TODAY’S theatre-goers have grown used to (some even weary of) multimedia experiments and envelope-pushing productions. Younger viewers should be no exception. Catering to that demand, Danish art collaboration Graense-Loes brings their production Fucking Alone to Helsinki for the Bravo! International Theatre Festival for Children and Youth.

Graense-Loes’ award-winning audiovisual performance grasps the difficult topic of human loneliness and focuses on people using technology instead of having real world contacts. Fucking Alone is described as a multimedia puppet theatre, with video projections and virtual media taking the stage as co-actors. The performance has gained international accolades, and teenagers and adults alike have enjoyed its modern object theatre and thought-provoking subject.

Learning the Finnish they don’t teach in school

Kaamos (noun)

English equivalent: Polar night.

Example of usage:

”Kaamos voi aiheuttaa kaamosmasennusta niin ihmisillä kuin eläimillä. Oireita ovat mm. unihäiriöt, ylensyönti, seksuaalinen taantuminen ja erakoituminen. Kaamoksesta voi selvitä matkustamalla ulkomaille.” (”Kaamos can cause depression in people as well as animals. Symptoms include e.g. sleep deprivation, loss of sexual appetite and becoming a hermit. Kaamos can be survived by travelling overseas. “)

Will they ever come true in this wretched world?

“Freedom for woman! Freedom of action, freedom of thought! Our spiritual strength is disheartened by the weight of old, stiffened shapes and customs. The impediment of free competition in different fields of society is forcing us to linger in material misery. In this way woman becomes a machine and loses her naturalness, existing only as a mere monkey of others. Life and a meaning of life appear in front of her as a book locked with seven seals.”

THIS is how Finnish writer, journalist and women’s rights advocate Minna Canth (1844–1897) described the social status of women in her article Of Women’s Issue in 1884.

CARTOON characters once restricted to the kid’s department now festoon adult apparel. Walk into any H&M or Sokos in Finland and you are bombarded with Snoopy, Tweety and Hello Kitty on anything from lingerie to lip gloss, all unmistakeably marketed to adults. Is this a vain attempt to reclaim childhood innocence or another marketing ploy embraced by a consumer society?

Merchandising turns any object into a commodity. Children’s merchandising has been strongly connected to children’s films and TV shows, while adult merchandising, previously based mostly on sports team items for fans, has also begun to exploit adult love for music, film and TV. Cartoons have long appealed to adults for their humour, so adults might also want to wear Spongebob or Shrek T-shirts.

DURING A WINTER like this one, when the whole country is blanketed with snow, the best maintained and illuminated tracks tend to get crowded. Turning your skis towards virgin snow, however, requires a completely new set of equipment, namely forest skis.

Compared to the ordinary cross-country skis, forest skis are much longer (240-280 cm) and wider (7 cm), which is why they float nicely, even in deep snow. One could always opt for snowshoes but they don’t glide like skis do. The tip of the forest ski is slightly narrow and soft as a birch branch. This means that the tip will always stay on the surface even in conditions of poor or powdery snow.

NOW that you’ve scoffed your cut-price Runeberg’s tortes and enjoyed the gluttonous cream-fest that is Shrovetide, don’t forget that on 28 February some poor, cake-bloated individual will drag themselves outside to hoist the flag yet again for Kalevala Day. On this day we celebrate the national epic, an oral tradition collected from the firesides of 19th century Finland and given the form of print by Elias Lönnrot. But what does Kalevala actually mean to the average Finn? SixDegrees asked a few people.

“It’s full of rape, murder and robbery. Like normal Finnish life. Väinämöinen somehow had something to do with the creation of the world. I think a sea-duck laying an egg came into it somehow too. He sang all the things into the world - the rivers, the lakes, the swamps and so on and so on(the list is very long and complicated).” -Jarno (37)

IF YOU THOUGHT Argentina’s gift to the world was Maradona, tango or perhaps beef, you thought wrong. I hereby introduce you to the alfajor.

Admittedly these delicacies are also found in other Latin American countries, but nowhere else do you find people as passionate about these wee confectionaries as in Argentina – and Argentines do like to claim these treats as their own invention.

Anyone who has taken a look at Microsoft Xbox 360’s downloadable Arcade titles can hardly have failed to notice one title in particular sitting pretty at the top of the downloaded charts. Developed by Finnish company RedLynx Limited, Trials HD is an insanely addictive game involving a motorbike and obstacle courses of ever-increasing difficulty. It is by all accounts one of the best-selling downloadable titles on the 360, having sold over 500,000 digital copies since its launch in mid-August last year.

The immense success of the game has bucked the economic trend. “It’s harder to justify a 50 or 60 euro price tag for a retail game in stores...

T-shirts are great aren’t they? Utilitarian, unisex and ever-present, the humble tee is probably the single most-worn item of clothing in the world. Obviously you can go to your ubiquitous and unoriginal H&M or Intersport stores to make your sartorial fashion statement, or you can go for something rather more individual. My Cup of T is a T-shirt store located in central Helsinki. It’s small, cosy and stocks tees that you just won’t find in any other store in Finland.

“We order a maximum of eight T-shirts per design,” Mirka Markkula a.k.a. the ‘boss lady’ told 6D, “in keeping with our philosophy of promoting individual style.” The store stocks just a few brands...

In the late 1960s, Johnny Cash sang the cautionary tale of a boy named Sue, who overcame years of belittling to finally confront his father over his gender-bending name. One would think that we’ve learnt a little since then, with deeply meaningful titles proudly displayed to all and sundry. Ahem, well. Maybe.

So, from Metallica to Armani, Lego or Chevrolet, there seems to be a unique moniker that suits every newborn child in 2009. Yes, this is a time of celebrities who are famous for nothing other than being famous – reflected by the dramatic spike in the number of newborn Americans named Paris earlier this decade. But surely, for every Moon Unit or Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, there must be some kind of applicable law somewhere that prevents such obscurities?