MY SCHOOL – VAASA HIGH SCHOOL – educated the doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and engineers of the future. Many boys went into their fathers’ professions, but I had no idea then what my future might hold. We didn’t discuss it at home. My father had had enough of electrical installation and had become a factory manager. As for myself, I had made just one decision and I intended to stick to it: there was no way I was going into industry. Factories and workshops seemed dirty, and the work was monotonous. What was more, my father was at work every single day. I doubted whether I wanted such a tough career.
My father never had enough time for me, and everyone else seemed to be in a hurry the whole time, too. Days were full of work and bustle. Everyone was on a journey somewhere, onwards or upwards. No one had time for frivolity, feelings, or fretting. We had a new home on account of my father’s new job, a large and light wooden house next to the factory. At home the only thing expected of me was that I would do well at school. This was no problem. Besides, our parents had somehow made me believe that by studying, working, and researching one could meet challenges that at first seemed impossible. By preparation and careful consideration one could get the better of any opponent.
Knowledge was power, by which one could transform one’s destiny. With the help of knowledge one could advance and do great things. With knowledge one could compete and never be limited.
I really don’t know where this optimistic view of the world came from. Perhaps my parents were drawing on their own disappointments to motivate their children. They had both been compelled to give up studying early. Both had been the first in their family to matriculate from high school, but neither had ever graduated from university. They really wanted their own children to have a chance to study and eventually to graduate.
For my mother the decision to abandon her studies in order to establish a family had been a painful one. It was never openly discussed because it would have hurt my mother too much. It was only by good fortune that she had gone to secondary school after her father’s death and fought for a place at university, but she had never had the chance to show how far her intellect and talent would have taken her. I assume she would have gone far. My mother was bitter about her fate, and the bitterness gradually changed to a sort of gray cloud that everyone noticed but no one mentioned. That cloud acted as a silent demand that her children study and take the opportunities denied to her.
My mother’s experiences came to mind much later, when I met Chinese president and Party Leader Jiang Zemin in 2002. My mother had died by then, so I couldn’t talk to her about my conversation with Jiang. The distinguished chairman and president wanted to know what I thought about setting up a stock exchange in China. My view was that the Chinese could indeed set up a stock exchange, but the most important thing was to take care of education. The country needed good engineers, lawyers, and industrialists in order to remain competitive.
When later in the business world I encountered situations that seemed impossible, I went back to the lessons learned at home. Everything is possible, if only you research, study, and do things right.
Nokia was full of people who thought the same way as me. We couldn’t accept that anything was impossible. Everything is possible for those who know what they’re doing. But without thorough knowledge, educated humility, and close attentiveness, nothing good will come. I have never been terribly good at improvising. I have always wanted to prepare for everything, both the expected and the unexpected. I am at my best when I know I am well prepared, whether the matter in question is a speech, a deal, or even a routine meeting.
Of course I still knew nothing of this in Vaasa High School at the beginning of the 1960s. There I sat in class with the other boys. Sometimes the teachers were boring and narrow; sometimes they set my thoughts racing. For example, Raimo Teppo’s history and social studies lessons were spellbinding, so that every boy listened as quiet as a mouse. Teppo took a keen interest in the economy and in society, and he transmitted his enthusiasm to his pupils. Once we debated which of Finland’s banks was best. It was from him that I learned what a stock exchange is and why the value of shares fluctuates.
I was not the sort of boy who would have been voted form captain. I didn’t tell anecdotes or jokes, I didn’t organize parties, and I didn’t experiment with alcohol or tobacco. Girls liked me, but I wasn’t a heartthrob who received a constant stream of secret love letters during boring lessons. I had been taught to behave well. At home it was emphasized that everyone was equal and we should all have the chance to develop our talents. No one should need to look up to other people, nor should anyone be allowed to look down.
I was in school to learn, not to enjoy myself. Many of my classmates enjoyed themselves at our teachers’ expense. Some of them were fun to tease. Our scripture teacher was so absent-minded that he could never remember where he had left his car; sometimes he even forgot which day it was. Some teachers would find wet mushrooms or sharp tacks on their chairs. I didn’t take part in these activities, and I’m sure many of the other boys thought I was a bit of a prig. I certainly seemed more mature than most. Perhaps today I’d be called a geek – nörtti in Finnish.
In those days I often used to cycle to play tennis in the evenings. In the winter it might well be twenty degrees below zero. I took my tennis racket, put on a thick winter jacket and a woolly hat, and rode along Vaasa’s dark and slippery streets to the other side of town. The front wheel never seemed to keep straight, and cycling was rather like skating. I would play for hours with my friends in the tennis hall. If I lost I would go home quiet and dejected. Tennis had become a serious contest, like so many other things. But above all I competed with myself, and in myself I encountered a tough opponent.
Besides tennis my recreations were the scouts and a nature club. At that time almost every secondary school in Finland had a nature club. At Vaasa High School it was called Reviiri – the Finnish word for territory. It had members from every class in the school and some former pupils as well. I joined when I was about twelve and later I became the chairman of the club. We focused on ornithology because we lay under one of the major avian migration routes. For many a nature club member the hobby was the spark for a career as a biologist or nature photographer.
Through the club I also got to read some fascinating books, such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The book’s title refers to the dying away of birdsong because the over-use of DDT had disrupted the food chain, and bird populations were in decline.
As the eldest child I was expected to behave better than my brothers and sisters. And we didn’t do silly things in our family – we didn’t get up to pranks we could all laugh at together. Life wasn’t solemn, though, even if it was earnest at times. We didn’t broadcast our emotions, either joyful or sad. My mother’s family in particular valued silence above great emotional tempests. Everyone in our family kept themselves under control, and our parents were a model for this. I grew up to be a polite, reserved, hard-working, eager-to-please, and ambitious young man.
Global politics intruded on Finland when in November 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. I read this in a newspaper, but many of my fellow students learned about it from television. We had watched television at a neighbor’s on a few occasions, but our parents were in no hurry to acquire this new and revolutionary device. In conservative Ostrobothnia television was feared as likely to ruin family life, to destroy children’s chances of success at school, and to spread subversive leftist opinions.
We finally got a television in 1964. My schoolmates had convinced me of its advantages. I told my mother that I wouldn’t do so well at school if we didn’t have one. I really needed to follow world events. My mother told my father, who bought a set the very next day. Television or no television, however, we had to keep order in the family. To do that I gathered all the children and my parents round the table and set out rules in writing for watching television. According to these, we could only watch it at a certain time, only after homework was completed. It would be turned off by ten at the latest. There were exceptions for news and sports, which my father could watch in the middle of the night – for example if a boxing match with Cassius Clay (who had yet to become Muhammed Ali)