Teresa Tirado wrote asking about a Finnish lullaby: My recently past grandmother used to sing a Finnish version of Rock A By Baby to me as a child. I am desperately searching for the words and clip so as to be able to learn to sing it to my children. Please if you could...

Nikoletta wrote: Dear Mama Lisa, I would like to ask your help. I’m a Hungarian girl (a mother with two children). My grandmother came from Finland, but we can’t speak Finnish. She died in 2000. In my mind there is a song from my children’s age: Tipu, tipu ….. I tried to find this song on...

Paul Gogojuice asked the following question on the Mama Lisa’s World Facebook Group: Hi all. My grandmother is full Finnish and as a child she always had 2 different sayings that she’d say to us. I don’t know how to spell them or anything, but I’m going to do my best to explain them. The first one...

Jessica wrote to me looking for help with a kids song from Finland… hello, i am looking for a Finnish children’s song called TUKU TUKU ULLIGA FOREN, KILI KILI VITA LAMMEN……. the rest i don’t know. sorry, i know the spelling is all wrong, but if u can make it out and send me the...

Several days ago I wrote a post about the Santa Lucia holiday in Sweden and Scandinavia. A popular saying associated with this holiday is: Lucy Light, The Shortest day & The Longest Night. This saying celebrates the association of St Lucia’s Day, December 13, with the Winter Solstice which, under the old Julian calendar, used to fall...

Last year I wrote about St. Knut’s Day, a holiday celebrated on January 13th, in Sweden, Finland and Norway. St. Knut’s Day is all about getting rid of all the Christmas decorations and throwing out the tree, thus ending the Christmas season. When I wrote about it last year, I asked if anyone knew of...

While I have this link at hand, I’d like to recommend www.freedict.com. It’s a site devoted to free online language dictionaries. You can translate between English and the following languages: Afrikaans Danish Dutch Finnish French Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Latin Norwegian Portuguese Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish I find that it can usually succeed at translating the words I need. Feel free to recommend other language dictionaries that you like in the...

Julie and Beth wrote looking for the origins of two Scandinavian rhymes that are played with little kids while touching their toes. We’re wondering if anyone’s ever heard of these rhymes and perhaps knows what country they’re from and/or anything else about their origins. Here’s what Julie wrote: I have been searching for the...

A significant part of the Mama Lisa sites is a large collection of songs and nursery rhymes from around the world. We currently have about 750 songs from around 90 countries and cultures. When you consider how many languages there are in those cultures – that’s a lot of information! In order to make...

Believe it or not, it’s quite interesting to listen to a choir singing about their complaints in Finnish. You can do just that, and you can read along with English subtitles, by clicking on the button below. But beware! The tune is quite catchy. So by the end you’ll be humming...

St. Knut’s Day is a holiday celebrated in Sweden, Finland and Norway, on January 13th. The day is called Tjugondag Knut in Sweden, which means 20th day Knut. In Norway it’s called Tyvendedagen, which I believe, is 20th day. On St. Knut’s Day, they say they “plunder” the Christmas tree. If...