I set up a contrastive German-Finnish phraseology project in 1985 at the University of Oulu, which was funded by, among others, the Academy of Finland in the years 1986-91. The initial focus of the research was on idioms, later expanding to include proverbs and other set phrases. Central research topics have been the structure, employment and historical development of phraseological units (‘phrasemes’), the translation of phrasemes from German to Finnish and vice versa as well as how they are recorded in dictionaries.

My professorial duties have taken me to the universities of Oulu, Turku and Helsinki, as well as at the University of Tübingen in Germany. In addition, I have been a visiting scholar and lecturer in dozens of German, Austrian, Swiss, Dutch and French universities.

I have many good memories of the University. Among the finer moments have been the doctoral defences of my students, discussions with delightful opponents and the attendant festivities. It was a particular source of delight to see scholarships granted to four excellent German researchers by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and to have the opportunity to guide them over a ten-year period at the German department. These scholars made a significant contribution to the research profile and studies offered at the department.