When I think about Finnishness, two things comes to my mind: summer and sports.
When talking about summer, the whole country comes to alive. Nature wakes up after a long and dark winter and people are getting out of their homes. In the summer you can see happy and smiling people all around the cities. Having a picnic in the park, swimming and sunbathing at the beach, having a beer or two at terrace.
One of the most Finnish things about summer in my opinion is music festivals. You can find some kind of music festival somewhere in Finland from the beginning of June all the way to the end of August. Maybe the most popular festival is Ruisrock. It’s held annually on the island called Ruissalo, located in Turku. In the last 3 years there has been annually 105 000 visitors over 3 days of the festival.
And then the sports. In Finland people love any kind of sports. It doesn’t matter if it’s the most popular sport ice hockey or Finnish national sport “pesäpallo” there is always people watching. The finns also has weird habit of having national championships in all kind of sports. You can compete in wife carrying or in swamp football or maybe boot throwing is the right sport for you. So it’s not big surprise people usually refers Finland to “Sports nut Finland”.
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