Saku Koivu

Saku Koivu

Saku Antero Koivu (born 23 November 1974, in Turku, Finland) is a Finnish professional ice hockey centre currently playing for the Montreal Canadiens as the team captain. His brother, Mikko Koivu, is also a captain for the Minnesota Wild.

Born to Jukka and Tuire Koivu, Saku started his professional ice hockey career playing for TPS in the Finnish SM-liiga, in the 1992–1993 season. He spent three seasons with TPS, winning two Finnish championships with the team in 1993 and 1995, and being elected Player of the Year by his fellow players in the 1994–1995 season. He was drafted by the Canadiens in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft as their first-round selection (21st overall), and moved to North America for the 1995–96 season.

In his first year, Koivu ranked 4th in scoring amongst NHL rookies. The following season Koivu was the NHL leading scorer (13 goals, 25 assists and 38 points) before suffering a knee injury on 7 December 1996, in a game against Chicago Blackhawks. He missed 22 games in that season but still had an average of scoring over a point per game (56 points in 50 games).

On 30 September 1999, Koivu was named the 27th captain of the Montreal Canadiens, and the first European-born captain in the history of the Canadiens.

After six seasons in the NHL, Koivu was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in September 2001 and missed practically the entire 2001–02 NHL season. He made an amazing recovery and was able to return for the playoffs, leading the Canadiens to an unlikely first-round upset of the number one-ranked Boston Bruins. For his courage and off-ice team leadership while undergoing cancer treatment, he was awarded the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy following the 2002 playoffs. He followed up in the 2002–03 NHL season by scoring his career best single-season point total with 71 (21 goals, 50 assists) to that date.

During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, Koivu returned to Finland to play for TPS, whose head coach at the time was his father, Jukka Koivu. He was joined in Turku by then-fellow Montreal Canadien, and close friend, Craig Rivet.

The 2006–07 was Koivu's seventh season as the Canadiens captain. His continued tenure seems to have ended a supposed curse of Habs captains. During a ten-year span from 1989 to 1999, six captains were traded away.

The 2006–07 NHL season was, for Saku Koivu, personally successful. In a game on 9 January 2007, in which the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Atlanta Thrashers 4–2, he registered his 500th NHL point. With 2:47 remaining, Koivu fed Michael Ryder with a pass across the slot for a power-play goal. Koivu received a standing ovation from the sellout crowd of 21,273 in Montreal. Koivu went on to score 22 goals and 53 assists in 81 games, totaling 75 points, making 2006–07 his best season. At the season's annual awards banquet, Koivu was announced as the winner of the King Clancy Trophy for his role in the cancer-fighting Saku Koivu Foundation. The Canadiens' team doctor, Dr. David Mulder, received the award on Koivu's behalf as he wasn't present.

In October 2007, Koivu was criticized by nationalist lawyer Guy Bertrand for not speaking French in a videotaped pre-game ceremony. Although Koivu is fluent in English, Swedish and Finnish, he speaks limited French and is shy about using it in public. He replied to Bertrand's remarks that he is not perfect, and jokingly mentioned that he speaks French to his wife during intimate moments. Koivu introduced his team in the next pre-game video with the phrase "Ici Saku Koivu, voici mon équipe" ("Saku Koivu here, this is my team").

In NHL.com's March 2008 edition of Impact! Magazine, Brian Compton listed 10 best captains of all-time after Steve Yzerman and Koivu was included in the article as 10th behind the likes of Mark Messier and Mario Lemieux. Later in the magazine, Koivu was characterized as an inspirative leader, who leads by example, and a courageous fighter, who has the will to overcome an obstacle such as cancer.

On 18 October 2008, Koivu moved up to number 7th on the Canadiens all-time assist list over the legendary Maurice "Rocket" Richard in a game against the Phoenix Coyotes. Koivu netted one and assisted on two from newly-acquired linemate Alex Tanguay when the Habs beat Coyotes 4-1.

Koivu would continue his strong performance with a goal in the following game against the Florida Panthers on 20th of October, 2008. The goal marked as his 600th career point in the NHL.

As of the conclusion of the 2008-2009, Koivu will be the longest serving captain in team history, tied with Jean Béliveau.

Throughout his career, Saku Koivu has suffered various medical issues, many due to his style of play in his early NHL years. In his sophomore year, Koivu was leading the NHL in scoring before suffering a knee injury. The next two seasons, Koivu was riddled with various leg injuries; however, in each year, he managed to play in more than 60 regular season games. During the 1999-00 NHL season, Koivu dislocated his shoulder which took him off the ice for 40 games, and had another knee injury, playing only 24 games. The next season, he sat out 28 games due to arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. Koivu's latest knee problems were in 2003-04 NHL season, when he was forced to miss 13 games. Since then he has changed his style of play to a more reserved style. Koivu also missed a couple of the 2007-2008 playoffs games with a broken foot.

On 6 September 2001, Koivu was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after having serious pains in stomach and vomiting. Koivu was on his way back from Finland with then-fellow Canadien Brian Savage who said he looked pale and not well at all. He went to see the Canadien's physician David Mulder, who did tests. It was later discovered that Koivu had cancer.

Koivu received large numbers of get-well e-mails and letters. He was also in touch with Mario Lemieux, John Cullen and Lance Armstrong; all athletes who had beaten cancer and returned to the top.

Koivu was expected to be out for the season but made a remarkable comeback in time for the last few games. Fans gave Koivu an eight-minute standing ovation when he skated onto the Molson Center ice for the first time on on 9 April 2002. Koivu helped the team to gain a playoff spot and they went on to beat the #1 ranked Boston Bruins in six games.

In 2008, Koivu was featured in the Simple Plan music video for the song Save You, which was originally written for the lead singer's brother. The music video features many cancer survivors such as Koivu.

On 26 April 2006, during a home playoff game against the Carolina Hurricanes, Koivu sustained a serious injury to his left eye. Hurricanes forward Justin Williams attempted to lift Koivu's stick and struck him in the eye. Koivu was rushed to the hospital, where he would remain overnight and for the remainder of the playoffs. Williams attempted to contact Koivu to apologize personally, but was only able to leave him a message on his cell phone. Koivu remained out of the lineup for the rest of the series and underwent surgery to repair a detached retina during the off-season.

Koivu has admitted to having lost some degree of peripheral vision out of the injured eye which he will likely never regain. As well, a small cataract developed following the retinal re-attachment surgery that was later successfully removed; Koivu waited until the conclusion of the 2006–2007 NHL season before opting to have the surgery, and also tried a contact lens design to counteract the cataract's effects. Koivu opted to wear a larger style of visor than he had previously worn.

Koivu's play has demonstrated that he can still complement his linemates with seemingly no adverse impact to his performance. In fact, in the 2006–2007 season he was able to beat his career high 71 points with 75, making the season after his eye injury the best of his career. Koivu attributes his increased scoring this year to developing a quicker release of the puck, rather than anything to do with his eye injury or other subsequent changes to his play style thereafter. In the summer of 2007 he underwent eye surgery to improve his vision.

Most recently, Koivu won a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics, and bronze medals at the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics. He was also on the 2004 World Cup team, which advanced to the final but lost against Canada, thereby winning the silver medal.

Koivu's most renowned achievement with Team Finland is as first line center in the 1995 IIHF World Championships, where Finland won its only IIHF men's gold medal to date. Koivu played in the first line with Jere Lehtinen and Ville Peltonen (the "Huey, Dewey, and Louie" line ), who were all selected as tournament all-stars.

Koivu is partnered with Teemu Selänne and Jere Lehtinen in a line if all three are available. The trio has been a key factor to Finland's success at bigger events. However, Koivu and Selänne have played numerous times without Lehtinen and have had great performances which have also affected the NHL; after 1999 World Championships Selänne said in an interview on a Finnish TV program: "It would be great to play with Saku" which led to rumours about Koivu being traded to Anaheim.

On 23 February 2006, Koivu was elected by his fellow Olympic competitors as a member of the Athletes' Commission of the IOC.

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Finland

Finland /ˈfɪnlənd/ (help·info), officially the Republic of Finland ( Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.

Around 5.3 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern part of the country. It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. The native language for most of the population is Finnish, a member of the Finno-Ugric language family most closely related to Estonian, and is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. The other official language of Finland, Swedish, is the mother tongue of 5.5 percent of the population. Finland is a democratic, parliamentary republic with a mostly Helsinki-based central government and local governments in 348 municipalities. A total of a million residents live in Greater Helsinki (including Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa) and a third of the country's GDP is produced there. Other major cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Kuopio and Lahti.

Finland was historically a part of Sweden and from 1809 an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire. Finland's declaration of independence from Russia in 1917 was followed by a civil war, wars against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and a period of official neutrality during the Cold War. Finland joined the United Nations in 1955, the OECD in 1969, and the European Union in 1995 and participates in the Eurozone. Finland has been ranked the second most stable country in the world, in a survey based on social, economic, political, and military indicators.

Finland has good results in many international comparisons of national performance such as the share of high-technology manufacturing, public education, health care, the rate of gross domestic product growth, and the protection of civil liberties.

According to archaeological evidence, the area now composing Finland was settled at the latest around 8500 BCE during the Stone Age as the ice shield of the last ice age receded. The artifacts the first settlers left behind present characteristics that are shared with those found in for example Estonia, Russia and Norway. The earliest people were hunter-gatherers, using stone tools. There is also evidence of carved stone animal heads. The first pottery appeared in 3000 BCE when settlers from the East brought in the Comb Ceramic culture. The arrival of the Corded Ware culture in southern coastal Finland between 3,000–2,500 BCE coincided with the start of agriculture. Even with the introduction of agriculture, hunting and fishing continued to be important parts of the subsistence economy, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

The Bronze Age (1500–500 BCE) and Iron Age (500 BCE–1200 CE) were characterised by extensive contacts with other cultures in the Fennoscandian and Baltic regions. There is no consensus on when Finno-Ugric languages and Indo-European languages were first spoken in the area of contemporary Finland.

The first verifiable written documents appeared in the 12th century.

Swedish speaking settlers arrived in the coastal regions during the medieval time. Swedish kings established their rule in 1249. Swedish became the dominant language of the nobility, administration and education; Finnish was chiefly a language for the peasantry, clergy and local courts in predominantly Finnish-speaking areas. The Bishop of Turku was the most socially pre-eminent person in Finland before the Reformation.

During the Reformation, the Finns gradually converted to Lutheranism. In the 16th century, Mikael Agricola published the first written works in Finnish. The first university in Finland, The Royal Academy of Turku, was established in 1640. Finland suffered a severe famine in 1696-1697 and almost one third of the population died. In the 18th century, wars between Sweden and Russia led to the occupation of Finland twice by Russian forces, known to the Finns as the Greater Wrath (1714–1721) and the Lesser Wrath (1742–1743). By this time Finland was the predominant term for the whole area from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Russian border.

On March 29, 1809, after being taken over by the armies of Alexander I of Russia in the Finnish War, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917. During the Russian era, the Finnish language started to gain recognition. From the 1860s onwards, a strong Finnish nationalist movement, known as the Fennoman movement, grew. Milestones included the publication of what would become Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, in 1835, and the Finnish language achieving equal legal status with Swedish in 1892.

The Finnish famine of 1866–1868 killed 15 percent of the population, making it one the largest famines in European history. The famine led the Russian Empire to ease financial regulations, and investment rose in following decades. Economic and political development was rapid. The GDP per capita was still a half of United States and a third of Great Britain.

