The BBC has reported on Finland's love for crazy contests. Click to see the full article, but I've pasted a few excerpts here as I think this is very much in the spirit of cultural education which was one of the reasons I started this blog."The mobile phone throwing world championship in Finland on Saturday is just one of many crazy contests on the country's summer diary. Helsingin Sanomat columnist Perttu Hakkinen asks why Finns have such a fondness for these wacky pursuits.
Finland is well-known for several reasons: mass-produced mobiles phones, lakes - 190,000 of them - and boiling hot saunas. Also, for Santa Claus and the Eurovision monsterman, Lordi.
Finnish summer sports and pastimes owe something to all of these things. The telecoms industry, the natural environment - and the country's gimmicky eccentric side. The list includes boot throwing, wife carrying, mosquito slapping, mobile-phone throwing, sauna endurance contests... and many more.
The most popular summer sport in Finland, however, is not wife carrying or boot throwing, but swamp soccer (SS). The SS World Championships can attract over 30,000 enthusiasts and 300 teams to the tiny northern village of Hyrynsalmi (population 2,895), travelling all the way from the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia and Iceland. The game is basically just like normal soccer, but it's played on a wet, marshy swamp."
The article concludes with a quote from Harri Kinnunen, two-time organiser of the Boot Throwing World Championships. "Yeah, I know what the foreigners think," Kinnunen laughs. "Those crazy Finns!"
Hmmm.
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