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CHAPTER 11

Home and Family

ON THE FIRST DAY OF JULY 1975 Liisa and I received the keys to our new home. We had bought a two-bedroom apartment in a four-story 1950s block in Herttoniemi, a hilly, wooded suburb on the east side of Helsinki. Not much had been done to it: the original bathtub and kitchen cabinets were still there, and it badly needed a makeover. A decorator friend came down from Ostrobothnia to lay new floors and give the place a lick of paint. We got rid of the bath and installed a shower. My parents came for three days to sand down the window frames and kitchen cupboards. I spent six weeks working alongside various workmen. I like carpentry and doing things with my hands; I always got top marks in school for woodwork. I laid a new tile kitchen floor under the decorator’s direction. He explained how the tiles were to be laid and what sort of adhesive you should use. I also painted the cupboards my parents had sanded.

I had finished my time as SYL president at the end of the previous year. But in a way I took part in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which took place in Helsinki in 1975. This was Kekkonen’s most visible foreign policy achievement and an important occasion for the world’s media. I listened to the speeches on the radio as I painted the cupboards in our new flat. The reports resounded in the empty, echoing rooms. I could follow every twist and turn in the CSCE process long after the conference because I had heard every speech while I was doing up our flat.

Buying our flat had not been entirely straightforward. Liisa had qualified as a nurse, but she was continuing her studies at Helsinki University, majoring in social policy. There was no sign I would ever have a career. We went with these recommendations to see the bank manager, who happened to be an acquaintance. We promised to scrape together a deposit; the rest we would borrow from the bank. My father lent me 3,000 marks (about $3,200 at 2016 prices) which was the only loan my parents ever made to me. We also agreed to use our student loans to increase our share of the capital. The housing market had a growth spurt and house prices rose in its wake. We absolutely wanted to own our own home. Liisa and I were reckless, as were many others, and we believed we would manage. The oil crisis helped us: the Finnish economy had slipped into such a deep bog that rampant inflation seemed to pay off our loan for us very quickly. For once macroeconomic theory was a practical help in our life: we had taken on the loan at just the right time.

I had gone back to studying macroeconomics. I wrote my master’s thesis chiefly in the faculty library. I often found myself alongside another student politician who had put his studies aside for a while – Erkki Liikanen, who was my age but had been a member of parliament since 1972. When he became Finland’s youngest-ever MP Erkki was a politics student and president of the Teiniliitto – the League of Teenagers. We used to see each other during coffee breaks, where we’d put the world to rights.

I completed my thesis in spring 1976. It was entitled “The Theory of International Trade under Uncertainty” and I received a prize for the best master’s thesis in macroeconomics that year. I couldn’t have known that, decades on, I would be working on the very same subject in a very practical way. It’s probably fair to say that Erkki Liikanen’s current work also has a macroeconomic theme, given that he is governor of the Bank of Finland and a member of the board of the European Central Bank.

But even more significant than my graduation was the birth of our first child, our son Jaakko. Liisa and I knew we were ready to be parents, though by present-day standards we were very young.

Becoming a father was a tough job. I was present at the birth and for our son’s first ten days at home, when I gave him a bath every day. The birth was also something of a watershed. Life seemed to have become organized: I had my own apartment, I had graduated, I was a husband and father.

Student and housing loans were not enough to keep a family. I had worked as an assistant lecturer in the economics department for a few months and I wanted to continue at the university, but there weren’t any openings there. So I accepted more short-term work. The Centre Party and its youth organization needed someone to look after its international affairs. I went to work as International Affairs Secretary at the party office in Helsinki, intending to stay for about half a year.

I looked after international correspondence, I organized visits for delegations and I wrote speeches. From time to time the party chairman would call and ask me to explain something. I had to take care to respect the party’s foreign policy line, which was pretty easy: it was the same as President Kekkonen’s and Finland’s. My work did at least provide a salary and a peaceful place to pursue my studies.

When the office closed for the evening I went to the library to study mathematics. I had decided I would also graduate from the University of Technology, though I did not finally do so until 1981.

I still hadn’t the faintest idea what I would do. I had the bright idea that I should stand for parliament for my home region of Ostrobothnia. I wasn’t at all enthusiastic. I’d had a bellyful of politics, and I doubted I’d get enough votes to be elected. I’ve never been a popular favorite, and I would have hated the electioneering and hand-shaking. The foreign ministry might have been an interesting alternative, but the life of a civil servant seemed a little slow for my restless nature. I had to come up with something, though – I was the twenty-six-year-old father of a family, with a great deal of education and a certain amount of experience and knowledge of the world, but no idea what profession I wanted to follow. It’s no wonder that my parents were bemused by my activities. They told me it wasn’t for this that they’d sent their son off to study.