Finland is an awesome country but has sometimes its own quirk. Here are five cool but maybe odd facts about the land of a thousand lakes!
1. Highest consumption of milk in the world
Finland ranks as #1 in the consumption of milk per person, around a whopping one litre per day. What makes this weird is the fact that 17% of the Finns are actually lactose intolerant!
2. …as well as the highest consumption of coffee
Maybe since the Finns often enjoy a bit of milk in their coffee is the consumption of milk as high as it is. Your average Finn consumes 12 kilos of coffee per year! Coffee is drunk in the mornings, as well as in the afternoons with a sweet cinnamon bun – and everywhere in between, before, and after.
3. Most heavy metal bands per capita
Finland is renowned by its contribution to the world of heavy metal. Many famous bands in the genre, such as Nightwish, Children of Bodom, or H.I.M. are Finnish. No wonder Finland has the highest concentration of heavy metal bands per capita in the world! There are 53.2 bands per every 100,000 inhabitants.
4. The inventor of text message is Finnish
Matti Makkonen introduced the idea of “text talk” in 1984, and the first text message was sent from a computer in 1992. A few years later, Nokia launched world’s first text message phone. Read more about text messages and the story of Nokia
5. There are so many weird sports
Wife-Carrying. Rubber boot throwing. Swamp soccer. Finland hosts both world and national championships for various eccentric sounding sports! All these bizarre past-times are in fact fairly popular in Finland during the summer, and some of the sports attract people from overseas too. You can read more about them from our blog post here!
