Cold War, Coldplay, Olympics outcry, and Finland's weirdest pizza

Hello Insiders!

TGI Friday, am I right? If you’re anything like me you’ve spent the last week glued to the Olympic action in Paris. I’ve been flitting from archery to BMX, swimming to gymnastics, badminton to eventing and absolutely loving it! Of course there’s been plenty of other news in the headlines to cover…

Coming up in this week’s Finland Insider newsletter I’ve got all the Finnish Olympics news you need: plus a look at how Finns consume news, trouble in parliament’s smallest political party, strike action regrets; plus a video voyeur at the beach, weird pizza, and war games in the Baltic bringing tens of thousands of Russian and Chinese military personnel (almost) to our shores.

Get set, go!

Inside the headlines

Shooting 1. Three people have been remanded in custody after a shooting in Seinäjoki this week which left five injured. The incident happened in a pub in the city on Saturday, and Ilta-Sanomat says at least one of the suspects has a long history of criminal activity.

Shooting 2. Police in Espoo have arrested an Estonian national after another Estonian man was found shot dead at an apartment in the city.

Employment. Statistics Finland revealed that the employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 was nearly 78% last year, down by 0.2 percentage points from a year ago. The number of employed grew most in education and manufacturing and decreased most in wholesale and retail trade.

Unemployment. New rule changes from Kela make it harder to qualify for the earnings-related daily allowance or basic unemployment allowance - increasing the full-time working period from six months to one year.

Strike fails. The chairman of trade union umbrella group SAK says a series of strikes in the spring didn’t bring the hoped-for wage rises. Speaking to MTV News, Jarkko Eloranta ruled out more strikes in the autumn and said that unions would put extra emphasis into the collective bargaining process instead.

Journalism. The Reuters Institute in England is a fantastic source of data on how people consume news. In their latest report, they find that 69% of people in Finland trust the news (the highest of any country the Institute looked at). But they also found a significant rise in “selective news avoidance” in Finland, which means people are going out of their way to not consume news which can happen with longer-term topics like the war in Ukraine or the Middle East conflict. At some point “conflict fatigue” sets in with the public.

While interest in news headlines has fallen in most countries in the last decade, the Reuters Institute finds that Finland bucks that trend - with interest in the big news stories actually up.

Beach. A video voyeur has hit the headlines after publishing dozens of videos of people at Helsinki beaches. City officials say complaints about voyeurs taking videos or photos of people in beach attire are, sadly, not uncommon. A professor of criminal law says it’s not clear-cut whether any laws are being broken if someone shoots video of people in a public place and distributes it online.

Coldplay. British dad-rockers Coldplay played their first-ever Finland gigs this week, with four nights at the Olympic Stadium. One Helsinki cobbler (actually, my Helsinki cobbler, Juho!) got called upon to do some emergency shoe repairs for the international stars. The band visited a sauna and plunged in the Baltic Sea while they were in town (of course) - and sold 177,000 tickets for the shows, attracting headline political names like former PM Sanna Marin and some of her Social Democrat pals, and (separately, quite separately!) President Stubb and his wife.

Finland at the Olympics

Woke-lympics? The Paris Olympics opening ceremony was huge in scope, ambition and imagination: covering art, history, culture and music in the city of love. Rather predictably not everyone enjoyed it, with one government minister taking to social media to brand it “woke”, presumably because the four-hour event featured a diverse cast of thousands touching on themes that make conservatives (or the far-right) uncomfortable.

Finland’s far-right Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio perhaps doesn’t want to do business with France, after taking to social media cesspool X, formerly Twitter, to write:

“The Olympics are hugely valued by conservatives. The unfortunate thing is that the Olympians no longer appreciate conservatives, at least not after the opening ceremony.

“Sport should be kept out of politics. Left-wing activism harnesses everything to propaganda and normalises its wokeness,” Minister Tavio wrote, although it is not clear if this is the official position of the Finnish government.

Tavio also called the opening ceremony last Friday a “sexual freak show.”

Kremlin. Wondering who else had similar things to say about the Olympics? Russian newspapers described it as “The Games of Satan” and said the opening ceremony was “sacrilegious”.

Blasphemy? Other conservative Finns and some ‘influencers’ took to social media claiming there was “blasphemy” in the opening ceremony, suggesting that the organisers found Christians fair game as a target of ridicule.

The Bishop of Helsinki (who presumably has a direct phone line to his God) weighed in saying that he watched the opening ceremony and saw no blasphemy, and added - I’m paraphrasing - if that’s what anyone else saw, they went out of their way to misconstrue it so just chill please.

