Your mountains so lofty, your treetops so tall,
Finland, Finland, Finland; Finland has it all."
Finland (Finnish: Suomi, Swedish: Finland), officially known as the Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomen tasavalta, Swedish: Republiken Finland), is a large, mostly empty Northern European country squeezed between Sweden and Russia, with its northern border being shared with Norway. Though ethnically distinct from both, it has generally been ruled by one or the other for most of its history. Starting around the 1200's, the Finns would be conquered and subsequently ruled over by Sweden (leading to Finland still having a sizable Swedish-speaking minority, most notably in the Åland Islands, which are almost homogeneously Swedish and have Swedish as their sole official language), before being handed over to Russia in 1809. They remained under the control of Tsarist Russia until the revolutions of 1917 gave it the chance to break free.
Finland was neutral in World War II for the first three months, ending with the Soviet invasion in late November 1939. Josef Stalin decided to conquer Finland, partially to use it as a buffer against Adolf Hitler's army. This led to the brief but brutal Winter War, which was a real-life case of David Versus Goliath, as the Finnish army (outnumbered 4 to 1 in men and 200 to 1 in tanks) handed the Red Army their asses on a plate. The war technically ended in a stalemate, but this was seen an embarrassing defeat to the Soviets, even though they still scored victories by annexing much of the Finnish Karelia, including its capital Vyborg. Two years later, Finland attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 with German support (partly in self-defense, partly to recover Karelia). It became the only democratic state which was on the Axis side. Once again, neither side won, and, after the war turned on the Axis, Finland (at Moscow's insistence) had to expel the Germans from its soil by force, resulting in additional destruction. The Soviets kept their territorial gains, but the Finns kept their independence and democracy, making it the only Imperial Russian territory at the time of its fall to escape the Soviet Union's attempt at subjugation.note This long sequence of events has given wargame designers headaches to this day.
Finland was the first country to paint swastikas on its aircraft, though in their case it was the personal insignia of the Swedish count who paid to set the Air Force up, and pre-dates the Nazi use of the symbol. The Finnish swastika was blue rather than black and rotated 45 degrees relative to the Nazi version. It must have looked odd to see British-supplied Hurricane fighters and American Brewsters with swastikas painted on the side, though.
War reparations to the Soviet Union required heavy industry and turned out to jump-start Finland's development from rural backwoods to advanced, well-to-do backwoods. The country remained neutral throughout the Cold War through concessions ("Finlandization", including buying MiG-21s and other weapons from the USSR) and extremely careful diplomacy. Afterwards it joined The European Union in 1995 and adopted the Euro in 2002. On April 4, 2023, after more than 75 years of maintaining a position of neutrality, Finland formally became a member of NATO following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
, becoming the current newest member of the organization.
Modern Finland is a wealthy and stable nation. There's a high tax rate and a lot of vaguely Minnesotan, rather than Alaskan, nature. The country is probably best known as an exporter of mobile phones (Nokia is a Finnish firm*), Heavy Metal bands, and racing drivers. Finns successful in any form of racing, be it on skis, wheels or feet, are invariably known as "Flying Finns."
Since June 20, 2023, the country's Prime Minister is Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party, heading a coalition government that also includes the Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party, and the Christian Democrats. His immediate predecessor, Sanna Marin of the Social Democratic Party, was only 34 when she took office in December 2019, making her the country’s youngest ever PM and the youngest head of government in the world at the time.note
For some unknown reason, Finnish overrepresentation is almost a Running Gag amongst online communities. Finns have a large presence on this wiki, possibly the largest from a non-English-speaking nation. Finland was one of the first countries on adopting The Internet, and many IT innovations, such as social media and mobile technology, originate in Finland. In addition, one of the two original developers of MySQL, itself based in Sweden before being acquired by Sun (and eventually Oracle), is from Helsinki.
Finland is the world's best country chosen by Newsweek. (Take that, Sweden!) In fact, due to its awesome school system and Newsweek's dodgy scoring system Finland got 102 points for education — out of 100.
