thisisFINLAND

Moving to Finland is one thing. Preparedness, you’ll be told, is everything. You’ll be told to brace yourself for the serenity of silence, the deep freeze of winter, the sheer-nakedness of sauna. Nobody warns you that snowball fighting is nowhere near as easy as it looks, though.

Cleber Gonçalves found this out the hard way on his first day here from Brazil more than 2...

As Yle celebrates its 100th anniversary, let’s list ten facts about the broadcaster and its changing role in Finnish society.

1. Yle is almost as old as the BBC

Britain’s BBC began broadcasting in 1922. Finland followed only four years later when Yle aired its first radio programme from central Helsinki in September 1926. (“Yle” is an abbreviation of the company’s Finn...

After his stand-up comedy show in Reykjavík, Iceland, Ismo Leikola was walking to his car when a local man came up to him and said that the show had been the first stand-up gig he’d ever attended.

“He told me how much he’d been laughing and how incredibly funny he’d found the show,” Leikola recalls. “And then he said that next time I have a show in Iceland, he’ll proba...

Water hitting hot stones produces a hissing sound. Sweat trickles down sauna-goers’ backs. The wooden benches feel as hot as sunbaked sand. Through a window that takes up all of one wall, the Oulu River delta stretches out below. The northern Finnish summer is at its greenest.

Armi Ruusuvirta throws another ladleful of water onto the sauna stove and sighs.

“What...

Finns love the outdoors. This is perhaps surprising to some, given Mother Nature’s more extreme instincts around these parts. Snow, sideways sleet or torrential November rain can’t keep people inside here. Unconvinced? Witness someone riding a bike in minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four degrees Fahrenheit). Then another. And another.

It helps that sport is woven into ...