Culture - thisisFINLAND

Food first: Finnish festival cuisine emphasises sustainability and artisanal touches

The recipe for the perfect bite? Sustainable, local ingredients turned into world-class artisanal dishes, served with a smile in a laid-back festival setting.

Arts & culture Finnishness

Visit a scenic Finnish lake essential to the country’s cultural legacy

The shores of one picturesque lake were home to a community of Finland’s most significant artists in the early 1900s – a cultural powerhouse whose legacy and influence is still vibrantly alive.

Life & society Finnishness

A Finnish word, sivistys, adds to wellbeing and helps solve future challenges

Finland’s Year of Sivistys 2024 spotlights a long-established concept of societal enlightenment and learning, and harnesses its strengths to face challenges now and in the future.

Restaurant Day

A Finnish invention allowing anyone to set up a restaurant for a day

Arts & culture Visual arts

Urbane renewal: Returning a beloved Helsinki landmark to its original form

We visit a workshop at an undisclosed location where the venerable sculpture Havis Amanda is undergoing a yearlong conservation project. [Update: It returned to its harbourside perch in June 2024 – with a new plan to protect it during major celebrations.]

Arts & culture Visual arts

Inspiration and influences: 12 artists in Finland talk about life and creativity

On a fascinating journey of discovery, we visit an array of Finland-based artists to find out what ideas animate and inform their work.

Number of Unesco World Heritage sites in Finland

Source: Unesco

Arts & culture Circus

Finland’s first circus professor unites many art forms under a big tent

Live video, virtual reality, archery: Finnish circus is going in directions you probably never imagined as a kid. And now circus art has a professor, too.

Life & society Cuisine

Après-steam cuisine: 7 Finnish waterfront sauna restaurants serving delicious meals

Famous for its sauna culture, Finland continues to innovate in the sauna space. Sleek new sauna restaurants have cropped up around the country in recent years. A few have already become classics and local landmarks.

Arts & culture Culture

In the far north, Siida shows a Sámi view of how nature and culture go together

Hundreds of kilometres above the Arctic Circle, the Siida Sámi Museum and Nature Centre portrays the culture of the Indigenous Sámi people and the diversity of the region’s flora and fauna.

292 votes

Amount of votes Finland got when winning the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest