''Nyrok City'' is a colour

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

drawn by the

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

artist

Mauri Kunnas Mauri Tapio Kunnas (born 11 February 1950) is a Finnish cartoonist and children's author. Kunnas was born in Vammala. He matriculated in 1969 and graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki as a graphic designer in 1975. He has ...

from 1975 to 1986, published in the youth magazines ''

Intro Introduction, The Introduction, Intro, or The Intro may refer to: General use * Introduction (music), an opening section of a piece of music * Introduction (writing), a beginning section to a book, article or essay which states its purpose and g ...

'', ''

Help! ''Help!'' is the fifth studio album by the English Rock music, rock band the Beatles and the soundtrack to their Help! (film), film of the same name. It was released on 6 August 1965. Seven of the fourteen songs, including the singles "Help! ( ...

'' and '' Suosikki''. The first story in the comic was ''Esittely'' ("introduction"), published in ''Intro'' issue 11 in November 1975. ''Intro'' was published twelve times per year. The last ''Nyrok City'' story ''One More Time: Nyrok City'' was published in ''Suosikki'' in July 1986. Kunnas was awarded the " Puupäähattu" award for ''Nyrok City'' by the Finnish Comics Society on 4 June 1981. The strip is about the world of popular culture and various Finnish and foreign bands, with their names comically twisted. Even though ''Nyrok City'' was originally only published in magazines, the entire run was later published in collections ''Nyrok City Kollektion 1'' (1984), ''Nyrok City Kollektion 2'' (1993) and ''The best & wörst of Nyrok City'' (2000). Strips similar to ''Nyrok City'' have also been published in the collections ''Nyrok Daily News Presents: Kotlant Jaarti'' (1982) and ''Mac Moose ja Jagge Migreenin tapaus'' (1986). Jagge Migreeni is a parody of

Mick Jagger Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the lead vocalist and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. His ongoing songwriting partnershi ...

. Language plays a prominent part in the ''Nyrok City'' strips. Most of the characters speak in a similar manner. The speech of the characters is heavily based on the Tyrvää dialect, which is also Mauri Kunnas's own home dialect. The Tyrvää dialect is spoken in Kunnas's hometown

Vammala Vammala is a former town and municipality of southwestern Finland, chartered in 1907. On 1 January 2009, Vammala was consolidated with the municipalities of Mouhijärvi and Äetsä, to form a new city named Sastamala. Geography Vammala was locate ...

(nowadays part of

Sastamala Sastamala () is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located in the Pirkanmaa region. The town has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water, making it the largest municipality in the Pirkanmaa region in terms of area. The ...

). Thus ''Nyrok City'' characters often use open diphthongs (''kiäli'' instead of ''kieli'' "language", ''tyä'' instead of ''työ'' "work"), replace standard Finnish "d" with "r" (''homehrutaan'' instead of ''homehdutaan'' "we're getting bored", literally "we're growing mold", ''rarikaali'' instead of ''radikaali'' "radical"), and use only one "s" in the

inessive case In grammar, the inessive case (abbreviated ; from la, inesse "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in Estonian, () in Moksha, in Basque, in ...

(''syrjäsä'', ''Suamesa'', ''näisä vanhemisa naisisa'' instead of ''syrjässä'', ''Suomessa'', ''näissä vanhemmissa naisissa'' "far away", "in Finland", "in these older women"). The strip also uses many words specific to the Tyrvää dialect not found in standard Finnish (''helppeesti'', ''hoto'', ''punttu'', ''pöykky''). As well as the Tyrvää dialect, Kunnas has used youth slang of his time and neologisms he has invented himself.

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

words in ''Nyrok City'' are often intentionally spelled badly to evoke a feel of a Finnish accent, and soft consonants in loanwords are often replaced with hard consonants (G becomes K, D becomes T and B becomes P).Vesterbacka, Marko: Kunnaxen kiäli. Warelia 2011. Although "Junttila" ("yokel-land") meaning Finland and "the entire world" were often contrasted, Kunnas in a way defended Finnishness and poked fun at Finnish rock stars who felt it was beneath them. The strip especially poked fun at

Hanoi Rocks Hanoi Rocks was a Finnish rock band formed in 1979. They were the first Finnish band to chart in the UK and they were also popular in Japan. The band broke up in June 1985 after drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley died in a drunk driving acciden ...

, Finland's only internationally successful band in the 1980s, who often gave statements of how the rest of the world and

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

in particular was better than the Finnish "yokel scene". Often the central plot of a ''Nyrok City'' strip is an international rock star ending up in the middle of a Finnish forest and the "yokel people". For example in the story ''Malka: Sarjakuva tabuista'' (''Suosikki'' #3/1981) "Miki Hiiri" (

Michael Monroe Matti Antero Kristian Fagerholm (born 17 June 1962), better known by his stage name Michael Monroe, is a Finnish rock musician who rose to fame as the vocalist for the glam punk band Hanoi Rocks, and has served as the frontman for all-star sid ...

) ended up in the middle of a Finnish forest and preferred to stick his head into the sweaty boot of a Finnish farmer to breathing the fresh winter air of the Finnish countryside. The smell of that sweaty boot reminded him of the sewers of the international city of Stockholm. Another story was about a

whisky Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden c ...

-drinking

E.T. ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (or simply ''E.T.'') is a 1982 American science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dub ...

(

Keith Richards Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943), often referred to during the 1960s and 1970s as "Keith Richard", is an English musician and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-princi ...

) ending up in a Finnish forest, and after getting back to the private jet of his band

Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the g ...

complaining to his fellow bandmembers how Finland was an awful place because "they only had milk to drink". An

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

n band was named "Nyrok City" after the strip. Mauri Kunnas himself also formed a band named " Nyrok Dolls" after the strip. The name "Nyrok City" is a

spelling of "New Rock City", which in turn is a parody of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The name "Nyrok Dolls" comes from the band

New York Dolls New York Dolls were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1971. Along with the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, they were one of the first bands of the early punk rock scenes. Although the band never achieved much commercial succe ...

References

Finnish comic strips