In 1906, universal suffrage was adopted in the Grand Duchy of Finland. However, the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire soured when the Russian government made moves to restrict Finnish autonomy. For example, the universal suffrage was, in practice, virtually meaningless, since the emperor did not have to approve any of the laws adopted by the Finnish parliament. Desire for independence gained ground, first among radical liberals and socialists.

After the February Revolution the position of Finland as part of the Russian Empire was questioned, mainly by the social democrats. Since the head of state was the Czar of Russia, it was not clear who was the chief executive of Finland after the revolution. The parliament, controlled by social democrats, passed the so-called Power Law, which would give the highest authority to the parliament. This was rejected by the Russian Provisional Government and by the right wing parties in Finland. The Provisional Government dissolved the parliament by force, which the social democrats considered illegal, since the right to do so was stripped from the Russians by the Power Law.

New elections were conducted, in which right wing parties won a slim majority. Some social democrats refused to accept the result and still claimed that the dissolution of the parliament (and thus the ensuing elections) were extralegal. The two nearly equally powerful political blocs, the right wing parties and the social democratic party, were highly antagonized.

The October Revolution in Russia changed the game anew. Suddenly, the right wing parties in Finland started to reconsider their decision to block the transfer of highest executive power from the Russian government to Finland, as radical socialists took power in Russia. Rather than acknowledge the authority of the Power Law of a few months earlier, the right wing government declared independence.

In 1918, months after the Russian October Revolution, the revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Party staged a coup. They succeeded in controlling southern Finland and Helsinki, but the right wing government continued in exile from Vaasa. The stage was set for a brief but bitter civil war. The Whites, who were supported by Imperial Germany, prevailed over the Reds, supported by Bolshevist Russia. After the war tens of thousands of Reds and suspected sympathizers were interned in camps, where thousands died by execution or from malnutrition and disease. Deep social and political enmity was sown between the Reds and Whites that would last until the Winter War and beyond. The civil war and activist expeditions (see Heimosodat) to the Soviet Union strained Eastern relations.

After a brief flirtation with monarchy, Finland became a presidential republic, with Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg elected as its first president in 1919. The Finnish–Russian border was determined by the Treaty of Tartu in 1920, largely following the historic border but granting Pechenga (Finnish: Petsamo) and its Barents Sea harbour to Finland. Finnish democracy didn't see any more Soviet coup attempts and survived the anti-Communist Lapua Movement. The relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union was tense. Germany's relations with Finland were also not good. Military was trained in France instead and relations to Western Europe and Sweden were strengthened.

In 1917 the population was 3 million. Credit-based land reform was enacted after the civil war, increasing the proportion of capital-owning population. About 70% of workers were occupied in agriculture and 10% in industry. The largest export markets were the United Kingdom and Germany. The Great Depression in the early 1930s was relatively light in Finland.

During World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union twice: in the Winter War of 1939–40 after the Soviet Union had attacked Finland and in the Continuation War of 1941–44, following Operation Barbarossa, in which Germany invaded the Soviet Union. For 872 days during World War II, German and Finnish armies besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city. Following German losses on the Eastern Front and the subsequent Soviet advance, Finland was forced to make peace with the Soviet Union and accept their demands for reparations and control. This was followed by the Lapland War of 1944–45, when Finland forced the Germans out of northern Finland.

The treaties signed in 1947 and 1948 with the Soviet Union included Finnish obligations, restraints, and reparations as well as further Finnish territorial concessions (cf. the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940). Finland was force to cede most of Finnish Karelia, Salla, and Pechenga, which amounted to ten percent of its land area and twenty percent of its industrial capacity, including the ice free port of Vyborg (Viipuri). Some 400,000 evacuees, mainly women and children, fled these areas.

Finland had to reject Marshall aid. However, the United States provided secret development aid and helped the still non-communist Social Democratic Party in hopes of preserving Finland's independence. Establishing trade with the Western powers, such as the United Kingdom, and the reparations to the Soviet Union caused Finland to transform itself from a primarily agrarian economy to an industrialised one. Even after the reparations had been paid off, Finland, which is poor in certain resources necessary for an industrialized nation (such as iron and oil), continued to trade with the Soviet Union in the framework of bilateral trade.

In 1950 half of the Finnish workers were occupied in agriculture and a third lived in urban areas. The new jobs in manufacturing, services and trade quickly attracted people to the towns. The average number of births per woman declined from a baby boom peak of 3.5 in 1947 to 1.5 in 1973. When baby boomers entered the workforce, the economy did not generate jobs fast enough and hundreds of thousands emigrated to the more industrialized Sweden, with emigration peaking in 1969 and 1970. The 1952 Summer Olympics brought international visitors. Finland took part in trade liberalization in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Officially claiming to be neutral, Finland lay in the grey zone between the Western countries and the Soviet Union. The YYA Treaty (Finno-Soviet Pact of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance) gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics. This was extensively exploited by President Urho Kekkonen against his opponents. He maintained an effective monopoly on Soviet relations from 1956 on, which was crucial for his continued popularity. In politics, there was a tendency of avoiding any policies and statements that could be interpreted as anti-Soviet. This phenomenon was given the name "Finlandisation" by the German press (fi. suomettuminen). Self-censorship vis-à-vis anything negative associated with the Soviet Union was prevalent in the media. Public libraries pulled from circulation thousands of books that were considered anti-Soviet, and the law made it possible for the authorities to directly censor movies with supposedly anti-Soviet content. Asylum-seeking Soviet citizens were frequently returned to the Soviet Union by the Finnish authorities.

Despite close relations with the Soviet Union, Finland remained a Western European market economy. Various industries benefited from trade privileges with the Soviets, which explains the widespread support that pro-Soviet policies enjoyed among business interests in Finland. Economic growth was rapid in the postwar era, and by 1975 Finland's GDP per capita was the 15th highest in the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, Finland built one of the most extensive welfare states in the world. Finland also negotiated a treaty with the EEC (a predecessor of the European Union) that mostly abolished customs duties towards the EEC starting from 1977, although Finland did not fully join. In 1981, President Urho Kekkonen's failing health forced him to retire after holding office for 25 years.

Miscalculated macroeconomic decisions, a banking crisis, the collapse of a primary trading partner (the Soviet Union) and a global economic downturn caused a deep recession in Finland in the early 1990s. The depression bottomed out in 1993, and Finland has seen steady economic growth ever since.

Like other Nordic countries, Finland has liberalized its economy since the late 1980s. Financial and product market regulation was loosened. Some state enterprises have been privatized and there have been some modest tax cuts. Finland joined the European Union in 1995, and the Eurozone in 1999.

The population is aging with the birth rate at 10.42 births per 1,000 population, or a fertility rate of 1.8. With a median age of 41.6 years, Finland is one of the oldest countries; half of voters are estimated to be over 50 years old. Like most European countries, without further reforms or much higher immigration, Finland is expected to struggle with demographics, even though macroeconomic projections are healthier than in most other developed countries.

The name Suomi (Finnish for "Finland") has uncertain origins but a strong candidate for a cognate is the Proto-Baltic word *zeme, meaning "land". In addition to the close relatives of Finnish (the Baltic-Finnic languages), this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian. According to an earlier theory the name was derived from suomaa (fen land) or suoniemi (fen cape).

The exonym Finland has resemblance with, e.g., the Scandinavian placenames Finnmark, Finnveden and hundreds of other toponyms starting with Fin(n) in Sweden and Norway. Some of these names are obviously derived from finnr, a Germanic word for a wanderer/finder and thus supposedly meaning nomadic "hunter-gatherers" or slash and burn agriculturists as opposed to the Germanic sedentary farmers and seafaring traders and pirates. The term "Finn" often refers to Sami people, too. Finn started referring to the people of Finland Proper after the 15th century, when the church appointed a bishop — who became one of the most powerful men in the province — over the whole area corresponding roughly to today's Finland. The fact there was no other ecclesiastical authority of the same level, coupled with the Bishop's temporal authority, engendered a sense of "the Finns" belonging to one geographical area over which the name spread from the 15th century onwards to refer to the people of the entire country.

Among the first documents to mention "a land of the Finns" are two rune-stones. There is one in Söderby, Sweden, with the inscription finlont (U 582) and one in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, with the inscription finlandi (G 319), dating from the 11th century.

Finland is a country of thousands of lakes and islands – 187,888 lakes (larger than 500 m²) and 179,584 islands. One of these lakes, Saimaa, is the fourth largest in Europe. The Finnish landscape is mostly flat with few hills, and its highest point, the Halti at 1,324 metres, is found in the extreme north of Lapland at the border between Finland and Norway.

The landscape is covered mostly (seventy-five percent of land area) by coniferous taiga forests and fens, with little arable land. The most common type of rock is granite. It is a ubiquitous part of the scenery, visible wherever there is no soil cover. Moraine or till is the most common type of soil, covered by a thin layer of humus of biological origin. Podzol profile development is seen in most forest soils except where drainage is poor. Gleysols and peat bogs occupy poorly drained areas. The greater part of the islands are found in the southwest in the Archipelago Sea, part of the archipelago of the Åland Islands, and along the southern coast in the Gulf of Finland.

Finland is one of the few countries in the world whose surface area is still growing. Owing to the post-glacial rebound that has been taking place since the last ice age, the surface area of the country is growing by about 7 square kilometres (2.7 square miles) a year.

The distance from the most Southern point – Hanko – to the most northern point of Finland – Nuorgam – is 1,445 kilometres (898 miles) (driving distance), which would take approximately 18.5 hours to drive. This is very similar to Great Britain (Land's End to John o' Groats – 1,404 kilometres (872 miles) and 16.5 h).

Phytogeographically, Finland is shared between the Arctic, Central European and Northern European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Finland can be subdivided into three ecoregions: the Scandinavian and Russian taiga, Sarmatic mixed forests and Scandinavian Montane Birch forest and grasslands. Actual tundra with permafrost is not found in Finland except for a narrow area in the extreme north. Similarly, temperate broadleaf mixed forests, with oak, elm, hazel and maple growing in the wild, are found only in the narrow area extreme south.

All terrestrial life in Finland was completely wiped out during the last ice age that ended some 10,000 years ago, following the retreat of the glaciers and the appearance of vegetation. Today, there are over 1,200 species of vascular plant, 800 bryophytes and 1,000 lichen species in Finland, with flora being richest in the southern parts of the country. Plant life, like most of the Finnish ecology, is well adapted to tolerate the contrasting seasons and extreme weather. Many plant species, such as the Scots Pine, spruce, and birch, spread throughout Finland from Norway and only reached the western coast less than three millennia ago.

Similarly, Finland has a diverse and extensive range of fauna. There are at least sixty native mammalian species, 248 breeding bird species, over seventy fish species and eleven reptile and frog species present today, many migrating from neighbouring countries thousands of years ago.

Large and widely recognised wildlife mammals found in Finland are the Brown Bear (the national animal), Gray Wolf, elk (moose) and reindeer. Other common mammals include the Red Fox, Red Squirrel, and Mountain Hare. Some rare and exotic species include the flying squirrel, Golden Eagle, Saimaa Ringed Seal and Arctic fox. Two of the more striking birds are the Whooper Swan, a large European swan and the national bird of Finland, and the Capercaillie, a large, black-plumaged member of the grouse family. The latter is considered an indicator of old-growth forest connectivity, and has been declining due to landscape fragmentation. The most common breeding birds are the Willow Warbler, Chaffinch and Redwing. Of some seventy species of freshwater fish, the northern pike, perch and others are plentiful. Atlantic salmon remains the favorite of fly rod enthusiasts.

The endangered Saimaa Ringed Seal, one of only three lake seal species in the world, exists only in the Saimaa lake system of southeastern Finland, down to only 300 seals today. It has become the emblem of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation. Due to hunting and persecution in history, many animals such as the Deer, Golden Eagle, Brown Bear and Eurasian Lynx all experienced significant declines in population. However, their numbers have increased again in the 2000s, mainly as a result of careful conservation and the establishment of vast national parks.

The Finnish climate is suitable for grain farming in the southernmost regions, but not further north.

Finland has a humid and cool semi continental climate. The climate type in southern Finland is a northern temperate climate. Winters of southern Finland (average temperature of day is below 0) are usually 4-5 months long, and the snow covers the land about 4 months of every year, and in the southern coast, it can melt many times during winter, and then come again. The coldest winter days of southern Finland are usually -20 C, and the warmest days of July and early August can be 25-30 C. Summers in the southern Finland last 4 months (from the mid of May to mid of September). In Northern Finland, particularly in the Province of Lapland, a subarctic climate dominates, characterized by cold, occasionally severe, winters and relatively warm summers. Winters in north Finland are nearly 7 months long, and snow covers the land almost 6-7 months every year. Summers in the north are quite short, only 2-3 months. The highest temperatures on the warmest summer days of July, are rarely above 20-25 degrees in northern Finland. The main factor influencing Finland's climate is the country's geographical position between the 60th and 70th northern parallels in the Eurasian continent's coastal zone, which shows characteristics of both a maritime and a continental climate, depending on the direction of air flow. Finland is near enough to the Atlantic Ocean to be continuously warmed by the Gulf Stream, which explains the unusually warm climate considering the absolute latitude.

A quarter of Finland's territory lies above the Arctic Circle and the midnight sun can be experienced – for more days, the farther north one travels. At Finland's northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 consecutive days during summer, and does not rise at all for 51 days during winter.

Finland currently numbers 5,332,671 inhabitants and has an average population density of 17 inhabitants per square kilometre. This makes it, after Norway and Iceland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Finland's population has always been concentrated in the southern parts of the country, a phenomenon even more pronounced after 20th century urbanisation. The biggest and most important cities in Finland are the cities of the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area – Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa. Other large cities include Tampere, Turku and Oulu.

The share of foreign citizens in Finland is 2.5 percent being among the lowest of the European Union countries. Most of them are from Russia, Estonia and Sweden.

Most of the Finnish people (92 percent) speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Finnish is a member of the Baltic-Finnic subgroup of the Uralic languages and is typologically between inflected and agglutinative languages. It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. In practice, this means that instead of prepositions and prefixes there is a great variety of different suffixes and that compounds form a considerable percentage of the vocabulary of Finnish. It has been estimated that approximately 65–70 percent of all words in Finnish are compounds. A close linguistic relative to the Finnish language is Estonian, which, though similar in many aspects, is not mutually intelligible with it. These languages, together with Hungarian (all members of the Uralic language family), are the primary non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. Finland is one of three independent countries where a Uralic language is spoken by the majority, the other two being Estonia and Hungary.

The largest minority language and the second official language is Swedish spoken by 5.6 percent of the population. Other minority languages are Russian (0.8 percent), Estonian (0.3 percent), Finnish Romani, and Finnish Sign Language (spoken as a first language by 4,000–5,000 people). To the north, in Lapland, are also the Sami people, numbering around 7,000 and recognized as an indigenous people. About a quarter of them speak a Sami language as their mother tongue. There are three Sami languages that are spoken in Finland: Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. The right of the minority groups (in particular Sami, Swedish-speaking Finns and Romani people) to cherish their culture and language is protected by the constitution.

In a 2005 Eurobarometer survey studying languages of the European Union, 60% percent of adult residents claimed to know English, 38% claimed to know Swedish as a second language (41% in 2008), and 17% claimed to know German. Ranking those claiming a knowledge of English, Finland ranked fifth behind Malta, the Netherlands (86%), Sweden (85%), and Denmark (83%). Relatively many Finns knew German, while relatively few knew French or Spanish.

Most Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (80.7 percent). With approximately 4.3 million members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is one of the largest Lutheran churches in the world, although its membership is on the decline. A minority belong to the Finnish Orthodox Church (1.1 percent; see Eastern Orthodox Church). Other Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church in Finland are significantly smaller, as are the Muslim, Jewish and other non-Christian communities (totaling 1.2 percent). 15.9 percent of the population has no religious affiliation.

Historically, in the prehistoric, ancient and early mediaeval periods of Finnish history, Finnish paganism was the majority religion. It has been revived recently through the form of Finnish neopaganism.

The main Lutheran and Orthodox churches are constitutional national churches of Finland with special roles such as in state ceremonies and schools. A university degree in theology is compulsory for Lutheran priests. Representatives at Lutheran Church assemblies are selected in church elections every four years.

Over half of Finns say they pray at least once a month, the highest proportion in Nordics. Most children are baptized and have confirmation at the age of 15. Nearly all funerals are Christian. The majority of Lutherans attend church only for special occasions like Christmas ceremonies, weddings and funerals. According to a 2005 Eurobarometer poll, 41 percent of Finnish citizens responded that "they believe there is a god"; 41 percent answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force"; and 16 percent that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".

Finnish family life is centered on the nuclear family. Relations with the extended family are often rather distant, and Finnish people do not form politically significant clans, tribes or similar structures. According to UNICEF, Finland ranks fourth in the world in child well-being.

There are 307 residents for each doctor. About 18.9 % of health care is funded directly by households and 76.6 % by public and other insurances. Finland limits medicine sales to the around 800 licensed pharmacies. Some significant institutions include Ministry of Health and National Public Health Institute.

In a comparison of 16 countries by Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, Finland used the least resources and got average result, making Finland the most efficient according to the study's authors.

The life expectancy is 82 years for women and 75 years for men. After having one of the highest death rates from heart disease in the world in the 1970s, improvements in the Finnish diet and exercise have paid off. Finland has exceptionally low smoking rates: 26 % for males and 19 % for females.

Finland's health problems are similar to other developed countries: circulatory diseases make up about half of all causes of death and cancer is the second most common cause of death.

The total annual consumption of pure alcohol by residents is lower than other European countries, even though heavy drinking is common at parties on the weekend. However, becoming intoxicated has remained the central characteristic of Finnish drinking habits. In the working-age population, diseases or accidents caused by alcohol consumption have recently surpassed coronary artery disease as the biggest single cause of death.

Schools teach sports, health and hands-on cooking classes. Finnish schoolchildren have one of the lowest amounts of sport classes in the European Union and according to National Public Health Institute only a third of adults exercise enough. National Public Health Institute claims 54 % male obesity and 38 % female obesity, while other estimates put obesity rates at 70 % and 50 %. The rate of diabetes is predicted to grow to 15 % by 2015. Finland has the world's highest rate of Type I diabetes.

The largest subdivisions are the six administrative provinces (lääni, pl. läänit), which mainly function as divisions of the state organisation, i.e. police, prosecutors, and other state services operate under their administration. After 1997 reforms the provinces have been Southern Finland, Western Finland, Eastern Finland, Oulu, Lapland, Åland. The province of Åland Islands is autonomous.

The fundamental administrative divisions of the country are the municipalities, which may also call themselves towns or cities. They account for half of public spending. Spending is financed by municipal income tax, state subsidies, and other revenue. As of 2009, there are 348 municipalities and most have less than 6,000 residents. People often identify with their municipality.

In addition to municipalities, two intermediate levels are defined. Municipalities co-operate in seventy-four sub-regions and twenty regions. These are governed by the member municipalities, but have only limited powers. The Åland region has a permanent, democratically elected regional council as a part of the autonomy. In the Kainuu region, there is a pilot project underway, with regional elections. Sami people have a semi-autonomous Sami Domicile Area in Lapland for issues on language and culture.

In the following chart, the number of inhabitants includes those living in the entire municipality (kunta/kommun), not just in the built-up area. The land area is given in km², and the density in inhabitants per km² (land area). The figures are as of 28 February 2009. Notice that the capital region – comprising Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen (see Greater Helsinki) – forms a continuous conurbation of one million people. However, common administration is limited to voluntary cooperation of all municipalities, e.g. in Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council.

The Constitution of Finland defines the political system. Finland is a representative democracy with a semi-presidential parliamentary system. Aside from state-level politics, residents use their vote in municipal elections and in the European Union elections.

According to the Constitution, the President is the head of state and responsible for foreign policy (which excludes affairs related to the European Union) in cooperation with the cabinet. Other powers include Commander-in-Chief, decree, and appointive powers. Direct vote is used to elect the president for a term of six years and maximum two consecutive terms. The current president is Tarja Halonen (SDP).

The 200-member unicameral Parliament of Finland exercises the supreme legislative authority in Finland. The parliament may alter laws, the constitution, bring about the resignation of the Council of State, and override presidential vetoes. Its acts are not subject to judicial review. Various parliament committees listen to experts and prepare legislation. Proportional vote in multi-seat constituencies is used to elect the parliament for a term of four years. The Speaker of Parliament is currently Sauli Niinistö (National Coalition Party). The cabinet (the Finnish Council of State) exercises most executive powers. It is headed by the Prime Minister of Finland and includes other ministers and the Chancellor of Justice. Parliament majority decides its composition and a vote of no confidence can be used to modify it. The current prime minister is Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party).

Since equal and common suffrage was introduced in 1906, the parliament has been dominated by the Centre Party (former Agrarian Union), National Coalition Party, and Social Democrats, which have approximately equal support, and represent 65–80 percent of voters. After 1944 Communists were a factor to consider for a few decades. The relative strengths of the parties vary only slightly in the elections due to the proportional election from multi-member districts, but there are some visible long-term trends. The autonomous Åland islands has separate elections, where Liberals for Åland was the largest party in 2007 elections.

The judicial system of Finland is a civil law system divided between courts with regular civil and criminal jurisdiction and administrative courts with jurisdiction over litigation between the individuals and the public administration. Finnish law is codified and based on Swedish law and in a wider sense, civil law or Roman law. The court system for civil and criminal jurisdiction consists of local courts (käräjäoikeus), regional appellate courts (hovioikeus), and the Supreme Court (korkein oikeus). The administrative branch of justice consists of administrative courts (hallinto-oikeus) and the Supreme Administrative Court (korkein hallinto-oikeus). In addition to the regular courts, there are a few special courts in certain branches of administration. There is also a High Court of Impeachment for criminal charges against certain high-ranking officeholders.

The abovementioned local court of first instance (käräjäoikeus) for civil and criminal cases consists of professional judges, or, in complex cases, 1—2 professional judges and 3—4 lay judges (lautamies) appointed by municipal councils. Administrative courts, appellate courts and supreme courts consist of professional judges only. Like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, Finland has no constitutional court, and courts may not strike down laws or pronounce on their constitutionality. In principle, the constitutionality of laws in Finland is verified by parliament's constitutional law committee and a simple vote in the parliament.

Around 92% of residents are confident in Finland's security institutions. Crime in Finland has some unique features. The overall crime rate of Finland is not high in the EU context. Some crime types are above average, notably the highest homicide rate in Western Europe. Crime is prevalent among lower educational groups and is often committed by intoxicated persons. A day fine system is in effect and also applied to offences such as speeding. Jail sentences tend to be among the world's lowest, with an official emphasis on rehabilitation.

Finland has successfully fought against the corruption which was larger in the 1970s and 1980s. For instance, economic reforms and EU membership introduced stricter requirements for open bidding and many public monopolies were abolished. Today Finland has a very low number of corruption charges; Transparency International ranks Finland as one of the least corrupted countries. Also, Finland's public records are among the world's most transparent.