Medals. As I put the final touches to the newsletter at noon on Friday, Finland hasn’t actually won any medals yet but there’s a whole other week of competition still to come with more strong athletes in action. So it’s only a matter of time, surely?

History. It’s been 100 years since Finland won their most-ever Olympic medals, with a haul of 37 at the Paris Olympics in 1924. In recent years there’s been a bit of a dearth with just 1 boxing bronze in Rio 2016; and two bronze medals (in swimming and boxing) at Tokyo 2021.

PM. If the Finnish athletes need a good luck talisman, maybe Petteri Orpo will help? The prime minister is paying a four-day visit to Paris from Thursday to Sunday where he’ll watch events with Finnish competitors, and host a reception for athletes.

President. Orpo’s visit comes after President Alex Stubb attended the opening ceremony, and told public broadcaster Yle that he would prefer if there were no Russian athletes at all participating in the games.

Perseverance. If at first you don’t succeed… take some advice from Finnish Olympian Lotta Harala. Over on Instagram, the hurdler has charted the ups and downs of injury and international competition to finally make it to her first Olympic Games, at age 32.

Inside politics

Ructions. There’s some drama in Finland’s smallest parliamentary party Liike Nyt - Movement Now - which is the political vehicle for millionaire businessman and celebrity TV host Hjallis Harkimo (the party’s only MP). One former party member has written a blog accusing the party of acting in an unethical and illegal way. The ex-member says Harkimo himself effectively blocked anyone else from running for party leader, threatening to withdraw his financial support of Liike Nyt and acted in an imperious manner.

According to the Liike Nyt website, Hjallis “is known to be straight-talking, [but] also has a sensitive side, which is rarely shown in public.”

Train. Prime Minister Orpo has been taking a summer holiday, after a busy year filled with, well, quite many government scandals! He tells HS in an interview that one of his priorities for the next session of parliament is to get the project to develop a one-hour train connection from Helsinki to Turku back on track.

Finland international

Russia. The chair of parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Kimmo Kiljunen (SDP) has welcomed a prisoner exchange between Russia and the US - the largest since the Cold War era - saying it was good to keep lines of communication open. However he says he believes that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died under suspicious circumstances in February, was killed so that he would not be part of any such prisoner exchange.

Middle East. Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (Kok) sent her condolences to the Druze community of Majdal Shams in Israeli-occupied Golan after a deadly rocket attack by Hezbollah killed 12 young people.

Some 200 Finnish peacekeeping troops under UN auspices are deployed in the region and Valtonen has confirmed in an interview that plans are in place to evacuate them if required.

Hamas. Meanwhile, Finland’s ambassador to the Gulf Region told MTV News that she expects some kind of retaliatory action after Hamas chief Ismail Haniya was killed in Tehran this week - either directly against the State of Israel or against Israeli targets in other countries.

Hungary. Former Europe Minister (and parliamentary group leader) Tytti Tuppurainen (SDP) says Hungary should be kicked out of the EU’s Schengen zone for visa-free travel, after opening up an express service that allows Russian nationals to apply for Hungarian - and therefore Schengen - visas.

Thailand. The government of Thailand says it will start to let seasonal berry pickers travel to Finland for work after receiving assurances they would be treated well. Travel was on hold following a long and well-documented history of people trafficking and human rights abuses that seasonal workers from Thailand had suffered in Finland over the years. Traditionally, berry pickers had come on tourist visas which left them more open to exploitation. Recently the Finnish government said there should be a more formal work visa relationship between berry pickers and employers but the government in Bangkok was still wary about letting its nationals travel to Finland for the berry picking season. However, the Thais reversed their decision after talks with Finnish officials this week.

Baltic. Some 300 naval vessels and 20,000 military personnel from Russia and China are taking part in war games in the Gulf of Finland this week. So that does nothing to calm anyone’s nerves!

And finally…

I don’t know what it is with Finns and food. I mean, there’s so much AMAZING fresh and natural food all around us in Finland, and tasty dishes that are always among the most-cooked in my house… but for some reason Finns choose sabotage. Like Chef Lauri Kaivoluoto who decided to make pizza but instead of using traditional tomato sauce for the base he uses - this might be distressing for some people - pea soup from a can. And you won’t believe what he uses as a topping… Watch:

Thank you, kiitos, tack! 

OK folks that’s a wrap on this week! I’m going right back to watching Olympics action, I’d inject it into my eyeballs 24/7 if such a thing was possible!

The Finland Insider newsletter is back next Friday with more original content and in the meantime if you’ve got a story idea or tip, please send me an email to [email protected] 

Bye for now,

David