Ice Hockey is to Finns what soccer is to the Brits, the most popular sport. And Sweden is the old adversary for the Finns, despite that 6% of its population are native Swedish speakers. As Finland was part of Sweden for several hundred years, before they were sold out to Russia, the Finns have a gentle enmity towards their old colonial power and near neighbour. It's not strong enough to prevent them taking more than a passing interest in what goes on in Sweden; the royal wedding there last year had much of the population here gripped.
But when it comes to sport, then a match against Sweden is viewed in much the same way as an England - Germany fixture in soccer would be back home. So on Sunday night, the prospect of competing with them for the World Championships was a delicious mix of anticipation and anxiety.
Ahead of the 9pm start time, most of the bars were filling up with fans in their blue and white shirts, getting into the appropriate spirit. And the game did not disappoint. The first goal went to Sweden in the first twenty minute period. The equaliser came during the second. But it was the final period of the match that saw the real drama. Finland quickly scored two more goals within the first four minutes and then did not give up. The final score was 6-1 to Finland, with the last coming within minutes of the final klaxon.
The city went wild. As the Helsingin Sanomat reported, "By 1 a.m. on Monday morning, both the Esplanades in downtown Helsinki were packed with jubilant hockey fans, such that the earlier rally of cars hooting their horns and with flags waving from the windows was no longer possible." Many of those cars drove home down my street and I can attest to their enthusiasm. Whoever told me that Finnish men don't show their emotions has never seen them after winning a world championship!
This evening, the team flew back from Bratislava on a Finnair flight (of course). A website that I regularly use to track the progress of my incoming visitors, flightradar24.com, was so inundated with hits from Finland that it reported that it was running a temporarily downgraded "high load" version; apparently the picture at one stage looked as though there was only one flight in the air, that of the returning Finnish lions.
Since I got home at 21:00, there has also been a steady stream of fans walking home down my street, many cheering "ihanaa leijonat, ihanaa"; roughly "wonderful lions" or "love lions". You can hear the official song featuring this lyric on YouTube. The noise has only dwindled away as I write this, more than two hours later. Helsingin Sanomat estimated that around 50,000 people would turn out this evening, which would not surprise me. That's around 5% of the population of the capital area.
The surprise of the game, though, was the award of the Tournament MVP trophy, decided before the final, to the Swedish goalie Viktor Fasth. He had only let in six goals in six matches, so earned the directorate's vote for the trophy. And then let in six goals all in the same match, the final. Ah well!
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