Finland has strict libel standards, and in one case a blogger was convicted for incitement to hatred when referring to statistics about an ethnic group. The voluntary Internet censorship list, similar to other Nordic countries, is classified "nominal" censorship by the ONI.

According to the latest constitution of 2000, the President (currently Tarja Halonen) leads foreign policy in cooperation with the government (currently Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb), except that the government leads EU affairs.

During the Cold War, Finland conducted its foreign policy in association with the Soviet Union and simultaneously stressed Nordic cooperation (as a member of the Nordic Council). After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Finland freed itself from the last restrictions imposed on it by the Paris peace treaties of 1947 and the Finno-Soviet Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance. Although opposed by socialists and agrarians, the government filed an EU membership application three months after the dissolution of the USSR and became a member in 1995. Finland did not attempt to join NATO, even though other post-Soviet countries in the Baltic sea and elsewhere joined. Nevertheless, defense policymakers have quietly converted to NATO equipment and contributed troops.

President Martti Ahtisaari and the coalition governments led Finland closer to the core EU in the late 1990s. In 2009 Ahtisaari was awarded Nobel Peace Price. Finland was considered a cooperative model state, and Finland did not oppose proposals for a common EU defence policy. This was reversed in the 2000s, when Tarja Halonen and Erkki Tuomioja made Finland's official policy to resist other EU members' plans for common defense. However, Halonen allowed Finland to join European Union Battlegroups in 2006 and the NATO Response Force in 2008.

The Finnish Defence Forces consists of a cadre of professional soldiers (mainly officers and technical personnel), currently serving conscripts and a large reserve. The standard readiness strength is 34,700 people in uniform, of which 25 % are professional soldiers. A universal male conscription is in place, under which all men above 18 years of age serve for 6 to 12 months of armed service or 13 months of civilian (non-armed) service. Alternative non-military service and volunteer service by women (chosen by around 500 annually) are possible. Finland is the only non-NATO EU country bordering Russia. Finland's official policy states that the 350,000 reservists with mostly ground weaponry are a sufficient deterrent. Finland has one of the biggest armies in Europe compared in manpower.

The Finnish Defense Forces favor partnership with Western institutions such as the NATO, WEU and EU, but are careful to avoid politics. Finland's defence budget equals about 2 billion euro or 1.4–1.6 % of the GDP. In international comparisons the defense expenditure is around the third highest in the EU. The voluntary overseas service is highly popular and troops serve around the world in UN, NATO and EU missions. Residents claim around 80 % homeland defense willingness, one of the highest rates in Europe. The Finnish Defence Forces are under the command of the Chief of Defence (currently Ari Puheloinen), who is directly subordinate to the President of the Republic in matters related to the military command. The military branches are the Finnish Army, Finnish Navy and Finnish Air Force. The Border Guard is under the Ministry of the Interior but can be incorporated into the Defence Forces when required by defence readiness.

Finland has a highly industrialized free-market economy with a per capita output equal to that of other western economies such as France, Germany, Sweden or the UK. The largest sector of the economy is services at 65.7 %, followed by manufacturing and refining at 31.4 %. Primary production is at 2.9 %. With respect to foreign trade, the key economic sector is manufacturing. The largest industries are electronics (21.6 %), machinery, vehicles and other engineered metal products (21.1 %), forest industry (13.1 %), and chemicals (10.9 %). Finland has timber and several mineral and freshwater resources. Forestry, paper factories, and the agricultural sector (on which taxpayers spend around 3 billion euro annually) are politically sensitive to rural residents. The Greater Helsinki area generates around a third of GDP. In a 2004 OECD comparison, high-technology manufacturing in Finland ranked second largest after Ireland. Knowledge-intensive services have also ranked the smallest and slow-growth sectors – especially agriculture and low-technology manufacturing – second largest after Ireland. Overall short-term outlook was good and GDP growth has been above many EU peers. Inflation has been low, averaging 1.8 % between 2004 and 2006.

Finland is highly integrated in the global economy, and international trade is a third of GDP. The European Union makes 60 % of the total trade. The largest trade flows are with Germany, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, USA, Netherlands and China. Trade policy is managed by the European Union, where Finland has traditionally been among the free trade supporters, except for agriculture. Finland is the only Nordic country to have joined the Eurozone.

The 40 largest Finland-registered companies by turnover in 2007 or 2006 were (Oy and Oyj abbreviations removed): Nokia, Stora Enso, Neste Oil, UPM-Kymmene, Kesko, SOK, Metsäliitto, Outokumpu, Metso, Tamro, Fortum, Sampo, Kone, Elcoteq, Rautaruukki, Wärtsilä, YIT, Varma, Cargotec, Sanoma, Kemira, Ilmarinen Keskinäinen Eläkevakuutusyhtiö, TeliaSonera Finland, Luvata International (former Outokumpu Copper), Huhtamäki, Finnair, Lemminkäinen, HKScan, Onvest, RTF Auto, Tieto, Ahlstrom, Konecranes, Valio, ABB, Itella, Amer Sports, Teboil, Elisa, and Myllykoski.

Private sector employees amount to 1.8 million, out of which around a third with tertiary education. The average cost of a private sector employee per hour was 25.1 euro in 2004. As of 2008 average purchasing power-adjusted income levels are similar to those of Italy, Sweden, Germany, and France. In 2006, 62 % of the workforce worked for enterprises with less than 250 employees and they accounted for 49 % of total business turnover and had the strongest rate of growth growth. The female employment rate is high. Gender segregation between male-dominated professions and female-dominated professions is higher than in the US. The proportion of part-time workers was one of the lowest in OECD in 1999.

Employment rate 68 % and unemployment rate was 6.8 % in early 2008. 18 % of residents are outside job market at the age of 50 and less than a third working at the age of 61. Unfunded pensions and other promises such as health insurances are a dominate future liability, though Finland is much better prepared than countries such as France or Germany. Directly held public debt has been reduced to around 32 percent of GDP in 2007. In 2007, the average household savings rate was -3.8 and household debt 101 percent of annual disposable income, a typical level in Europe. Home ownership rate is 60 %.

As of 2006, 2.4 million households reside in Finland. The average size is 2.1 persons; 40 % of households consist of a single person, 32 % two persons and 28 % three or more persons. Residential buildings total 1.2 million and the average residential space is 38 m2 per person. The average residential property without land costs 1,187 euro per sq metre and residential land 8.6 euro per sq metre. 74 % of households had a car. There are 2.5 million cars and 0.4 other vehicles. Around 92 % has a mobile phone and 58 % Internet connection at home. The average total household consumption was 20,000 euro, out of which housing at around 5500 euro, transport at around 3000 euro, food and beverages excluding alcoholic at around 2500 euro, recreation and culture at around 2000 euro. Purchasing power-adjusted average household consumption is about the same level as it is in Germany, Sweden and Italy. According to Invest in Finland, private consumption grew by 3 % in 2006 and consumer trends included durables, high quality products, and spending on well-being.

Most pre-tertiary education is arranged at municipal level. Even though many or most schools were started as private schools, today only around 3 % students are enrolled in private schools (mostly Helsinki-based schools such as SYK), many times less than in Sweden and most other developed countries. Pre-school education is rare compared to other EU countries. Formal education is usually started at the age of 7. The primary school takes normally 6 years, the lower secondary school 3 years, and most schools are managed by municipal officials. The flexible curriculum is set by the Ministry of Education and the Education Board. Attendance is compulsory between the ages of 7 and 16. According to PISA assessments of the age group 15, Finnish students had a high average score and a low variation among schools and students. McKinsey has attributed the result distribution to high teacher education (Master's degree), high continuing teacher training, and emphasis on laggards. After lower secondary school, graduates may either enter the workforce directly, or apply to trade schools or gymnasiums (upper secondary schools). Trade schools prepare for professions. Academically oriented gymnasiums have higher entrance requirements and specifically prepare for Abitur and tertiary education. Graduation from either formally qualifies for tertiary education.

In tertiary education, two, mostly separate and non-interoperating sectors are found: the profession-oriented polytechnics and the research-oriented universities. Finns used to take student loans and scholarships, but for the past decades the financial risk has been moved solely to the government. There are 20 universities and 30 polytechnics in the country. The World Economic Forum ranks Finland's tertiary education #1 in the world. Around 33% of residents have a tertiary degree, similar to Nordics and more than in most other OECD countries except Canada (44%), United States (38%) and Japan(37%). The proportion of foreign students is 3% of all tertiary enrolments, one of the lowest in OECD, while in advanced programs it is 7.3%, still below OECD average 16.5%.

More than 30 % of tertiary graduates are in science-related fields. Finnish researchers are leading contributors to such fields as forest improvement, new materials, the environment, neural networks, low-temperature physics, brain research, biotechnology, genetic technology and communications.

Anyone can enter the free and largely privately owned Nordic energy market traded in Nord Pool exchange, which has provided competitive prices compared to other EU countries. As of 2007, Finland has roughly the lowest industrial electricity prices in the EU-15 (equal to France).

In 2006, the energy market was around 90 terawatt hours and the peak demand around 15 gigawatts in winter. This means that the energy consumption per capita is around 7.2 tons of oil equivalent per year. Industry and construction consumed 51% of total consumption, a relatively high figure reflecting Finland's industries. Finland's hydrocarbon resources are limited to peat and wood, while neighboring Norway has oil and Estonia oil shale. Finland has little hydropower capacity compared to Sweden or Norway. Most energy demand is satisfied with fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Finland has four privately owned nuclear reactors producing 18 percent of the country's energy, one research reactor in Otaniemi campus, and the fifth AREVA-Siemens-built reactor – the world's largest at 1600 MWe and a focal point of Europe's nuclear industry – is scheduled to be operational by 2011. Renewable energy forms (industry-burned wood, consumer-burned wood, peat, industrial residue, garbage) make high 25 % compared to the EU average 10 %. A varying amount (5–17 percent) of electricity has been imported from Russia (at around 3 gigawatt power line capacity), Sweden and Norway. A new submarine power cable from Russia has been considered a national security issue and one permit application has already been rejected. Finland negotiated itself expensive Kyoto and EU emission terms. They are causing a sharp increase in energy prices and 1-2 billion euro annual cost, amplified by the aging and soon decommissioned production capacity. Energy companies are already ready to increase nuclear power production, if parliament granted permits for new reactors.

The extensive road system is utilized by most internal cargo and passenger traffic. As of 2005, the country's network of main roads has a total length of 13,258 km and all public roads 78,186 km, of which 50,616 km are paved. The motorway network totals 653 km. The annual road network expenditure of around 1 billion euro is paid with vehicle and fuel taxes which amount to around 1.5 billion euro and 1 billion euro.

The main international passenger gateway is Helsinki-Vantaa Airport with over 13 million passengers in 2007. Tampere-Pirkkala airport is the second largest and around 25 airports have scheduled passenger services. The Helsinki-Vantaa based Finnair, Blue1 and Finncomm Airlines sell air services both domestically and internationally, and there are many others offering direct flights around the world. Helsinki has an optimal location for great circle routes between Western Europe and the Far East. Hence, many international travelers visit Helsinki-Vantaa airport on a stop-over between Asia and Europe. Despite low population density, taxpayers spend annually around 350 million euro in maintaining 5,865 km railway tracks even to many rural towns. Only one rail company operates in Finland, VR Group, which has 5 % passenger market share (out of which 80 % are urban trips in Greater Helsinki) and 25 % cargo market share. Helsinki has an urban rail network.

The majority of international cargo utilizes ports. Port logistics prices are low. Vuosaari harbour in Helsinki is the largest container port after completion in 2008 and others include Hamina, Hanko, Pori, Rauma, Oulu. There is passenger traffic from Helsinki and Turku, which have ferry connections to Tallinn, Mariehamn, Sweden and several other destination. The Helsinki-Tallinn route, one of the busiest passenger sea routes in the world, is also served by a helicopter line.