The Finnish language is notoriously alien-looking to speakers of Indo-European languages (such as English and Swedish)note ; it is part of the completely unrelated Uralic group, which includes the related Estonian, the very distantly related Hungarian, the Sámi languages spoken in Lapland, and a number of minority languages in Russia, such as Karelian, Mari, and Komi.note The Uralic languages, as the name indicates, originated from the Uralic Mountains in modern-day Russia, and the area indeed has the family's most diverse concentration of languages. It was this strangeness that attracted J. R. R. Tolkien to the language, and he used Finnish as the basis for his invented Elvish languages (specifically Quenya) — though he later changed the spelling to a more Latinate form that would look more appealing to English eyes. That said, Finnish is actually spelled very much like classical Latin, probably because Finnish spelling was deliberately created a relatively short time ago. After thousands of years of sharing land with both Slavic and Germanic tribes, expect a lot of borrowings to crop up, some ancient and unchanged to this day.
Famous Finns
Culture- Alvar Aalto - Influential architect and designer.
- Bugbear Entertainment - Another software developer, focused on racing games. Probably best known for the FlatOut games.
- Children of Bodom - Melodic Death Metal band.
- Circle and Pharaoh Overlord - Experimental rock bands (the latter began as an offshoot of the former).
- Finntroll - polka-metal band
- Renny Harlin - Film director, made action movies in The '90s.
- HIM - 'Love Metal' band
- Tove Jansson - writer of The Moomins
- Aki Kaurismäki - Film director, makes Jim Jarmusch-esque movies.
- Aleksis Kivi - The Finnish national author responsible for the first Finnish-language novel, Seven Brothers.
- Väinö Linna - Not so well-known abroad but second to only possibly Aleksis Kivi as an author within Finland. He is best known for his books The Unknown Soldier (depicting the Continuation War (between Finland and Russia in 1941-1944 during WWII) from the point of view of ordinary soldiers) and Under the North Star (depicting the Finnish Civil War).
- Lordi - Hard Rock band, and 2006 Eurovision Song Contest winners
- Elias Lönnrot - Philologist and creator of The Kalevala.
- Nightwish -
RockMetal band - The Rasmus - Alternative rock band
- Remedy Entertainment - Software developers and one of Finland's earliest game studios, creators of Death Rally, Max Payne, and Alan Wake.
- Joosa Riekkinen - Creator of the computer game Liero.
- Rovio Entertainment - Makers of Angry Birds.
- Johan Ludvig Runeberg - writer of the epic The Tales Of Ensign Stål and the lyrics for the national anthem.
- Jean Sibelius - Composer
- Paavo Siljamäki - Another Trance producer, one-third of the group Above and Beyond.
- Skepticism - Doom Metal band (Trope Codifier for the funeral doom subgenre)
- Stratovarius - Power Metal band
- Minna Sundberg - Born in Sweden, but grew up in Finland from the age of 7. Creator of A Redtail's Dream and Stand Still, Stay Silent, the former being heavily based on Finnish mythology.
- Joonas Suotamo - Actor best known for playing Chewbacca in the Star Wars franchise following Peter Mayhew's retirement from the character in 2017.
- Ville Virtanen – Trance producer, performs under the stage name Darude. Wrote "Sandstorm." Chances are you've heard it. Especially if you're a fan of the South Carolina Gamecocks.
- Lauri and Anni Vuohensilta – Creators of the Hydraulic Press Channel. Both were hosts from the channel's creation in 2015 until Anni left the channel in 2021, citing burnout. The couple amicably divorced the next year; Lauri remains the host.
- Mika Waltari – One of the most successful Finnish writers of fiction. Is best known for his historical epics like The Egyptian, especially outside of Finland, but he has also written detective novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry and non-fiction.
- YUP – Progressive Rock band, best known for their album Toppatakkeja ja Toledon Terästä.
- Several classical musicians, including composers (Kaija Saariaho, Einojuhani Rautavaara), opera singers (Karita Mattila, Matti Salminen, Juha Uusitalo) and conductors (Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jorma Panula).
Science
- Johan Gadolin - Chemist, physicist and mineralogist who discovered yttrium. Gadolinium was also named after him.
- Anders Johan Lexell - Astronomer, mathematician and physicist.
- Herman Spöring - Botanist and explorer who sailed with James Cook.
- Anders Chydenius - Highly influential liberal philosopher, champion of democracy and freedom of press in the 1700s.
