Linus Torvalds - Just for Fun

Then you have to get the tent set up and the fire going before you can eat. You're cold and hungry and tired because you haven't slept in two days. I understand that people actually pay good money to participate in such extreme outdoor adventures as "character-building experiences." They should just join the Finnish Army.

Actually, the outdoor marathons didn't happen often, but they happened. I calculated that during eleven months with the army, I spent more than 100 days in the woods. Finland has abundant woods: 70 percent of the country is covered with forest. I felt as if I visited it all.

My job as an officer was to be the fire control leader for a group of five. That just means you're supposed to know how things work, and make them seem more complicated than they really are. But it just wasn't that interesting and I wasn't a very good leader. I certainly wasn't good at giving orders. I took them well -- the trick is not to take it personally -- but I didn't feel that it was my mission in life to do the best job.

Not then.

Did I mention how cold it gets in Lapland?

Come to think of it, I really hated it while I was there. But it was one of those things: After it was over it immediately became a wonderful experience.

It also gave me something to discuss with virtually any Finnish male for the rest of my life. In fact, some people suggest that the major reason for the required army duty is to give Finnish men something to talk about over beer for as long as they live. They all have something miserable in common. They hated the Army, but they're happy to talk about it afterward.

While we're on the subject, let me tell you some more about Finland. We probably have more reindeer than any place on Earth. We also have a healthy share of both alcoholics and fans of tango dancing. Spend a winter in Finland and you understand the roots of all the drinking. There's no excuse for the tangoistas, but, thankfully, they are all pretty much concentrated in small towns, where you never have to encounter them.

A recent survey determined that Finnish males are the most virile in Europe. It must be all the reindeer meat, or the hours spent in saunas. This is a nation that literally is home to more saunas than cars. Nobody actually knows how this religion started, but the tradition, at least in some places, is to build the sauna first, then the house. Many apartment buildings contain a sauna on the first-floor level or the top floor, and every family gets its own private hour-like Thursdays, 7 to 8 P.M. (Thursdays and Fridays tend to be sauna days.) That way, you don't have to endure the horror of seeing your neighbors naked. I was once thumbing through an English-language guidebook to Finland that went to great lengths to warn the reader that Finns never have sex in saunas, and how they would be horrified to learn' that such a violation has taken place or was even a mere fantasy in the tourist's mind. I couldn't stop laughing when I read that, because the sauna is such a neutral place in the Finnish home that the book might just as appropriately have warned against having sex on the kitchen Boor. I don't think it's any big deal. In remote locales babies are born in saunas -- the only places with hot water -- and that's where you go to die, according to some traditions. These rules don't apply to my family, by the way, which has a laid-back approach to the whole thing.

There are other traits that distinguish Finns from other members of the human species. For example, there's this silence tradition. Nobody talks much. They just sort of stand around not saying anything. This is another rule that doesn't apply to my family, which I will generously describe as "offbeat."

Finns are stoic to a fault. Silent suffering and fierce determination might be what helped us survive in the face of domination by Russia, a succession of bloody wars, and weather that sucks. But these days, it just seems odd. The German writer Bertolt Brecht lived briefly in Finland during World War II and made the famous observation about patrons of a railway station cafe there "remaining silent in two languages." He left for the United States via Vladivostock the first chance he could.

Even today, if you step into a bar in any Finnish city -- particularly the smaller ones -- you're likely to find stone-faced men sitting by themselves, staring off into the air. People respect each other's privacy in Finland -- that's another big thing -- so nobody would think of going up to a stranger and striking up a conversation. There's a conundrum. Finns actually are quite friendly. But few people are ever able to find that out.

I understand the atmosphere is much more convivial in Finland's lesbian bars.

Since Finns are loathe to converse face to face, we represent the ideal market for mobile phones. We have taken to the new devices with an enthusiasm unmatched by any other nation. It's not clear which country actually does claim the most reindeer per capita -- the title might go to Norway, come to think of it -- but there's no question which nation on Earth has more cell phones for every man, woman, and child. There's talk in Finland of having them grafted to the body upon birth.

And they are used for more purposes than anywhere else. Finns routinely send each other text messages, or rely on mobile phones as a mechanism for cheating on high school tests (send a friend the question and wait for his text-message reply). We use the calculator function that few Americans even realize exists on a mobile phone. The obvious next step is for folks to start dialing up the number of the lonely person at the next cafe table and strike up a cell conversation. The phenomenal success of Nokia notwithstanding, mobile phones have changed Finland like nothing since the introduction -- long forgotten -- of the sauna itself.

It's actually no surprise that mobile phones would find such a warm reception in Finland. The country has a history of being quick and confident in the adoption of technology. For example, unlike practically everywhere else on Earth, Finland is a place where folks routinely pay bills and conduct all their banking electronically -- none of this wimpy pseudo-electronic banking that takes place in the United States. There are more Internet nodes per capita in Finland than any other country. Some credit this techno-savvy to the strong educational system-Finland has the world's highest literacy rate, and university tuition is free, which is why the typical student sticks around for six or seven years. Or, in my case, eight years. You can't help learning something by hanging around a university for such a large chunk of your life. Others say the technological edge got its start with the infrastructure improvements made in the shipping industry as part of war reparations paid to Russia. And others say it has something to do with a population that is (at times, unbearably) homogeneous.

Linus and I are sitting at the dining room table. we have just returned from a car-racing/batting-cage place. Tove is putting away groceries, Patricia and Daniela are in a tussle over a book I brought for one of them. I brush aside a stuffed penguin and a huge jar of peanut butter, turn on the tape recorder, and ask Linus to talk about his childhood.

"Actually, I don't remember much of my childhood," he says, in a monotone.

"How can that be? It was only a few years ago!"

"Ask Tove: I'm lousy at remembering names or faces or what I did. I have to ask her what our phone numbers are. I remember rules and how things are organized, but I can never remember details of things, and I don't remember the details of my childhood. I don't remember how things happened or what I was thinking when I was small."

"Well, did you have friends, for example?"