Santa Taking a Back Seat : Finland Seeks New Image as a High-Tech Center

This nation is fed up with its image as the land of Sibelius, saunas and Santa Claus, of being subservient to the Soviets.

It would rather be known as a center of European high-technology--a kind of Nordic Japan or South Korea.

“The world must know that we exist,” said Ralf Friberg, director-general of press and cultural affairs at the Finnish foreign ministry. “In many cases, what is parading as knowledge of Finland is antiquated and does not take into account the rapid economic development of this country in the past 15 years.

“A country must be visible. It must be in the minds of the international community to protect its rights.”

To change its image, Finland is investing about $25 million a year on books, films and videos intended for distribution abroad, especially to business audiences.

One of its first efforts was a video featuring two British comedians--Mel Smith and Griff Rhyss-Jones

In the video, Smith plays a modern, high-tech Santa, in instant touch with salesman through his Finnish-made mobile telephone and punching sales figures into his Finnish computer.

“Forget about reindeer,” he says. “Most Finns haven’t seen one. They live in towns.”

To Finns, the most galling image that foreigners have of them is of a nation whose independence is less than total, conditional on the agreement of its giant neighbor to the east, the Soviet Union.

Finnish surveys abroad have found that many people believe Finland is actually part of the Eastern Bloc. The term “Finlandization” is sometimes used as a derogatory term, denoting submission to Soviet domination.

Finns say their policy of strict neutrality in foreign affairs is a price well worth paying for the luxuries of a Western life style, one of the highest living standards in Europe and political freedom.

The alternative, they say, would have been to suffer the fate of other Baltic republics, which like Finland won their independence in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution--Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

All are now part of the Soviet state.

As Smith tells Jones in the publicity video: “We trade with the Soviet Union. We’re not part of it.”

“The government wants to make Finland better known, and better known in a modern sense,” said Max Jakobson, a former senior Finnish diplomat who is now one of his country’s most respected historians and political commentators. “The image is of not a very modern country, not very highly industrialized, subservient to the Soviet Union.

“But the image has enormously improved in recent years. The image is important for economic reasons. It harms Finnish business if people think that Finland is a primitive country or that Finland is somehow politically unstable or unreliable as a trading partner.”

One senior Finnish official recalled how a deputy British minister visited Finland three years ago and deeply upset his hosts by asking how many Soviet troops were stationed on Finnish soil.

The answer, as any Finn will gladly point out, is none. The last left in 1956, when the Soviet Union gave up its enclave of the port of Porkkala, southwest of Helsinki, which it had occupied since 1944.

Although the Finnish public relations machine has scored some successes, it still has a long way to go to break down the stereotypes, judging by some recent articles in the international press.