- Adolf E. Nordenskjöld - Expeditor, first to sail the Northeastern Passage
- Artturi I. Virtanen - Chemist, Nobel chemistry prize winner 1946
- Gustav Komppa - Chemist, one of the first synthetic fuel researchers
- Ragnar Granit - Biochemist, Nobel medicine prize winner 1967
- Esko Valtaoja - Astronomer, university professor and writer.
- Edvard Westermarck - Swedish-speaking Finnish philosopher and sociologist. Among other subjects, he studied exogamy and the incest taboo.
Technology
- Johan Helsingius – creator and operator of The Penet remailer.
- Jarkko Oikarinen – creator of Internet Relay Chat (IRC).
- Linus Torvalds – initial creator of the Linux kernel and the Git software used to maintain it. Probably the best-known member of the country's native Swedish-speaking minority.
- Michael "Monty" Widenius – co-creator of MySQL (with Swedish developer David Axmark), and lead developer of MariaDB, which was forked from MySQL in 2009 in response to Oracle's acquisition of the software.
- Nico Hämäläinen – creator of Draynor.
- Nokia - Telecommunications firm and former conglormerate, best known for their cellphones and for popularising mobile games.
- Tatu Ylönen – creator of SSH.
- Gustav Erikson - last of the great sailing ship Magnates. Maintained a line of merchant vessels from his headquarters in the Åland Islands until just after World War II.
- Marshal Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim - Field marshal and Commander-in-Chief during the Winter War, president 1944-46, and top of the "100 Greatest Finns" list on TV recently. Also a noted expeditor and ethnoscientist.
- Simo Häyhä - Sniper during the Winter War and all-round badass, nicknamed "White Death". He averaged killing about 7 Soviet soldiers every day during the war.
- Lauri Törni/Larry Thorne - A Finnish officer and a legendary soldier during World War II. He is most famous for serving as a military officer in three different armies: He left the Finnish Army after the end of the Continuation War in 1944 and joined the German Waffen-SS so he could keep fighting the Soviets, then eventually made his way to the United States after the end of World War II and joined the U.S. Army in 1954 under the name of Larry Thorne. He was reported MIA in Vietnam while serving as an officer in the Green Berets; there is a rumor that he inspired the John Wayne feature of the same name. Again belongs to Names to Run Away from Really Fast.
- Ilmari Juutilainen - top Finnish fighter ace with 94 kills. 2 scored on Fokker D.XXI, 36 on Brewster Buffalo and 54 with Messerschmitt 109G. Highest scoring fighter ace outside Luftwaffe.
- Vilho Petter Nenonen - Artillery officer, and the only General of Artillery in Finnish history. His inventions in directing artillery fire contributed to the Finnish victory in the battle of Tali-Ihantala in 1944. His legacy also includes instructing Finnish artillerists to write the number seven with a short vertical line through the diagonal linenote , to help distinguish it from the number one, as confusing one for the other in the profession could have serious consequences. This practice was later adopted by the Finnish school system as well, and when the National Agency of Education removed the vertical line from the officially sanctioned "model numbers" in 2004, it was later restored in 2016 due to its overwhelming prevalence.
Motorsport
- Keke Rosberg - Formula One driver (world champion 1982 and first Finn to compete successfully; there had been two before him but neither made a dent).
- Nico Rosberg - his son, a now-retired Formula One driver (world champion in his final season in 2016), raced under a German license.note
- Mika Häkkinen - Formula One driver (world champion 1998 & 1999, considered by Michael Schumacher as his only real rival).
- Kimi Räikkönen - Formula One driver (world champion 2007), has had brief stints in NASCAR's Truck Series and the World Rally Championship, only to return to F1 in 2012.