Finland has developed greatly since 1945, when it was a primarily agricultural nation, and created major firms like the electronics firm DICRO Oy, the 55 year old Media company Evia Oyj and the cell phone firm Nokia. Contrary to popular belief Finland does have some heavy industrial firms like the metal components company Rautaruukki, which supply the Finn's construction industry. Forestry is still an important industry, as is the ever growing tourism and holiday sectors.

Finnish politicians have often emulated other Nordics and the Nordic model. Nordics have been free-trading and relatively welcoming to skilled migrants for over a century, though in Finland immigration is relatively new. The level of protection in commodity trade has been low, except for agricultural products.

Finland's judiciary is efficient and effective. Finland is highly open to investment and free trade. Finland has top levels of economic freedom in many areas, although there is a heavy tax burden and inflexible job market. Finland is ranked 16th (ninth in Europe) in the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. Recently, Finland has topped the patents per capita statistics, and overall productivity growth has been strong in areas such as electronics. While the manufacturing sector is thriving, OECD points out that the service sector would benefit substantially from policy improvements. Finland is one of the most fiscally responsible EU countries.

IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2007 ranked Finland 17th most competitive. The World Economic Forum 2008 index ranked Finland the 6th most competitive. In both indicators, Finland's performance was next to Germany, and significantly higher than most European countries. In the Business competitiveness index 2007-08 Finland ranked third in the world.

Economists attribute much growth to reforms in the product markets. According to OECD, only four EU-15 countries have less regulated product markets (UK, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden) and only one has less regulated financial markets (Denmark). Nordic countries were pioneers in liberalizing energy, postal, and other markets in Europe. The legal system is clear and business bureaucracy less than most countries. Property rights are well protected and contractual agreements are strictly honored. Finland is rated one of the least corrupted countries in Corruption Perceptions Index. Finland is rated 13th in the Ease of Doing Business Index. It indicates exceptional ease to trade across borders (5th), enforce contracts (7th), and close a business (5th), and exceptional hardship to employ workers (127th) and pay taxes (83rd).

Finnish job market regulation is a remaining example of Nordic neocorporatist model. In the 1990s, Denmark liberalized its job market, Sweden moved to more flexible decentralized contracts, and Finnish trade unions blocked most reforms. Finnish law forces all workers to obey the national contracts that are drafted every few years for each profession and seniority level. The agreement becomes universally enforceable provided that more than 50% of the employees support it, in practice by being a member of a relevant trade union. The unionization rate is high (70%), especially in the middle class (AKAVA – 80%). A lack of a national agreement in an industry is considered an exception. More flexibility is generally recommended by economists for various reasons.

Overall taxation has been reduced to nearly 10 percentage points lower level than in Sweden, but it is still nearly 10 percentage points higher than in Germany. The middle income worker receives only 40% of his income after the median tax wedge and effective marginal tax rates are high. Value-added tax is 22 percent for most items. Capital gains tax is 28% and corporate tax is 26 percent, about the EU median. Property taxes are low, but there is a stamp duty of 4% for home sellers. For instance, McKinsey estimates that a worker has to pay around 1600 euro for another worker's 400 euro service when both workers' taxes are counted. Tax cuts have been in every post-depression government's agenda and the overall tax burden is now around 43% of GDP compared to 51.1% in Sweden, 34.7% in Germany, 33.5% in Canada, and 30.5% in Ireland.

Public consumption is 51.7% of GDP compared to 56.6% in Sweden, 46.9% in Germany, 39.3% in Canada, and 33.5% in Ireland. Much of the taxes are spent on public sector employees, many of which are jobs-for-life and amount to 124,000 state employees and 430,000 municipal employees. That is 113 per 1000 residents (over a quarter of workforce) compared to 74 in the US, 70 in Germany, and 42 in Japan (8% of workforce). The Economist Intelligence Unit's ranking for Finland's e-readiness is high at 13th, compared to 1st for United States, 3rd for Sweden, 5th for Denmark, and 14th for Germany. Also, early and generous retirement schemes have contributed to high pension costs. Social spending such as health or education is around OECD median. Social transfers are also around OECD median. In 2001 Finland outsourced more than most Western European countries, although less than Sweden. Municipalities spend a half of taxes.

In Finland, the euro was introduced in 2002. As a preparation for this date, the minting of the new euro coins started as early as 1999; this is why the first euro coins from Finland has the year 1999 on it, instead of 2002 like other countries of the Eurozone. Three different designs (one for €2 coin, one for €1 coin and one for the other six coins) were selected for the Finnish coins. In 2007, in order to adopt the new common map like the rest of the Eurozone countries, Finland changed the common side of their coins.

Finland also has a rich collection of collectors' coins, with face value ranging from 5 to 100 euro. These coins are a legacy of an old national practice of minting silver and gold commemorative coins. Unlike normal issues, these coins are not legal tender in all the eurozone; for instance, a €5 Finnish commemorative coin cannot be used in any other country.

In 2005, Finnish tourism grossed over €6.7 billion with a five percent increase from the previous year. Much of the sudden growth can be attributed to the globalisation and modernisation of the country as well as a rise in positive publicity and awareness. There are many attractions in Finland which attracted over 4 million visitors in 2005. The Finnish landscape is covered with thick pine forests, rolling hills and complemented with a labyrinth of lakes and inlets. Much of Finland is pristine and virgin as it contains 35 national parks from the Southern shores of the Gulf of Finland to the high fells of Lapland. It is also an urbanised region with many cultural events and activities. Commercial cruises between major coastal and port cities in the Baltic region, including Helsinki, Turku, Tallinn, Stockholm and Travemünde, play a significant role in the local tourism industry. Finland is regarded as the home of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, living in the northern Lapland region. Above the Arctic Circle, there is a polar night, a period when the sun doesn't rise for days or weeks, or even months. Lapland, the extreme north of Finland, is so far north that the Aurora Borealis, atmospheric fluorescence, is seen regularly in winter. Outdoor activities range from Nordic skiing, golf, fishing, yachting, lake cruises, hiking, kayaking among many others. At Finland's northernmost point, in the heart of summer, the Sun does not completely set for 73 consecutive days. Wildlife is abundant in Finland. Bird-watching is popular for those fond of flying fauna, however hunting is also popular. Elk, reindeer and hare are all common game in Finland. Olavinlinna in Savonlinna hosts the annual Savonlinna Opera Festival.

Throughout Finland's prehistory and history, cultural contacts and influences have concurrently, or at varying times, come from all directions. As a result of Swedish and Russian rule, cultural influences are still notable. Today, cultural influences from North America are prominent. Into the twenty-first century, many Finns have contacted cultures from distantly abroad, such as with those in Asia and Africa. Beyond tourism, Finnish youth in particular have been increasing their contact with peoples from outside Finland by travelling abroad to both work and study.

One of the most traditional activities characterised by the Finnish culture is cottage life by a lake, often combined with going to sauna, swimming and barbecuing. Many Finns are emotionally connected to the countryside and nature, as urbanisation is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Finnish mentality is often characterised by less small talk and more honest and straight forward types of communication compared to other cultures.

There are still differences between regions, especially minor differences in accents and vocabulary. Minorities, such as the Sami, Finland Swedes, Romani, and Tatar, maintain their own cultural characteristics.

Though Finnish written language could be said to exist since Mikael Agricola translated the New Testament into Finnish in the sixteenth century as a result of the Protestant Reformation, few notable works of literature were written until the nineteenth century, which saw the beginning of a Finnish national Romantic Movement. This prompted Elias Lönnrot to collect Finnish and Karelian folk poetry and arrange and publish them as Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. The era saw a rise of poets and novelists who wrote in Finnish, notably Aleksis Kivi and Eino Leino.

After Finland became independent there was a rise of modernist writers, most famously Mika Waltari. Frans Eemil Sillanpää was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939. The second World War prompted a return to more national interests in comparison to a more international line of thought, characterized by Väinö Linna. Literature in modern Finland is in a healthy state, with detective stories enjoying a particular boom of popularity. Ilkka Remes, a Finnish author of thrillers, is very popular.

Finns have made major contributions to handicrafts and industrial design. Finland's best-known sculptor of the twentieth century was Wäinö Aaltonen, remembered for his monumental busts and sculptures. Finnish architecture is famous around the world. Among the top of the twentieth century Finnish architects to win international recognition are Eliel Saarinen (designer of the widely recognised Helsinki Central railway station and many other public works) and his son Eero Saarinen. Alvar Aalto, who helped bring the functionalist architecture to Finland, is also famous for his work in furniture and glassware.

Much of the music of Finland is influenced by traditional Karelian melodies and lyrics, as comprised in the Kalevala. Karelian culture is perceived as the purest expression of the Finnic myths and beliefs, less influenced by Germanic influence, in contrast to Finland's position between the East and the West. Finnish folk music has undergone a roots revival in recent decades, and has become a part of popular music.

The people of northern Finland, Sweden and Norway, the Sami, are known primarily for highly spiritual songs called Joik. The same word sometimes refers to lavlu or vuelie songs, though this is technically incorrect.

The first Finnish opera was written by the German composer Fredrik Pacius in 1852. Pacius also wrote Maamme/Vårt land (Our Land), Finland's national anthem. In the 1890s Finnish nationalism based on the Kalevala spread, and Jean Sibelius became famous for his vocal symphony Kullervo. He soon received a grant to study runo singers in Karelia and continued his rise as the first prominent Finnish musician. In 1899 he composed Finlandia, which played its important role in Finland gaining independence. He remains one of Finland's most popular national figures and is a symbol of the nation.

Today, Finland has a very lively classical music scene. Finnish classical music has only existed for about a hundred years, and many of the important composers are still alive, such as Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, Aulis Sallinen, Uuno Klami and Einojuhani Rautavaara. The composers are accompanied with a large number of great conductors such as Sakari Oramo, Mikko Franck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Osmo Vänskä, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Susanna Mälkki and Leif Segerstam. Some of the internationally acclaimed Finnish classical musicians are Karita Mattila, Soile Isokoski, Kari Kriikku, Pekka Kuusisto, Réka Szilvay and Linda Brava.

Modern Finnish popular music includes a number of prominent rock bands, jazz musicians, hip hop performers, and dance music acts such as Bomfunk MCs and Darude. Finnish electronic music such as the Sähkö Recordings record label enjoys underground acclaim. Iskelmä (coined directly from the German word Schlager, meaning hit) is a traditional Finnish word for a light popular song. Finnish popular music also includes various kinds of dance music; tango, a style of Argentine music, is also popular. One of the most productive composers of popular music was Toivo Kärki, and the most famous singer Olavi Virta (1915–1972). Among the lyricists, Sauvo Puhtila (born 1928), Reino Helismaa (1913–1965) and Veikko "Vexi" Salmi are the most remarkable authors. The composer and bandleader Jimi Tenor is well known for his brand of retro-funk music.

Notable Finnish dance and electronic music artists include Jori Hulkkonen, Darude, JS16, DJ Proteus and DJ Orkidea.

