After his stand-up comedy show in Reykjavík, Iceland, Ismo Leikola was walking to his car when a local man came up to him and said that the show had been the first stand-up gig he’d ever attended.
“He told me how much he’d been laughing and how incredibly funny he’d found the show,” Leikola recalls. “And then he said that next time I have a show in Iceland, he’ll probably come see me again.”
Probably. Leikola still bursts out laughing when he remembers the comment.
“You know, he can’t be certain. What if he falls ill? Maybe he has somewhere else to be that day?”
As a Finn living in the US, “probably” coming to someone’s gig is one of the subtle – and less subtle – cultural differences he navigates on a daily basis. Leikola points out that in the Nordics, promises, no matter how small, are taken seriously.
“In the US, the man would’ve been likely to say that he will ‘definitely, 100 percent’ be there, without thinking anything of it.”
Whichever way works, Leikola doesn’t mind. If anything, it’s just material for his comedy, focusing on culture- and language-related jokes – and now also music.
Winning the comedy lottery
Leikola believes that because laughing is healthy and is said to make people live longer, telling someone not to laugh could be considered homicide.Photo: Jaakko Manninen
Leikola started his comedy career in Finland in the early 2000s, becoming something of a household name by contributing to a prime-time talk show as a correspondent from his hometown, Jyväskylä in central Finland.
In 2014, he hit the jackpot by winning the title of Funniest Person of the Year in a competition organised by Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. A year later, he moved to the US, and a couple of years after that, he performed on Conan O’Brien’s talk show.
“Winning the competition was definitely like winning the lottery,” he says now, over ten years later. “I was able to move to the US, and I didn’t need to start at open mic nights in scruffy clubs, as I could get proper gigs right away.”
Since then, Leikola – known on stage simply by his first name Ismo – has been cracking jokes about speaking English as a second language and the quirks and oddities of it, as well as comparisons between how Finns and Americans operate. He tours outside Finland and the US, too, performing in English and adapting jokes to local contexts.
An epiphany and a new beginning
Telling jokes with a guitar in hand has brought a whole new layer to Leikola’s work.Photo: Eggert Óskar Ólafsson
Making comedy in two languages doesn’t need to mean having two distinct sets. Sure, not all jokes can be translated, but Leikola emphasises that the richness of language is only a good thing, never a hindrance.
“Sometimes when I translate a joke between Finnish and English, it becomes even better than the original. Other times, the joke won’t translate at all, but it brings to mind a completely different angle, resulting in a new joke anyway.”
And there’s something totally new brewing, too. Leikola has long used music as part of his show, playing parodies of other people’s tunes with new lyrics. Earlier this year, after a Super Bowl watch party, Leikola was at a music studio with friends when he grabbed a guitar and began half-singing, half-reciting one of his old jokes.
“Something just clicked in my head. I realised I don’t have to try to write a song. I can write a joke and then just sing it.”
After more than two decades of doing stand-up comedy and only a few months since his epiphany, Leikola now can’t even imagine going on stage without a guitar.
“This is taking me to a whole new level. I feel like this is just the beginning.”
An oxymoron? Not so much
Ismo Leikola is originally from Jyväskylä, central Finland.Photo: Jaakko Manninen
Travelling the world, Leikola has come across stereotypes about Finland. There have been people who’ve told him that a Finnish comedian is an oxymoron: Finns aren’t funny.
“That’s hard for me to grasp, because I think Finns are super-funny. But I get that sometimes the humour can be a little difficult to explain.”
Although humour depends on cultural contexts, Leikola has learned that the differences between individuals are much larger than differences between regions. The same jokes can land in Finland, Florida and Canada, as it’s much more about who’s in the room than where the room is.
And it can be very useful to be a bit of an outsider. A lot of Leikola’s fans aren’t native English speakers, and his pensive style, clear pronunciation and unhurried rhythm make his performances easy to follow.
“Of course I’m also really funny. But it helps when people understand everything I say.”
Watch Ismo Leikola cracking a joke:
Text by Anne Salomäki, September 2026
