I arrived in Finland on Saturday and this morning came to Helsinki where I will be for one week. With daylight being too limited for much sightseeing and my linguistic curiosity insatiable, I probably will spend most of this time in the library. Today’s tour of the university’s Department of Finno-Ugrian linguistics was exciting. I had lunch with faculty members Tapani Salminen and Riho Grünthal (at the extreme left and right respectively of the photograph), and a graduate student whose name I sadly don’t remember.

Later I attended a session of Prof Salminen’s course on Enets. His lecture used an Enets translation of fragments of Luke’s gospel to elucidate the similarities of the poorly-understood Forest Enets language to his own concentration, Tundra Nenets, and their mutual descent from Proto-Samoyedic. (Incidentally, this Enets Biblical translation is published by in Stockholm by the Institute for Biblical Translation, ISBN 91-88394-99-9.)

I have picked up three Mari-related books. One, Poro Keče, is the most lightweight of recent Mari textbooks. The other two items are readers published by Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura (the Finno-Ugrian Society) in Helsinki, Yrjö Wichmann’s Tscheremissiche Texte (from 1953) and Alho Alhoniemi’s Marin kielen lukemisto (1986).

The department was all the more welcoming because Mari is the theme of its display board.