The Finnish rock-music scene emerged in 1960s with pioneers such as Blues Section and Kirka. In the 1970s Finnish rock musicians, such as Juice Leskinen, started to write their own music instead of translating international hits into Finnish. During the decade some progressive rock groups, such as Tasavallan Presidentti and Wigwam, gained respect abroad but failed to make a commercial breakthrough outside Finland. This was also the fate of the rock and roll group Hurriganes. The Finnish punk scene produced some internationally acknowledged names including Terveet Kädet in 1980s. Hanoi Rocks was a pioneering 1980s glam rock act that left perhaps a deeper mark in the history of popular music than any other Finnish group, giving inspiration for Guns N' Roses. 1980s the first metal bands were constituted including power metal band Stratovarius (1984) inspiring greatly among other things Sonata Arctica, Stone (1985), and Amorphis (1989). In the 90s many successful modern metal bands were founded, such as Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, Children of Bodom, Ensiferum and Impaled Nazarene. Finnish modern metal has been the most sold metal music in Asian countries from 90s to nowadays, and has had a remarkable influence on loads of other modern metal bands all over the world.

In the 2000s, other Finnish rock bands started to sell well internationally. The Rasmus became more known in Europe (and other places, like South America) in the 2000s. Their 2003 album Dead Letters sold 1.5 million units worldwide and garnered them eight gold and five platinum album designations. So far the most successful Finnish band in the United States has been HIM; they were the first band from Finland to ever sell an album that was certified gold by the RIAA. Other notable Finnish rock and metal acts include Apocalyptica and the monster rockers Lordi.

In film industry, notable directors include Aki Kaurismäki, Mauritz Stiller, Spede Pasanen and Hollywood film director and producer Renny Harlin.

Today there are 200 newspapers; 320 popular magazines, 2,100 professional magazines and 67 commercial radio stations, with one nationwide, five national public service radio channels, three digital radio channels. Each year around twelve feature films are made, 12,000 book titles published and 12 million records sold.

SanomaWSOY publishes the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (the circulation of 434,000 making it the largest newspaper), the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, the commerce-oriented Taloussanomat, and the television channel Nelonen. The other major publisher Alma Media publishes over thirty magazines, including newspaper Aamulehti, tabloid Iltalehti and commerce-oriented Kauppalehti. Finns, along with other Nordic people and the Japanese, spend the most time in the world reading newspapers. The National Broadcasting Company YLE has five television channels and 13 radio channels in two national languages. YLE is funded through a mandatory license for television owners and fees for private broadcasters. All TV channels are broadcast digitally, both terrestrially and on cable. The most popular television channel MTV3 and the most popular radio channel Radio Nova are owned by Nordic Broadcasting (Bonnier and Proventus Industrier). International newspapers such as Aftonbladet or Financial Times are available, but according to the sole importer the readership is only around 600,000 copies per year or around 2,000 on average day.

Around 79 percent of the population use the Internet. Finland had around 1.52 million broadband Internet connections by the end of June 2007 or around 287 per 1,000 inhabitants. All Finnish schools and public libraries have Internet connections and computers. Most residents have a mobile phone. It's used mostly for contact and value-added services are rare.

Traditional Finnish cuisine is a combination of European, Fennoscandian and Western Russian elements; table manners are European. The food is generally simple, fresh and healthy. Fish, meat, berries and ground vegetables are typical ingredients whereas spices are not common due to their historical unavailability. In years past, Finnish food often varied from region to region, most notably between the west and east. In coastal and lakeside villages, fish was a main feature of cooking, whereas in the eastern and also northern regions, vegetables and reindeer were more common. The prototypical breakfast is oatmeal or other continental-style foods such as bread. Lunch is usually a full warm meal, served by a canteen at workplaces. Dinner is eaten at around 16.00 to 18.00 at home.

Modern Finnish cuisine combines country fare and haute cuisine with contemporary continental cooking style. Today, spices are a prominent ingredient in many modern Finnish recipes, having been adopted from the east and west in recent decades.

All official holidays in Finland are established by acts of Parliament. The official holidays can be divided into Christian and secular holidays, although some of the Christian holidays have replaced holidays of pagan origin. The main Christian holidays are Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension Day, Pentecost, and All Saints Day. The secular holidays are New Year's Day, May Day, Midsummer Day, and the Independence Day. Christmas is the most extensively celebrated holiday: usually at least 23rd to 26th of December are holidays.

In addition to this, all Sundays are official holidays, but they are not as important as the special holidays. The names of the Sundays follow the liturgical calendar and they can be categorised as Christian holidays. When the standard working week in Finland was reduced to 40 hours by an act of Parliament, it also meant that all Saturdays became a sort of de facto public holidays, though not official ones. Easter Sunday and Pentecost are Sundays that form part of a main holiday and they are preceded by a kind of special Saturdays. Retail stores are prohibited by law from doing business on Sundays, except during the summer months (May through August) and in the pre-Christmas season (November and December). Business locations that have less than 400 square metres of floor space are allowed Sunday business throughout the year, with the exception of official holidays and certain Sundays, such as Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Various sporting events are popular in Finland. Pesäpallo (reminiscent of baseball) is the national sport of Finland, although the most popular sports in Finland in terms of media coverage are Formula One, rallying, ice hockey and football. Finland has won ice-hockey world championship only once in 1995 when the Finland-Sweden final ended 4–1 in their favour. Jari Kurri and Teemu Selänne are the two Finnish-born ice hockey players to have scored 500 goals in their NHL careers. Other prominent NHL players from Finland include Miikka Kiprusoff, the starting goaltender for the Calgary Flames, Mikko Koivu and Niklas Backstrom of the Minnesota Wild and Saku Koivu of the Montreal Canadiens. Kiprusoff and Backstrom are regarded as two of the premier NHL goalies playing today. Football is also popular in Finland, though the national football team has never qualified for a finals tournament of the World Cup or the European Championships. Jari Litmanen and Sami Hyypiä are the most internationally renowned of the Finnish football players.

Relative to its population, Finland has been a top country in the world in automobile racing, measured by international success. Finland has produced three Formula One World Champions – Keke Rosberg (Williams, 1982), Mika Häkkinen (McLaren, 1998 and 1999) and Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari, 2007). Along with Räikkönen, the other Finnish Formula One driver currently active is Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren). Rosberg's son, Nico Rosberg (Williams), is also currently driving, but under his mother's German nationality. Other notable Finnish Grand Prix drivers include Leo Kinnunen, JJ Lehto and Mika Salo. Finland has also produced most of the world's best rally drivers, including the ex-WRC World Champion drivers Marcus Grönholm, Juha Kankkunen, Hannu Mikkola, Tommi Mäkinen, Timo Salonen and Ari Vatanen. The only Finn to have won a road racing World Championship, Jarno Saarinen, was killed in 1973 while racing.

Among winter sports, Finland has been the most successful country in ski jumping, with former ski jumper Matti Nykänen being arguably the best ever in that sport. Most notably, he won five Olympic medals (four gold) and nine World Championships medals (five gold). Among currently active Finnish ski jumpers, Janne Ahonen has been the most successful. Kalle Palander is a well-known alpine skiing winner, who won the World Championship and Crystal Ball (twice, in Kitzbühel). Tanja Poutiainen has won an Olympic silver medal for alpine skiing, as well as multiple FIS World Cup races.

Some of the most outstanding athletes from the past include Hannes Kolehmainen (1890–1966), Paavo Nurmi (1897–1973) and Ville Ritola (1896–1982) who won eighteen gold and seven silver Olympic medals in the 1910s and 1920s.

They are also considered to be the first of a generation of great Finnish middle and long-distance runners (and subsequently, other great Finnish sportsmen) often named the "Flying Finns". Another long-distance runner, Lasse Virén (born 1949), won a total of four gold medals during the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics.

Also, in the past, Riku Kiri, Jouko Ahola and Janne Virtanen have been the greatest strength athletes in the country, participating in the World's Strongest Man competition between 1993 and 2000.

The 1952 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad, were held in 1952 in Helsinki, Finland. Other notable sporting events held in Finland include the 1983 and 2005 World Championships in Athletics, among others.

Some of the most popular recreational sports and activities include floorball, Nordic walking, running, cycling and skiing.

1 Has part of its territory outside Europe.  2 Entirely in West Asia but having socio-political connections with Europe.  3 Has dependencies or similar territories outside Europe. 4 Name disputed by Greece; see Macedonia naming dispute. 5 Declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008 and is recognised by 58 United Nations member states.

1 Provisionally referred to by the Council of Europe as the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"; see Macedonia naming dispute.

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Jere Lehtinen

Jere Kalervo Lehtinen (born June 24, 1973 in Espoo, Finland) is a Finnish professional ice hockey forward currently playing for the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League (NHL). He plays as a right wing. He was drafted 88th overall in the 1992 NHL Entry Draft by the Minnesota North Stars. Lehtinen handles defensive aspects of the game as well as offensive, hence he is a two-way forward for which he has won the Frank J. Selke Trophy three times as the league's best defensive forward.

Lehtinen started his career with his hometown team, Kiekko-Espoo. The team was jammed in first division in 1991 but they managed to win the division and gained a spot in the Finnish SM-liiga, from there Lehtinen started his professional career. He spent another year with Kiekko-Espoo but the team was struggling and after one season, Lehtinen received an offer from one of the biggest clubs at that time, TPS. He signed with TPS in the summer of 1993 and once the season started, he soon found his scoring abilities. Lehtinen was immediately paired with another future NHLer Saku Koivu and the two were a big part of TPS's great season. Although they won the regular season title by a huge margin, they lost to Jokerit in the finals.

The following season, TPS and Lehtinen went all the way again, this time beating Jokerit in the final series 3–2. After the SM-liiga season was over, Lehtinen received an invite to the 1995 World Championships. Team Finland went all the way to the final game and swept Sweden 4–1, winning Finland's only IIHF World Championship gold medal to date. He was part of the renowned first line of Finland dubbed by Finnish fans the "Ankkalinnan pojat" ("The boys of Duckburg", a reference to their nicknames "Tupu, Hupu, Lupu"; "Huey, Dewey, Louie") with Saku Koivu and Ville Peltonen, another future NHLer. The three also made up the tournament's all-star line.

After the big year in 1995, winning SM-Liiga and World Championship gold medals, Lehtinen went over the sea to play in the NHL. He saw only one game in the minors and was part of the Dallas Stars organisation instantly. Lehtinen worked his way up in three years to join Mike Modano in the first line and was nominated for the Frank J. Selke Trophy for the first time in 1996–97 season. During 1997–98 season he was voted to the 1998 NHL All-Star Game. It was the first year the NHL introduced a new system, in which European players play against North-American players. Lehtinen's fellow countrymen Saku Koivu, Teemu Selänne and Jari Kurri were also voted to the game and the four saw a few shifts with each other rotating. The same year Lehtinen was again a nominee for the Selke Trophy as the best defensive forward and eventually won the prestigious award. He was also part of the bronze-winning Team Finland in Nagano Olympic games in 1998.

In 1999 the Stars managed to go all the way to the Stanley Cup finals and beat Buffalo Sabres in six games winning the Stanley Cup, Lehtinen scored the first goal in Game 6 and assisted on Brett Hull's cup-winning goal in over-time. Lehtinen set new career high stats and captured the Selke Trophy, being only the third player to win the award in consecutive seasons.

Season 1999–00 was a tough break for Lehtinen. He was able to play in only 17 regular season games due to problems with his ankle. He fractured it early in the season and had to be sidelined for 30 games. After he had sustained the injury he returned to the lineup but was again sidelined just after playing 8 games, this time for 35 games. He then returned to help his team in the playoffs. The Stars went again to the Stanley Cup finals but were unable to overcome the New Jersey Devils.

After having a troubled last season, Lehtinen bounced back to his old form in 2000–01 season, and put up another good season stats-wise. The Stars, however, didn't go as deep as they had gone the last couple of years.

