This question could of course be understood in a very profound sense: Why do I exist at all – why have I been born as a human being precisely at this epoch and on this small planet in a Universe billions of years old and containing billions of stars and galaxies? Or, as Moominpappa put it when he was still a small curious child in the Hemulen's bleak orphanage for moomin foundlings: Why am I the one I am and not somebody else? Why is everything as it is and not quite the opposite?

Unfortunately, I have to disappoint the reader with a keen interest in matters philosophical or metaphysical. What I mean is simply: Why am I here on the internet – in the spider's web? Why have I taken all the trouble to construct this website and to compile information about myself to be looked at by any websurfer?

Well – it all began when I was nominated as a candidate in the parliamentary election to be held here in Finland in March 1999. In that situation I found it appropriate to introduce myself to the voters in this modern and fashionable way. When I had, however, learned how to use the HTML language and could start planning and constructing webpages of my own, I was carried away by the joy of creating!

I found it quite rewarding to describe what I have achieved and which ideas I have been fighting for, to tell about my roots and my family, to remember people who have been important to me – and to transform these facts and memories into documents that might conceivably interest also others than those directly concerned.

The result of this admittedly somewhat narcissistic pottering was a rather extensive collection of webpages, many-coloured and inconsistent as life itself but nevertheless forming some kind of portrait of their author.