Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) commits the government to eliminating chronic homelessness and promises that realizing the right to housing is a key objective. In this article, we explore how the Canadian government could realize the right to housing in the context of eliminating chronic homelessness. We argue that it is helpful to look at how other jurisdictions have successfully reduced homelessness. In this article we examine Finland and Scotland’s approaches because they offer certain similarities in how homelessness is addressed, yet they also differ, most crucially in how they understand the right to housing. We argue that both of these jurisdictions offer important lessons for Canada to draw on as it seeks to reduce long-term homelessness.

Over 120 prehistoric pottery sherds from mainland Finland and the Åland Islands in the north Baltic region were studied for their organic residue content. Preserved fat residues found in these vessels indicated that the food procurement pattern was broad during the Neolithic and Early Metal periods. Based on previous research and these results, it appears that animal husbandry came to Finland with the Corded Ware culture. Groups using the succeeding Late Neolithic Kiukainen Ware did not, however, practice animal husbandry to any great extent, as there is an indication of dairy fats in only a single sherd. In general, even after dairy farming arrived in the area, prehistoric groups in southern and south-western Finland continued or returned to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. During the Early Metal period, animal husbandry increased in importance among the groups living in the area, and the level of dairying then intensified.

This article uses one case study to explore the use of criminal hate speech provisions against populist politicians. In a high-profile Finnish case, a populist politician was found guilty of hate speech after a four-year criminal process. Though the prosecution was ultimately successful, the various problems with the case helped boost the political popularity of the accused who was turned into a well-known public figure and member of Parliament. The case might thus be seen to warn against tackling populist politicians by means of criminal law. However, further analysis of the political context and a comparison with the Dutch prosecution against anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders complicate this conclusion. This article examines the consequences of hate speech prosecutions of politicians and sheds light on the conditions under which they can achieve (some of) their aims. The case also has lessons for other jurisdictions about when hate speech prosecutions of politicians are likely to be successful in terms of countering prejudice and disempowering those who spread it for electoral purposes.

In the context of northern Europe, copper use started early in eastern Fennoscandia (Finland and the Republic of Karelia, Russia), sometime after 4000 BC. This article explores this Stone Age copper use in eastern Fennoscandia in relation to broader cultural developments in the region between the adoption of pottery (c. 5500 BC) and the end of the Stone Age (c. 1800 BC). Stone Age copper use in north-eastern Europe has conventionally been understood in terms of technology or exchange, whereas this article suggests that the beginning of copper use was linked to more fundamental changes in the perception of, and engagement with, the material world. These changes were associated with the Neolithization of eastern Fennoscandia, which started earlier than has traditionally been thought. It is also argued that the adoption, use, and manipulation of new materials played an active role in the emergence of the Neolithic world in north-eastern Europe and beyond. Also, issues related to the Finno–Russian border dividing up eastern Fennoscandia and its effects on the study of early metal use and other prehistoric cultural processes are discussed.

We review the evidence for the earliest agriculture in Finland. The claims are all based on pollen analysis. Some claims go back to the Neolithic period. We contest these claims critically and argue that the ‘early cereal-type’ pollen grains may in fact come from large-grained wild grasses, and cannot be taken as clear evidence for cultivation in the absence of other lines of evidence. Cultivation of cereals in Finland may have started as late as the start of the Iron Age in c. 500 BC.

Le renne, Rangifer tarandus, était chassé en Europe dès l'ère paléolithique et fournissait alors à l'homme vêtement et nourriture. Avec le recul des glaciers vers le Nord, sa répartition s'est vue cloisonnée. Les premières traces de domestication du renne sont tardives, elles semblent n'apparaître qu'au Ve siècle en Asie et après le IXe siècle chez les Finnois et Lapons, lesquels ont apprivoisé les rennes et les ont rassemblés en troupeaux. L'homme est ainsi devenu nomade pour suivre les rennes au fil de leurs migrations en Asie comme en Scandinavie, centralisant ainsi sa vie autour du renne pour moult usages. En Finlande cependant, l'homme du XXe siècle s'est sédentarisé, suite à la fermeture des frontières avec la Norvège et la Suède et l'instauration d'un système de coopératives. Le renne est donc en Finlande un exemple paradoxal de domestication du fait de son caractère partiel. La mutation de cette domestication a été étudiée au travers d'enquêtes et de recherches effectuées en Laponie finlandaise.