In 2001–02, Lehtinen had a stellar season. Although the Stars failed to qualify for the playoffs, Lehtinen managed to score 25 goals, tallied 24 assists and finished first on the team in plus/minus with +27. He was again voted to the NHL All-Star game but was unable to play due to injury. He ranked 7th in Lady Byng Memorial Trophy voting and was again nominated for the Selke Trophy. He came in short and Michael Peca was honored with the award for second time in his career.

After having a great season in 2001–02, Lehtinen continued where he left off in 2002–03 season. He was the leading Stars player in goals, setting a new career high 31 goals in a season, led the team in plus/minus (+39) and was also ranked fourth in the league. Recorded his second career hat-trick against Los Angeles Kings in that season too. To top it off, Lehtinen became only the third player to win the Selke Trophy three times, tying Guy Carbonneau for three and one behind Bob Gainey who has won it four times.

2003–04 season was a disappointment to Lehtinen as he only played in 58 games and scored 26 points. During the season he had problems with his knee. The Stars were knocked out by the Colorado Avalanche in the first playoff round.

Before the NHL lockout for 2004–05 season, the World Cup of Hockey was played. Lehtinen was once again representing Finland and the finns met Team Canada in the final. The Canadians took the gold with a 3–2 win over Finland.

Lehtinen underwent a surgery to get his knee fixed and rehabilitated it during the lockout season. It showed in his game in 2005–06 season as he tied for his career high points, 52, and set a new career high in goals, 33. Dallas won the Pacific division title, making it the 7th in last 10 seasons. However, they were once again eliminated in the first playoff round, by the Colorado Avalanche. Lehtinen was again a nominee for the Selke Trophy but finished third in voting.

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin took place in the middle of the 2005–06 NHL season. Lehtinen was again a vital part of Team Finland's journey to the gold medal game. Like in previous international tournaments, Lehtinen was placed in a line with Saku Koivu and Teemu Selänne. However, Finland lost the final bitterly 3–2 to their nemesis, Team Sweden. Koivu and Selänne were the tournament's joint top scorer and Lehtinen tied for 7th.

In the 2006–07 season, Lehtinen scored 26 goals and led the team in goals for second consecutive season. The Stars failed to progress from the first round for the third season in a row. Despite the series stretched to seven games, Lehtinen failed to contribute a single point in playoffs for his team.

Lehtinen started out the 2007–08 season very efficiently by posting 6–13–19 stats in 21 games before suffering a sports hernia. He returned on February 1st 2008 in a game against the Edmonton Oilers, ceasing his 33-game absence. He recorded an assist to Jussi Jokinen's goal in that game.

To date, Lehtinen is the only Finnish player to have won both a World Championships gold medal and a Stanley Cup.

Lehtinen met his wife, Jaana, at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. The two were married in June, 1998 and since the ceremony was only a few days after the NHL Awards, Jere wasn't present to accept the first Selke Trophy of his career. They have twin girls, Anna and Sofia, and one son, Joel.

Jere is a huge Slayer fan and has attended five of their concerts: two in USA, three in Finland.

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Carolina Hurricanes

The Carolina Hurricanes are a professional ice hockey team based in Raleigh, North Carolina. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL), and play home games at the 18,680 capacity RBC Center.

The team was formed in 1971 as the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association, and moved into the NHL in 1979 as the Hartford Whalers, relocating to North Carolina in 1997. They won their first Stanley Cup during the 2005–06 season, beating the Edmonton Oilers four games to three.

The New England Whalers were born in November 1971 when the World Hockey Association awarded a franchise to begin play in Boston, Massachusetts. For the first two-and-a-half years of their existence, the club played their home games at the Boston Arena, Boston Garden, and The Big E Coliseum in West Springfield. However, sagging attendance forced the team to Hartford, Connecticut. On January 11, 1975, the team played its first game in front of a sellout crowd at the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum. With the exception of a period in the late 1970s when the Whalers played at the Springfield Civic Center while their Hartford home was being renovated (due to a portion of the roof collapsing after a blizzard), the franchise was largely located in Hartford.

As one of the most stable WHA teams, the Whalers, along with the Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets, were admitted to the NHL when the rival leagues merged in 1979. Because the NHL already had a team in the New England area, the Boston Bruins, the former WHA team was renamed the Hartford Whalers. Unfortunately, the team was never as successful in the NHL as they had been in the WHA, recording only three winning seasons. They peaked with their only playoff series victory in 1986 over the Quebec Nordiques and extended the Montreal Canadiens to overtime of the seventh game in the second round, followed by a regular season division title in 1986–87. 1992 was the last time the Hartford Whalers made the playoffs.

The Whalers found it increasingly difficult to compete in a changed financial environment during the 1990s, in part because Hartford was the smallest U.S.-based market in the league. In March 1997, Whalers owner Peter Karmanos announced that the team would move elsewhere after the 1996–97 season because of the team's inability to negotiate a satisfactory construction and lease package for a new arena in Hartford. In July, Karmanos announced that the Whalers would move to the Research Triangle area of North Carolina and the new Entertainment and Sports Arena in Raleigh, become the Carolina Hurricanes, and change their team colors to red and black. Due to the relatively short time frame for the move, Karmanos himself thought of and decided upon the new name for the club, rather than holding a contest as is sometimes done.

For 1998–99 the Hurricanes curtained off most of the upper deck, lowering the Coliseum's stated capacity to about 12,000, but attendance continued to lag. On the ice, however, the 'Canes were now out of the doldrums; led by the return of longtime Whalers captain Ron Francis, Keith Primeau's 30 goals, and Gary Roberts' 178 penalty minutes, they won the new Southeast Division by eight points and made the playoffs for the first time since 1992. Tragedy struck hours after their first-round loss to the Bruins when defenceman Steve Chiasson was thrown from his pickup truck and killed in a single-vehicle drunk-driving accident.

Despite their move to the brand-new ESA, the Hurricanes played lackluster hockey in 1999–2000, failing to make the playoffs. In 2000–01, though, they claimed the eighth seed, which nosed out Boston, and landed a first-round date with the defending champs, the New Jersey Devils. Although the Hurricanes were bounced by the Devils in six games, the series is seen as the real "arrival" of hockey in the Triangle. Down 3–0 in the series, the 'Canes extended it to a sixth game, thereby becoming only the tenth team in NHL history to do so. Game 6 in Raleigh featured their best playoff crowd that year, as well as their noisiest. Despite the 5–1 loss, Carolina was given a standing ovation by their home crowd as the game ended, erasing many of the doubts that the city would not warm up to the team.

The 'Canes made national waves for the first time in the 2002 playoffs. They survived a late charge from the Washington Capitals to win the division, but expectations were low entering the first round against the defending Eastern Conference champion Devils. However, Arturs Irbe and Kevin Weekes were solid in goal, and the Hurricanes won two games in overtime as they put away the Devils in six games. The second-round matchup was against the Montreal Canadiens, who were riding a wave of emotion after their captain Saku Koivu's return from cancer treatment. In the third period of Game 4 in Montreal, down 2–1 in games and 3–0 in score, Carolina would tie the game and then win on Niclas Wallin's overtime goal. The game became known to Hurricanes fans as the "Miracle at Molson"; Carolina won the next two games by a combined 13–3 margin over a dejected Habs club to take the series.

In the Eastern Conference finals, Carolina met the heavily-favored Toronto Maple Leafs. In Game 6 in Toronto, the Leafs' Mats Sundin tied the game with 22 seconds remaining to send it to overtime, where Carolina's Martin Gelinas would score to send the franchise to their first Stanley Cup finals. During this series, several Hurricanes fan traditions drew hockey-wide media attention for the first time: fans met the team at the airport on the return from every road trip, and echoed football-season habits honed for games across the parking lot by hosting massive tailgate parties before each home game, a relative novelty in the cold-weather-centric NHL. Inside the building, CBC's Don Cherry lauded the RBC Center as "the loudest building in the NHL", praise that would be echoed in 2006.

In the Stanley Cup finals, Carolina would face the Detroit Red Wings, thought to be the prohibitive favorite all year. Though the Canes stunned the Wings in Game 1, when Francis scored in the first minute of overtime, Detroit stormed back to win the next four games. Game 3 in Raleigh featured a triple-overtime thriller (won by Detroit's Igor Larionov, the eldest player to score a last-round goal), which sportscasters called one of the best finals games in history. Despite the 4–1 series loss, it had been by far the most successful season in franchise history.

The momentum from the Cup Finals appearance did not last, however, and the next two seasons saw the 'Canes drop into the cellar of the NHL rankings; many of the new fans attracted to the team (and to hockey itself) during the 2002 playoff run lost interest and attendance declined. One of the few positive results of these losing years was the team's drafting of future star Eric Staal in 2003. In December 2003, the team fired Paul Maurice, who had been their coach since their next-to-last season in Hartford, replacing him with former New York Islanders bench boss Peter Laviolette. Weekes remained tough, but the offense was suspect; center Josef Vasicek led the team with a mere 19 goals and 26 assists for 45 points.

The outcome of the 2004–05 NHL lockout led to the shrinking of the payroll to $26 million. The 'Canes, however, turned out to be one of the NHL's biggest surprises, turning in the best season in the franchise's 34-year history. They finished the regular season with a 52–22–8 record and 112 points, shattering the previous franchise records of 94 points (in the WHA) set by the 1972-73 Whalers and 93 points (in the NHL) set in 1986–87. It was the first time ever that the franchise had passed the 50-win and 100-point plateaus. The 112-point figure was good for second in the East (one point behind the Ottawa Senators) and fourth overall in the league (tied with third-overall Dallas on points, but with one fewer win than the Stars). The Hurricanes also ran away with their third Southeast Division title, finishing 20 points ahead of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Attendance increased from 2003–04, averaging just under 15,600 per game, and the team made a profit for the first time since the move from Hartford.

In the playoffs, after losing the first two games of the conference quarterfinal series against the Montreal Canadiens, Laviolette lifted goalkeeper Martin Gerber in favor of rookie Cam Ward. The Hurricanes went on to win both games in Montreal, tying up the playoff series and turning the momentum around, winning the series on a Game Six overtime goal by Cory Stillman. Carolina faced the New Jersey Devils in the conference semifinals, which proved surprisingly one-sided, as the Hurricanes beat the Devils in five games. Stillman struck again, once again scoring the series-winning goal.

In the Eastern Conference finals, the Hurricanes faced the Buffalo Sabres, who had finished just one spot behind the Canes in the overall standings. The Sabres were devastated by injuries, at one point playing without their top four defensemen. The contentious series saw both coaches — Lindy Ruff and Laviolette — taking public verbal shots at each other's team, but in the deciding Game Seven, the Hurricanes rallied with three goals in the third to win by a score of 4–2. Rod Brind'Amour scored the game winner as the Hurricanes reached the Stanley Cup finals for the second time in team history.

The Cup finals were against the Edmonton Oilers, the first time in NHL history that two former WHA franchises had played against one another in the finals. The Canes rallied from a 3–0 deficit in Game 1 to win 5–4 after Rod Brind'Amour scored with 30 seconds left. In Game 2, the 'Canes shelled the Oilers 5–0 to take a two-game lead.

The Oilers won Game 3 in Edmonton, 2–1, as Ryan Smyth scored the game-winning goal with 2:47 left to play. Carolina rebounded in Game 4 with a 2–1 victory, and came home with a chance to win the Cup on home ice. However, game five saw the Oilers come back with a stunning 4–3 overtime win on a shorthanded breakaway by Fernando Pisani. Suddenly the momentum started to turn the Oilers' way. In Game 6 in Edmonton, Carolina was soundly defeated 4–0; the only bright point for the Hurricanes was the return of forward Erik Cole from a broken neck that had sidelined him since March.

