complete in this year’s competition. Once again Estonia were unbeatable, as Alar Voogla sprinted home in just over one minute to win the Baltic country's 11th title, with Kirsti Viltrop clinging upside-down on his back. Germany took the silver and Ash Davies and Aila Bruce from England the bronze. "We came with our costume designer all the way from England - she has designed this especially, so we can compete, streamline you know, aerodynamic tuning," Davies said.
Finally, if Julia Galvin really wants to win perhaps she could carry me next year, I only weigh 72 kg – but I am not going to dress up as a woman – not even for beer!
Mike Bangle is the owner of Talking English language consultancy and can be contacted at mike.bangle(at)phnet.fi
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