Margo and wife carry off the prize

This is a time of year when news is supposed to be scarce. Which makes it all the more inexplicable that last weekend's world wife-carrying championships in Finland went unreported in most newspapers. In case you missed the results, I can report that Estonia tightened its grip on the competition, winning for the fourth consecutive year. Estonians are to wife-carrying what Kenyans are to middle-distance running. In fact, this year's winning couple - Margo Uusorg (22) and Birgit Ullrich (18) - were defending the title from last year, when they completed the 253-metre obstacle course in a record 55 seconds. It may be helpful to point out, for English-speaking readers, that Margo is a man.

Twenty-one teams from six countries competed in the latest staging of the event, which draws the small but tightly-knit world wife-carrying community to the town of Sonkajarvi, close to the Arctic Circle, each July. You've probably heard of the place before - it also hosts Finland's national beer-barrel rolling championships. But the wife-carrying competition has local roots going back to the 19th century, when - I'm quoting from a guidebook - "it was common practice to steal women from the neighbouring villages".

Things have moved on since then, happily. And in these more enlightened times, when the theft of women is discouraged by law in most countries, it's reassuring to know that a local police team has been prominent in the relay event at Sonkajarvi. But the Finns still honour tradition in the main competition's rules, which state that the wife being carried need not be the competitor's own. She needn't even be a wife, in fact (and in at least one US version of the sport, she needn't be a woman either).

Estonia's current supremacy is based on the controversial but legal "Estonian style" of carrying. Until recently, traditional techniques such as the piggyback and the "fireman's carry" dominated. But the new style, which caused a sensation when it first appeared, involves the "wife" hanging upside-down on her partner's back, gripping his neck with her thighs. This alarming but aerodynamic technique leaves the carrier's arms completely free for what is known as "flailing". Estonians are world leaders in flailing.

The style had the added benefit of making the "wife" a more active participant: try hanging from anything upside-down with your thighs, and you'll see what I mean. It also carries risks, of course. There's a bigger chance the wife will slip off and hit the ground - and that means an automatic 15-second penalty.

But the growing political correctness of the competition cannot mask a big weakness. While there is a minimum age requirement for women - 17 - there is no minimum weight. And whereas the winning wife in 1999 was 45 kilos, the current champion is an absurd 34 kilos (5st 5lb in the old currency). This is a dangerous tendency. If horse-racing were similarly organised, we would have genetically modified jockeys by now - the human equivalent of bonsai trees - a situation prevented partly by the handicap system, with its added saddle weights.

A similar system would restore some credibility to the Sonkajarvi event. Admittedly, there is even now an in-built sanction against choosing Ally McBeal-sized partners to carry, in that the winning prize is the wife's weight in beer. Which means that Margo will hardly have got drunk enough on the winnings to forget for a night what his parents christened him. But the organisers need to look at this issue again.

I know some readers will think the wife-carrying championships are another reason for voting no to a closer EU. But in a country where one of our popular festivals involves the coronation of a goat, we should be slow to judge. Finland is clearly a place like our own, with the same mixture of modernity and tradition; the same love for the contests of athletic youth (not to mention the laughter of happy maidens); and of course a similar respect for beer.

It's true that, paradoxically, the Finns have a reputation for being somewhat cool in the personality department. Never having been there, I can't comment. On the other hand, I have a cousin working in Helsinki (hi,Brendan!) and when I asked how his Finnish was coming on, he said poorly but that it wasn't a problem because conversation was "frowned upon". I think he was exaggerating, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, Eurosceptics can relax. I doubt if wife-carrying will ever really take off internationally. More likely it will remain one of those obscure folk traditions so common in Finland. Like the one in which - get this - a large man in the far north of the country is said to spend all year making toys for the world's children. With a team of elves! And then delivers them down everyone's chimney! What are these people on?

fmcnally@irish-times.ie