Today's Finlands 99th Independence Day from Russia. It's so exciting to see one of my favourite countries see celebrate something so special. In honour of this day I'd like to present you some fun facts.
- 1 and 2 cent coins aren't used
- Which means, while these coins are legal, not many shops will take them, because they are following the rounding rule where cash payments are rounded to the nearest 5.
- Finland has world championships for the most ridiculous sports
- like wife carrying, mobile phone throwing, mosquito catching, swamp soccer, (rain) boot throwing & sauna and air guitar
- Finnish language is an non Indo-European language
- it belongs to the Uralic family including Estonian and Hungarian
- Santa Claus (Joulupukki) is of Finnish nationality
- He lives in a house right on top of the Arctic circle near Rovaniemi, Lappland
- He has his own post office address: Santa Clause Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle and receives around 700,000 letters every year from around 198 different countries.
- Finland has two official languages
- Which are Finnish (spoken by 94% as 1st language and 6% as 2nd) and Swedish (spoken by 5% as 1st language and 44% as 2nd)
- Finland has launched it's own emojis
- Check out what they mean.
- Finland is called "The land of the Thousand Lakes"
- It has about 188,000 lakes and 179,500 islands
- It's also called "The land of Midnight Sun"
- because the sun never drops below the horizon in summer in the north of Finland
- it shines all day and night
- Finland has over 400 words for snow and ice
- like lumi, sumuttaa, peittää lumeen, jää, jäätelö, jäädyttää, kuorrutta, sokeroida, härma, hanki, halla, myräkkä, ikijää, hymä, talvi suveaa
- If you're interested in more you can check out this blog.
- Finns invented quite a lot we still use
- 1st internet browser for users
- heart-rate monitor
- salty liquorice (Salmiakki) ~ which is the best
- Linux OS
- ice skaters,
- Angry Birds
- SMS
- saunas
- Finland's most iconic characters are Moomins
- They were invented by the Swedish speaking Finn Tove Jansson
- There is a Moomin Laakso in Tampere
- which means Moominvalley an is a museum dedicated to the artwork and story making by Tove Jansson
- since October 2016 it's closed and will re-open in May 2017 as Moomin Museum
- The population is around 5 million people
- from which 1,4 million live in Helsinki, the capital
- Suomenlinna is a sea fortress on an island
- which is a district of Helsinki with 850 inhabitants
- Turku is the oldest town of Finland
- It was founded and settled around the 13th century and was Finlands first capital before Helsinki became capital in 1812
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