Wednesday 9 December 2009

New flagging day

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was born on the 8th December in 1865, and from the year 2011 this will be a national flagging day to commemorate his birth.

Sibelius composed many music pieces inspired by the Finnish national epic Kalevala, as many of the artist of his time. His most famous work is Finlandia which by many Finns is considered to be the real Finnish anthem. Finlandia was apparently from the beginning called "Finland awakens" and strangely enough, it seems to even have been the national anthem of some African nation for some time in the late 1960's, or so I have heard.

Well so the celebrations of the Independence Day are over and done with, the TV repeatedly runs clips of the reception and media still relishes on who did what, and wore what yesterday, the same annual discussion and procedure as every year.

3 comments:

  1. It was the national anthem of the Biafra Republic (a short lived independence movement in Nigeria).

    Land of the Rising Sun - lyrics in English, music by Sibelius

    http://www.biafraland.com/biafra_national_anthem.htm

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  2. Its also been 4 different Christian hymns in English, a Welsh nationalistic anthem, and an alma mater for an obscure university in Iowa (according to Wikipedia...)

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  3. Wow!
    Thank you for your expertise, dear Willie.

    Wishing you a nice day,
    Mona

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