Olemus - Sikke's Ramblings, Tags, And Other Stuff

13. 9 Fun facts about Finland

[]|July 3rd, 2018|[]
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Because hey, why not?

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1. The area of Finland is 338,424 km², yet there is only around 5.5 million Finns living there.

2. So, we only have 5.5 million Finns, right? We still have about 2-3 million saunas, around one per every household. There is actually a Burger King in Helsinki, the Capital, that has a sauna in it!

Sauna is originally a Finnish word, which wasn't changed in English. + from what I've read from multiple different sources, the sauna you might have experienced outside of Finland isn't the same as a traditional Finnish sauna!

3. One of Finland's nicknames is 'the Land of a Thousand Lakes'. This is actually fairly accurate, since Finland has approximately 187,888 lakes.
Like in Canada, most (if not all) of those lakes were 'born' because of/during the Ice Age thousands of years ago.

4. Finland is one of the countries with the cleanest water & air. Even our tap water is cleaner than bottled water, which is why you wouldn't usually be offered bottled water in hotels. The more North you go, the cleaner the natural water is. For example, I live in the Arctic Circle, so I'm already pretty North up there, but you would only have to go up just maybe a few, 2-4 hours (by a car) and boom, you could almost drink from the lakes.

5. In Finland, we have this thing called 'yötön yö', which translates to 'Nightless Night'. Basically, during Midsummer, all of Finland has sunlight for 24 hours. I'm not sure how long it lasts in the southern parts of Finland, but in Lapland (North Finland) the sun doesn't set below the horizon for a month during Summer.

Respectively, during Winter we in Lapland have only a few hours of light during the day, if even that. This has it's own pros and cons, which I might talk about more in the future!

6. So, like I said earlier, when it was Ice Age, it covered over Finland. Simply said, some year periods were warmer than others and some colder, which caused the giant ice thing to have this sort of back-and-fort kind of  motion. What did this do? Multiple things, which unfortunately I'm too lazy right now to try to remember everything.
One of the things it did was that many things on top of the land - like the most nutrients of the land and such - 'washed'/were pushed more south. It also worked kind of as a sandpaper for (old) mountains, which is the reason why Finland doesn't really have any.

7. Finland is said to have one of the best school systems in the world. I might talk more specifically about this in the future, but I don't want to make this too long. ^^;

8. As an independent country Finland is quite young, since we just recently in 2017 celebrated Finland's 100th birthday!

9. The national food of Finland is sautéed reindeer with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam!

I've seen some people claim that reindeer meat to Finns is like beef to Americans, but yeah, I have to disagree. Even I, who lives in Lapland (where at least 95% of the reindeers in Finland live, mind you), don't eat reindeer meat daily, less alone every few weeks. Fish, moose, and (wild) duck are a more common meat for me to eat than reindeer. This, of course, depends on your family/yourself on what you eat, but  keep in mind that no one I know eats reindeer meat more than a few times a month.

I know there's so many people who think reindeers aren't real because Santa isn't. I think even some of my friends here thought like that before, too.
They are very real and no, they aren't magical and can't fly.

Their name in Finnish is pretty cute, poro (literally meaning just 'a/the reindeer').

There, some facts for you! Maybe I'll do more of these in the future, but we'll see. ^^

- Sikke