Fearless Finn

The reporter was right on top of the news. Just a long swipe away was the four-year-old female bear he planned to wrestle for his story. Holding the bear's halter, 29-year-old Matti Jaemsae last week got his news source to nibble some sugar from his palm. But when Jaemsae lunged forward to wrestle, the startled bear fouled him by clawing two gashes from the corner of his right eye down his cheek. Blinded by blood, Jaemsae was led from the ring a beaten man. Said he: "I realized that this was not such a small bear as I thought. The bear won. But I got my story."

Through such spectacular stunts, bearbaiting, beret-topped Newsman Jaemsae (pronounced Yamsa) has got the stories that have helped the picture weekly Apu to achieve the largest magazine circulation (230,000) in Finland. In the course of his reporting chores, Jaemsae has charmed a cobra, parachuted from 13,000 ft., tamed a lion, dived in a frogman's gear to a dangerous depth of 200 ft., and was stopped only by open water in an attempt to ski across the Baltic Sea from Finland to Sweden. Other Jaemsae stunts:

P: To learn how to get out of a car under water (Finns like to drive on their frozen lakes, and dozens are drowned annually when their cars fall through thin ice), Jaemsae drove a car, with its windows closed, off a ramp at 40 m.p.h. into 24 ft. of water, nearly panicked when a seat came loose and pinned him for a moment. But he found a layer of air under the roof, waited until the car filled with enough water to offset outside pressure, then opened the door and floated to safety.

P: Matched against Jaemsae in a contest to see who could stay buried alive longer in a coffin, a Finnish fakir was dug up in hysterics after 21 hours, subsequently gave up fakiry. Jaemsae stayed down for 50 hours, showed no ill effects other than a determination never to try it again.

P: Weary of beauty-queen contests, Jaemsae strapped on a corset, fluffed up his flowing, brown hair, and entered himself in the annual Maid of the North contest in Rovaniemi, capital of Finnish Lapland. "I didn't drink then, was much slimmer, and managed to turn out really quite a beautiful face," recalls Jaemsae. Well padded, he looked fine in the required Finnish national costume and evening dress, got through an interview with the judges by pleading hoarseness and hiding his hands under net gloves. The judges gave him third prize. Jaemsae promptly mounted the orchestra platform, beckoned for silence, then whipped out his falsies and waved them triumphantly in the air. The contest has not been held since.

"See It Through." Son of a Turku railway-station official, Jaemsae never did get to high school, began making news in his first reporting job on a provincial newspaper--he strapped on skis and ran an elk to exhaustion. Since 1953 he has averaged a story a week for Apu, often has his exploits reported in the Scandinavian and northern German press. One future assignment: hunting a bear with a spear (to prove that modern Finns are as strong as their ancestors).

The only time Daredevil Jaemsae has been known to falter was when he photographed the birth of his first child. When he turned woozy in the delivery room, a doctor snapped at him: "You wanted to come, and now you can damned well stay and see it through." He stayed.

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