House builders in Tornedalen are a similarly perverse category.  Evasive characters, preoccupied when you talk to them, restless, impatient, and with shifty eyes.  Only when they have their hands wrapped around a hammer are they anything like normal folk, only then can they possibly say nice things to their wives through a mouth full of nails.  It's amazing what a bloke can manage to build in a lifetime!  House and cowshed, signed and sealed.  Sauna and shit-house, before your very eyes!  Woodshed and barns, no problem!  Toolshed and summer house, attaboy!  Then garage and dog kennel and cycle shed and playhouse for the kids.

This is about the point at which the local authority decides that the site is fully developed.  The husband is devastated, as sour as vinegar, starts shouting at the children, turns to drink, can't get to sleep, loses his hair, kicks the dog, has sight and hearing problems and is prescribed Valium by a doctor in Gällivare -- and then his desperate wife inherits an undeveloped holiday home plot.

And so he can start all over again.

Summer cottage, sauna, shit-house, woodshed, dog kennel.  A pause for breath, then boathouse, earth cellar, guest cottage, toolshed, deck, and fantasy house for the kids.  Then all the extensions.  Up with the lark every day of the holiday.  Hammering in nails, sawing and chopping, and feeling good.

But years go by, and inevitably every square inch is filled.  The housing committee of the local authority pore over aerial photographs.  And the husband becomes so obstreperous, it's beyond a joke; and his wife is on the point of leaving him.

But all of a sudden, it's time for renovations.  New roof, more modern roof insulation, underfloor heating in the living room, loft conversion, game room in the basement, replace the putty in the windows, strip and repaint, new doors for the kitchen cabinets, fitted carpets, new taps and washbasins, replace rotten timber in the sauna, build a patio and balcony, and glaze in the deck.

But then it's all finished.  Then it's irrevocable.  Then it's impossible to add anything else, it's all completed, there's nothing else to hammer in, and his wife is forced to accept that there's no alternative.  It has to be the psychiatric ward in Gällivare.

But then they change the law and relax the planning restrictions.

It's amazing how many new sheds can fit into a normal-sized garden.  Off we go again.  And the marriage is once more filled with something warm, something calm, something one might even call love.

Mikael Niemi, Finnish author of
"Popular Music from Vittula"