- Heikki Kovalainen - Formula One driver, now competes in Super GT, winning the 2016 championship
- Valtteri Bottas - Formula One driver
- Jyrki Järvilehto ("JJ Lehto") - Formula One and endurance driver (Le Mans 24 Hours overall winner in 1995 (GT1) & 2005 (LMP1))
- Markku Alén - Rally driver (world champion 1978)
- Ari Vatanen - Rally driver (world champion 1981)
- Hannu Mikkola - Rally driver (world champion 1983)
- Timo Salonen - Rally driver (world champion 1985)
- Juha Kankkunen - Rally driver (world champion 1986, '87, '91 and '93)
- Tommi Mäkinen - Rally driver (world champion 1996, 97, 98 and 99)
- Marcus Grönholm - Rally driver (world champion 2000 & 2002)
- Jarno Saarinen - Motorcycle road racer (250cc (now Moto2) world champion 1972, the only Finn to win a MotoGP championship on any class and the first rider to use the now predominant style of riding corners with the knee on the ground)
- Kari Tiainen - Motorcycle enduro racer (world champion in various classes, 1990-92, 1994-95, 1997 and 2000)
- Juha Salminen - Motorcycle enduro racer (world champion in various classes, 1999-2004 & 2007, grand national cross country champion 2005-06)
- Petteri Silván - Motorcycle enduro racer (world champion in various classes, 1995, '99, '01 & '02)
- Yrjö Vesterinen - Motorcycle trials racer (world champion 1976-78)
- Kalle Rovanperä - Rally driver (2022 and 2023 world champion; also holds the record for being the youngest WRC rally winner at the age of 20)
- Jari-Matti Latvala - Rally driver (Second youngest rally winner at the age of 22 in 2008, and the most prolific WRC driver with 209 starts)
Other sport
- Lasse Virén - Runner (four-time Olympic gold medallist in 1972 & 1976)
- Kalle Palander - Alpine skier (World slalom champion 2003)
- Janne Ahonen - Ski jumper (Five world championships in team & individual events)
- Ari-Pekka Nikkola - Ski jumper (Olympic gold medallist 1988 & 1992)
- Matti Nykänen - Ski jumper (four-time Olympic gold medallist in 1984 & 1988), was the main source of income for the Finnish yellow press until his premature death in 2019. The guy literally divorced and remarried Mervi. It looked for a time that he'd have had 20 divorces with that woman... but wound up marrying another woman (his fifth wife, and sixth and final marriage) in 2014. Also received some international press attention after he was sentenced to prison after the attempted murder of a friend while drunk and after losing in finger-wrestling. The press attention was because he was an Olympic gold winner. He basically drank himself to death, reportedly continuing to drink even after being diagnosed with diabetes in his final months.
- Paavo Nurmi - Long-distance runner (9-time Olympic gold medalist between 1920 & 1924), and incidentally, the original Flying Finn.
- Jari Kurri - Hockey great who played alongside Wayne Gretzky on the powerful Edmonton Oilers during the 80s, and the first Finn in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
- Teemu Selänne - Another hockey great who in 2017 became the second Finn inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Also known as the "Finnish Flash".
- Sami Hyypiä - Football (proper football) player, central defender and captain for Liverpool FC for ten years, winning the FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield, UEFA Cup and the UEFA Champions League in the process. Allowed to leave for Leverkusen in Germany in what Liverpool fans considered a great mistake. Current manager of FC Zurich in Switzerland after spells in charge of Leverkusen, Brighton & Hove Albion and as assistant manager to the Finland national team.
- Jari Litmanen - One of the first Finns to achieve great success and recognition in football. Best remembered from his time with Ajax, but also played with Barcelona and briefly ended up at Liverpool alongside Hyypiä.
- Kiira Korpi - Figure skater, 2007 European bronze medalist.
- Susanna Pöykiö - Figure skater, 2005 European silver medalist.
- Laura Lepistö - Figure skater, the 2009 European Champion and 2010 World bronze medalist.
- Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko - Ice dancers, 1995 European Champions and World silver medalists.
- Lauri Markkanen – Current NBA player with the Utah Jazz.
See also:
The Finnish flag
Coat of arms of Finland
The Finnish national anthem
—
—
Government
- Unitary parliamentary republic
- President: Alexander Stubb
- Prime Minister: Petteri Orpo
Miscellaneous
- Capital and largest city: Helsinki
- Population: 5,536,146
- Area: 338,455 sq km (130,678 sq mi) (65th)
- Currency: Euro (€) (EUR)
- ISO-3166-1 Code: FI
- Country calling code: 358
- Highest point: Halti (1324 m/4,344 ft) (148th)
- Lowest point: Baltic Sea (459 m/1,506 ft) (-)
