When I was a young child, my older sister had a necklace with a bird on it that had been a gift from my father’s cousin. It was a small ceramic bird that whistled when you blew into its mouth. Throughout my childhood, this bird symbolized the mystery of my father’s rarely mentioned cousin. His name was Raimo, and he lived in the city of Turku, Finland making these bird-whistles that we saw in every crafts store during our summers in Scandinavia. Growing up, I would learn more and more about this man and his bizarre ways, which made me ashamed to be in his family.
Early on, my dad revealed that Raimo was a traditional Finnish craftsman by occupation. He made bird whistles and woodcrafts and sold them in open-air markets. Quirky, but not too weird—at least not when compared to his other pastime. Apparently Raimo snagged many a Finnish hottie in his lifetime. He married two different Miss Finland winners, and, according to my father, he “kicked them to the curb because they were too in love with him.” Those handicrafts sure get ‘em every time.
Adding to my knowledge of the many faces of Raimo, my mom explained that once when she and my sister were visiting Seurasaari, a nature preserve outside Helsinki, they stumbled upon a traditional crafts fair where merchants dressed in old-timey Finnish artisan garb. Raimo was there selling bird whistles to eager Finns who couldn’t get enough of his avian talents. After talking to him briefly in broken Finnish, my mom discovered that he was essentially the godfather of the traditional crafts circuit in southern Finland, and that he went to every fair, spreading the Liuksila name and attaching it to every craft item he could get his hands on. From an American standpoint, this was equivalent to bumping into one of your relatives in colonial Williamsburg and learning that he wears a bonnet and a monocle to work every day before returning to his log cabin to make homemade paper by gaslight.
I finally met Raimo when I was 14 years old. Until then he had never been a real person to me, just someone to joke about with family. Right before the meeting, I sat in our Turku hotel room as shame came over me. How could I be related to this crazy man with so many wives? My greatest fear was that the Liuksila crafts gene would suddenly become dominant and I would turn into a Finnish artisan, whittling crafts and wearing handmade twill pants just like Raimo.
We were to meet at Raimo’s house, so I was perplexed when my father led us inside an old wooden barge in the Turku harbor. Realization swept over me. This was Raimo’s house. A barge. That sold woodcrafts. When I entered his house, I actually had to wait in line behind paying customers before I could finally get to the artisan himself. When we reached the front of the line, I discovered that Raimo didn’t speak a word of English. So I just smiled at this jolly, fat Finnish man in a linen shirt and work pants who was holding a wooden replica of a Viking ship. Not knowing what to do, Raimo pointed out his “apprentice,” a small brunette Finnish woman (not a Miss Finland) who never said she was his wife but didn’t deny it either when my father, who translated for us, asked. Needless to say, it was just weird all around, and I was embarrassed that there were customers lining up behind us. So we left, and that was all I ever saw of the man, the legend, Raimo Liuksila.
Raimo is indeed an odd relative to have. However, there’s a lot to be learned from his Finn-tastic life. That a pudgy, unattractive, barge-living, arts and crafts enthusiast could seduce not one but two Miss Finlands (among many other women) shows that he’s really just a go-getter with a penchant for dress-up. He’s also someone who has spent his life doing what he loves, and doing it better than anyone else. Standing in that barge in Turku, it felt like I was in the Scandinavian crafts holy land, waiting my turn to meet the high priest. People certainly loved his work. Raimo represents the characters I associate with my Finnish heritage: go-getters and free spirits. He lets me know that it’s ok to be a bird-whistle maker. But that I should never turn my back on the things I love, even if it means wearing folk costumes in public and crafting tiny birds that whistle from every orifice.
