Continuing the discussion from Awesome Song Thread! (And some awesome Welch and Finnish songs too!):
Raita has taken some umbrage to my (commonly-known) assertion that Finland, a fictional country, does not exist. Likewise, Finns and Finnish.
Riiiiiiiight. And you’ve got a Ministry of Silly Walks as well, do you?
So cute: “Finland” going to “war”. What are they gonna do, throw reindeer moss at me?
(source)
They might challenge you to a salmiakki contest…
You wanna talk war? Let’s talk war.
For your information, we fought off Soviet Union during the Winter War in 1939-1940, with half the man power and hundreds of times less tanks and aircrafts. I know it sounds too awesome to be true, but, but…
Our President also rides a (veloci?)raptor. Which, again, might sound incredible, but it’s true.
We also have had sauna championships, though we don’t do that anymore because, well… “A Finn and a Russian went to a sauna. The Russian died.” Oh, and we do it naked.
That is a battle no non-Finn will ever win (the only people who would ever stand a change are the Dutch, but never win). We also drink salmiakki vodka. We’re that badass.
How does salmiakki, or salmiakki vodka, compare to Unicum?
NB: Fk that “Zwack Liqueur” st.
We are hiding nothing! We just like lots and lots of forests. They’re nice. You can pick berries and mushrooms, go on a camping trip, and conspire with the space cops to… I mean, nothing.
I think this is all a conspiracy by Sweden to discredit Finland’s wonderful existence. And I will not stand for it.
One of my favorite countries to visit (feels like home).
I actually grew up near Oulu…
Have you ever visited the Forevertron? It’s only 5 hours away!
Unfortunately, no – even though I went to college less than an hour away.
I’ve lived near Watts Towers for ~17 yrs now and haven’t visited it either.
I think that it is an unconscious preservation tactic – it wouldn’t take much of a nudge to get me started on obsessively creating something like this… (I would likely use concrete like Mr. Dinsmoor)
It’s either that, or raise chickens!
I guess Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunnen must really be from somewhere else then, probably Glasgow.
Estonia?
I think what you need to do is learn the Finnish culture a little more! Here are some tips on Finnish etiquette:
Here are Finnish swear words (sadly spoken by someone who is not a native speaker):
Here we are weighing the biggest bear in Finland JUST BECAUSE:
And all you need to know is in this Anthony Bourdain episode. It’s a must watch.
If Anthony Bourdain visiting Finland doesn’t prove our glorious existence, what does?
I thought Anthony Bourdain was a BBC thing, like Dr. Who. Don’t they get a new actor to play him every few seasons?
Ah, brings back memories of working for ancient Finnish farmers…
One of my high school teachers actually had a custom automobile license plate “vittu” – not sure how he got away with that.
Finland also developed and perfected the self-igniting molotov cocktail. No lighter required. I can’t possibly dislike a country that feeds my pyromania thusly:
Notice the long magnesium-phosphorus storm match you can ignite with a small stone, or the head of the match on second molotov cocktail for a double dose of sticky fire. Very tidy and highly effective.
Finland’s tram rules seem to be exactly the same as Seattle’s “walking on the street” rules. IE:
ETA: the last two are specific observations of Seattle. Seeing as Finland has a higher human development index than pretty much anywhere, I’d expect that there either actually are no homeless people, or that others are willing to help them.
Yeah, that’s the general idea. In the countryside it’s different, but in cities… don’t look, don’t touch, definitely don’t talk to stranger. It’s not because of any “stranger danger”, we just don’t do small talk. Though I have to say, if a tourist is asking for help, most Finns will gladly help, and most speak such fine English that you’ll get the help you need. We just don’t talk to other Finns. We also do kind of ignore beggars easily, but we don’t have many actually homeless people as such.
I was just a few weeks ago dragging a huge amount of luggage from a bus station to my home, wondering why Finns have to be like this and never help a stranger out, when at the end a kind man helped me carry my luggage the rest of the way. It made me happy.
But to the point, which is that Finland is awesome.
I’ll have to admit something; every time someone outside our country mentions us, we get so fucking excited about it. It is a weakness. I think we as a country just have bad self-esteem and are looking for the approval of other countries (not that we need to exist, mind you!).
Conan O’Brien, oh he supports us.
Tarja Halonen was a great president. Funnily enough, Niinistö is our president now. We came really close to having a gay Green Party president, though!
They might be overstating his influence here, but… well, when he visited Finland, I went to the airport to see a glimpse of him and DON’T JUDGE ME.
Here the episode where he visited Finland; it really says a alot about us a country:
And here’s the second part:
I’ve actually always wanted to visit Finland. It’s quite objectively the happiest place on earth (according to statistical evidence, the incontrovertible kind). I want to see how the magic kingdom stacks up against a whole country 
Although these days, I fear my American passport may be held against me, what with all the wars my country’s been waging, and all the idiots in congress, and our last president wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box of safety scissors.
Canadian accents are easy to imitate, but pretending I had as good a primary school education as a Canadian can’t be done.
ETA: Conan “meddling” in the Finnish election seems very American as well. We can’t keep our hands out of other people’s business, pretending we’re the world police and such 
