Skip to main content

15 Most Interesting Facts About Finland

How much do you know about Finland? Do you know these general facts?
The Nordic country of Finland is one of the world's nothernmost countries. Finland is renowned for its "midnight sun", exciting outdoor adventures, delicious cuisine, beautiful scenery and interesting customs. The biggest cities in Finland are: Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Oulu, Turku, Lahti, Kuopio, Jyväskylä, and Pori. Finland's official languages are: Finnish (spoken by 88.9%) and Swedish (spoken by 5.3%). Sami is recognized as a regional language. Finland's capital is Helsinki. The country has a total population of 5.4 million people. The currency used is the Euro. The president and prime minister of Finland are Sauli Niinistö and Juha Sipilä respectively. Finland has a high average life expectancy - 80.5 years. The life expectancy for men is 78 years and that for women, 83 years. Finland's official website is Finland.fi.
Take a look at these distinctive facts about Finland.
1. Finland is the happiest country in the world, as revealed by this year's World Happiness Report. Finland toppled last year's winner, Norway. The World Happiness Report is released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
2. Finland got a score of 85/100 in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index (2017), making it the third least corrupt country in the world.
3. Finland has the world's highest annual consumption of milk per capita. In 2007, milk consumption per capita in Finland was 361.19 kilograms, with milk per person at about 34.34 gallons per person (latest available statistics).
4. Finland is home to the "midnight sun". In June and July, the sun stays above the horizon, casting a white light even in the middle of the night.
5. Finland was the first European country to introduce women's suffrage. Women were allowed to vote in Finland in the late nineteenth century (1906).
6. There are more saunas in Finland than cars. Like the Finnish saying goes, "Build the sauna, then the house." Finns take this saying very serious. For a population of only 5 million people, there are 2 million saunas in Finland. Saunas are a necessity to Finns, just as rye bread and vodka are. It is the norm in Finland to have a sauna in your home. Most Finns take a sauna at least once a week. Finland's parliament has its own sauna wherein officials can debate.
 
7. Salty licorice/Salmiakki is a popular treat loved by the Finns. Ammonium chloride gives Salmiakki its distinctive salty taste. The more ammonium chloride salmmiaki contains, the saltier and stronger it will be.
8. If you are a lover of weird events and contests, Finland has got you covered. The infamous Wife Carrying World Championship takes place in Sonkajärvi, Finland, every summer. Wife carrying is a contest in which male competitors race while carrying a female teammate. The male who carries the female through the specified obstacle in the fastest time wins. The first price in the wife-carrying championship is the wife's weight in beer.
The World Mobile Phone Throwing championship takes place each August in Savolinna, Finland. It started in 2006. It is an international sport in which participants throw mobile phones and are judged on technique or distance.
The Air Guitar World Championship is an event for music lovers organized in Oulu, Finland. Air guitar playing consists of exaggerated strumming and picking motions, often coupled with loud singing or lip-synching. The performer actually pretends to play an imaginary rock or heavy metal-style electric guitar. The annual Air Guitar World Championships have been a part of the Oulu Music Video Festival in Oulu, Finland, since 1996.
The Kutemajrvi Sex Festival takes place in Kangasniemi, Finland. During this festival, sex education is given, a sex toy exposition takes place, there are exotic dances, and there is the Aphrodite Competition in which people pose nude.
The World Sauna Championships used to take place in Heinola, Finland, from 1999 to 2010. The purpose was to test how long the competitors could tolerate a humid 110º Celsius in a Finnish sauna.
Other weird competitions that take place in Finland include: the Mosquito Swatting Championship, the Ant-Nest Sitting Competition, ice swimming events, Snowshow Football, and the Swamp Soccer World Championships.
9. Helsinki, Finland's capital, ranks seventh in the the top ten cities with the cleanest air in the world.
10. Finland received a score of 100 in Freedom House's 2017 report, ranking first. However, she ranks fourth in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index report.
11. The telecommunications company Nokia is Finnish. Nokia's headquarters are in Espoo, in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Nokia is one of the world's largest manufacturers of mobile phones.
12. Finland has a National Day of Failure, which is celebrated on October 13. The first Day for Failure was held in 2010 by Finnish university students.
13. Finland is dubbed the "prison break" capital of Europe. This is probably a drawback of operating an open prison system - prisoners roam freely, and work and shop among the locals. In 2013, 1084 escapes were recorded for every 10,000 prisoners in Finland.
 Saramarki prison in Turku, Finland
14. The Finnish government has been providing expectant mothers with sheets, nappies, clothes and a mattress for the yet-to-be-born baby since 1938.
15. The creator and principal developer of the Linux kernel (the basis for the Linux, Android and Chrome operating systems), Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finn. He was born on December 28, 1969, Helsinki, Finland.
  



Comments

  1. You understand lots about saunas. I like your strategies and sights. How often does one sauna?  saunajournal.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular Posts

Princess Qajar - The Revolutionary Persian Princess

Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh commonly referred to as Princess Qajar was a princess and memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty. Princess Tadj was one of the best known daughters of the Persian king, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar who ruled Persia from 1848 to May 1896. The Persian princess was born on February 4, 1883 and died on January 25, 1936, in Tehran, at the age of 52. Princess Qajar revolutionized beauty standards with her full look and ragged unibrow, and her unmistakably evident mustache. She was a true epitome of beauty at her time. Princess Qajar was declared a symbol of beauty in Persia and was coveted by many men. Thousands of men wanted to marry her, 13 of whom committed suicide upon being rejected by the princess. Princess Qajar eventually married Amir Hussein Khan Shoja'-al Saltaneh and had they had four children - two boys and two girls. They later got divorced in 1907 after enduring an unloving arranged marriage - she married Khan when she was 13. The princess argued f

The Lehman Brothers Scandal (2008)

Company Background : Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a firm specialized in the provision of global financial services. It was founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States of America. The company had headquarters in New York City, New York, in the U.S. It ceased operations in 2008. The founders were: Henry Lehman, Emmanuel Lehman and Mayer Lehman. What Happened? Lehman Brothers hid over $50 billion in loans disguised as sales. They allegedly sold toxic assets [1] to Cayman Island Banks with the understanding that they would eventually be rebought. How they were caught : Their bankruptcy led to the discovery of the fraud. They filed for bankruptcy in 2008, which is the largest bankruptcy ever recorded. Their case was larger than that of Enron, Washington Mutual, WorldCom and GM combined.  On September 15, 2008, Lehman brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection  (Montgomery, n.d.) . Their bankruptcy filing came in as a blow to the financial industry as i

The finger-cutting tradition of Indonesia's Dani tribe

The death of a loved one is always an extremely painful thing to bear, and people of different cultures grieve in diverse ways, some more unique than others. A typically unique way of grieving is that of the Dani (an Indonesian tribe). Finger-cutting is a fundamental part of grieving for women of the Dani tribe, and pertains to their women only. According to The Globe and Mail, an estimated 250,000 Dani tribe members live in a town named Wamena, in the extremely remote central highland area of Papua Province. Wamena is only accessible by plane.  Upon the death of a loved one, the top joint of one of a woman's fingers would be amputated, and smear ashes and clay across their faces. Prior to amputation, a string would be firmly tied to the upper half of the woman's finger for 30 minutes, to cause numbness. This was to reduce the pain from amputating the tip. In most cases, the responsibility of cutting off the top joint of the finger is assigned to one of the woman's