In Game 7, before the second-largest home crowd in franchise history (18,978), the Hurricanes won 3-1, sealing the Hurricanes' first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history. Ward was honored with the Conn Smythe Trophy for the playoffs' most valuable player, becoming just the fourth rookie to be honored with the award. Several Canes raised the Cup for the first time in long NHL careers; Rod Brind'Amour and Bret Hedican had both played over 15 years without winning the Cup, while Glen Wesley — the last remaining Hartford Whaler on the Hurricanes' roster — had waited 18 seasons.

The Hurricanes' Stanley Cup championship marked the first professional major league sports title for a team from the Carolinas. As well, they were the only NHL team in history to lose nine or more games in a year's playoffs, yet still win the Stanley Cup.

The Hurricanes were not able to follow up their success. In 2006-07, the Hurricanes finished third in the Southeast and eleventh overall in the Eastern Conference. This finish made them the first champions since the 1938–39 Chicago Blackhawks to have failed to qualify for the playoffs both the seasons before and after their championship season. In 2007-08, Carolina again missed out as Washington stormed back to take the division title on the last day of the season, leaving the Hurricanes second in the division and ninth overall in the conference, and making the Canes only the second club in NHL history to miss the playoffs for two seasons running after a Cup triumph.

After a slow start to the 2008-09 season, Cup-winning coach Peter Laviolette was fired in early December and replaced by his own predecessor, Paul Maurice. Teetering on the edge of the playoff picture again, the club reacquired winger Erik Cole from Edmonton at the March trade deadline and proceeded on a 12-3-2 run to close out the season. The stretch run included nine straight wins, matching a franchise record from the 2005-06 season, and capped off a streak of 12 straight home wins, which set a new franchise mark. The team finished sixth in the Eastern Conference with 97 points, earning a first-round matchup with the New Jersey Devils.

The last player remaining from the Hartford days, defenseman Glen Wesley, announced his retirement after the 2007-08 season. The organization retains many Whaler connections among its off-ice personnel; in addition to executive management and the coaching staff, of whom only goaltenders coach Tom Barrasso was never involved with the franchise in Hartford, broadcasters Chuck Kaiton, John Forslund and Tripp Tracy (at the time a minor-league player), and equipment managers Wally Tatomir, Skip Cunningham and Bob Gorman all made the move to North Carolina with the team. Finally, the old goal horn from the Hartford Civic Center remains in use at RBC Center.

Records as of August 2008.

Updated March 4, 2009.

Note: This list of team captains does not include captains from the Hartford Whalers (NHL) and New England Whalers (WHA).

Retired numbers: The Hurricanes have officially retired two numbers since their move to Carolina, the 10 of center Ron Francis in 2006 and the 2 of Glen Wesley in 2009. The Hurricanes keep three numbers out of circulation without banners: defenseman Steve Chiasson's 3 was unofficially retired following his 1999 death while a member of the team, and the team honors the leaguewide retirement of Wayne Gretzky's 99, as well as the Hartford retirement of 9 for Gordie Howe. The franchise had retired two additional numbers in Hartford, but after the move, the Hurricanes resumed issuing the jerseys 2 of Rick Ley (D, 1972–81) (which was issued only to Wesley before its re-retirement) and 19 of John McKenzie (RW, 1977–79).

Hall of Famers: Ron Francis, who captained the team in both Hartford and Carolina and spent fifteen years with the franchise overall as a player before joining its staff in 2006, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2007. The only other Hall member to have played in a Hurricanes jersey is Paul Coffey, who spent one and a half seasons in Carolina near the end of his career (as well as, two seasons prior, twenty games in Hartford). In the franchise's history, WHA and NHL Whalers Gordie Howe and Dave Keon are both members, as is Bobby Hull, although he only played nine games in Hartford. In addition, longtime franchise radio play-by-play announcer Chuck Kaiton received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award in 2004, an honor granted by the Hall of Fame.

Note: This list does not include selections of the Hartford Whalers.

These are the top-ten point-scorers in franchise (Hartford & Carolina) history. Figures are updated after each completed NHL regular season.

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Turku

Turku (Swedish: Åbo) (pronounced (help·info), (help·info)) is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of Aura river. It is located in the region of Finland Proper in the Province of Western Finland. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland. Turku was for a long time the most important population center in Finland: it was the first capital city of Finland from 1809 to 1812 and continued to be the largest city by population in Finland until the end of 1840s. Nowadays its significance nationwide is not the same as it used to be, but Turku is still a regional capital and important location for business and culture.

Because of its long history it has been the site of many important historical events and has extensively influenced Finnish history. During the year 2011 Turku has been designated to be the European Capital of Culture together with Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. In 1996 it was declared the official Christmas City of Finland.

Due to its location, Turku is a notable commercial and passenger seaport city with over three million passengers travelling through Port of Turku each year to Stockholm and Mariehamn.

As of February 28, 2009 Turku’s population was 175,689, which makes it the fifth largest city in Finland by population. As of 31 August 2008 there were 303,492 inhabitants living in the Turku sub-region, which makes it the third largest urban area in Finland after the Greater Helsinki area and Tampere sub-region. The city is officially bilingual as 5.2 percent of its population identify as speaking Swedish as a mother-tongue.

Turku has a long history as Finland's largest city and occasionally as the administrative focus of the country, but has, over the last two centuries, given up both titles to Helsinki. To this day, the city's identity stems from its status as the oldest city in Finland and the country's first capital. Originally, the word "Finland" referred only to the area around Turku (hence the title, "Finland Proper" for the region).

Although archaeological findings in the area date back to the Stone Age, the town of Turku was founded no earlier than the late 13th century. Its name originated from an Old East Slavic word, tǔrgǔ, meaning "market place". The Cathedral of Turku was consecrated in 1300, and together with Turku Castle and the Dominican monastery (founded in 1249), established the city as the most important location in medieval Finland.

During the Middle Ages, Turku was the seat of the Bishop of Turku (a title later upgraded to Archbishop of Turku), covering the then eastern Sweden (most of the present-day Finland) until the 17th century. Even if Turku had no official capital status, both the short-lived institutions of Dukes and Governors-General of Finland usually had their Finnish residences there. In 1640, the first university in Finland, The Royal Academy of Turku, was founded in Turku. Turku was also the meeting place for the States of Finland in 1676.

After the Finnish War, which ended when Sweden ceded Finland to Imperial Russia at the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809, Turku became briefly the official capital, but soon lost the status to Helsinki, as Emperor Alexander I felt that Turku was too far from Russia and too aligned with Sweden to serve as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The change officially took place in 1812. The government offices that remained in Turku were finally moved to the new capital after the Great Fire of Turku, which almost completely destroyed the city in 1827. After the fire, a new and safer city plan was drawn up by German architect Carl Ludvig Engel, who had also designed the new capital, Helsinki. Turku remained the largest city in Finland for another twenty years.

In 1918, a new university, the Åbo Akademi – the only Swedish language university in Finland – was founded in Turku. Two years later, the Finnish language University of Turku was founded alongside it. These two universities are the second and third to be founded in Finland, both by privat donations.

In the 20th century Turku was called "Finland's gateway to the West" by historians such as Jarmo Virmavirta. The city enjoyed good connections with other Western European countries and cities, especially since the 1940s with Stockholm across the Gulf of Bothnia. In the 1960s, Turku became the first Western city to sign a twinning agreement with Leningrad in the Soviet Union, leading to greater inter-cultural exchange and providing a new meaning to the city's 'gateway' function. After the fall of Communism in Russia, many prominent Soviets came to Turku to study Western business practices, among them Vladimir Putin, then Leningrad's deputy mayor.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Turku displayed unprecedented rates of growth, resulting in the construction of many new densely-inhabited suburbs such as Varissuo and Runosmäki, and the annexation of many neighbouring municipalities (e.g., Maaria and Paattinen). Many old quarters were completely destroyed in the process, replacing them with more efficient and faster-built concrete buildings. The city's growth has led to problems with unemployment in the new populous suburbs on the one hand, and with the provision of public services (such as education) in more remote parts on the other.

Located at the mouth of the Aura river in the southwestern corner of Finland, Turku covers an area of 245 km² (94 sq mi) of land, spread over both banks of the river. The eastern side, where the Cathedral of Turku is located, is popularly referred to as täl pual jokke ("this side of the river"), while the western side is referred to as tois pual jokke ("the other side of the river"). The city centre is located close to the river mouth, on both sides of the river, though development has recently been expanding westward.

There are nine bridges over the Aura river in Turku. The first bridge in the city area, known as Pennisilta, was built in 1414, and has since been demolished. The oldest of the current bridges is Auransilta, which was constructed in 1904. The newest bridge is Teatterisilta ('theatre bridge'), a pedestrian-only bridge built in 1997. One of the best-known landmarks of Turku is the Föri, a small ferry that transports pedestrians and bicycles across the river without payment.

With a population of approximately 300,000, the Turku Region (LAU 1) is the third largest urban region in Finland, after Greater Helsinki and the area around Tampere. The region includes, in addition to the city itself the following municipalities: Askainen, Kaarina, Lemu, Lieto, Masku, Merimasku, Mynämäki, Naantali, Nousiainen, Paimio, Piikkiö, Raisio, Rusko, Rymättylä, Sauvo, Vahto, and Velkua.

A more exclusive definition for the urban area is the city region of Turku with a population around 235,000 consisting of four major municipalities Kaarina, Raisio, Naantali and Turku.

The city is divided into 78 districts and nine wards that do not function as local government units. There are, however, some projects that are based on the district divisions, particularly in the eastern part of the city, where unemployment is rife in certain areas. The largest populated districts are Varissuo and Runosmäki. By area, however, Kakskerta and Paattinen, formed from former municipalities that were annexed to the city proper in the mid-20th century, constitute the largest districts.

As many of the small neighbouring municipalities from the north and south of the city were annexed during the mid-20th century, Turku is today shaped like an elongated pear. The city centre and most of the suburban areas lie in the middle, separated from the less densely populated northern rural areas by the Turku bypass, that forms part of European route E18. Islands such as Ruissalo, Hirvensalo and Kakskerta, forming the southern part of the city, are also sparsely populated and mostly contain summer residences, with the exception of some districts in Hirvensalo which are currently growing into upper-middle-class suburbs.

Situated by the Baltic Sea and sheltered by the islands of the Archipelago Sea, Turku has a hemiboreal climate. Like much of southern Finland, the city experiences warm summers, with temperatures ranging up to 30 °C (86 °F), and relatively cold winters with frequent snowfall. The warmest month of the year is July, with an average temperature of 17 °C (62 °F), whereas the coldest month is February. The average year-round temperature is 5 °C (41 °F). Winter usually starts in early December, and spring in late March.

Precipitation in Turku averages 698 mm (27 inches) a year. The rainiest month of the year is August, when the city receives on average 79 mm (3.1 inches) of rainfall. In May, the driest month of the year, the figure is only 35 mm (1.4 inches). The average air pressure at sea level is 1012 millibars, with little variance throughout the year.

Operational since 1955, the city's weather station is located at an altitude of 47 metres (154 feet) at Turku Airport.

Being both a regional and provincial capital, Turku is an important administrative centre, hosting the seat of the Archbishop of Finland and a Court of Appeal. Mikko Pukkinen, the former city manager of Seinäjoki, has been the city manager of Turku since 2006.

The city council and city board have long been dominated by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), with approximately equal representation. Currently, the council has 67 members, with 20 from Kokoomus and 15 from SDP. The other major parties in the council are the Green League (11 seats) and the Left Alliance (10 seats). The current chair of the city board is Aleksi Randell from Kokoomus.

For a city of its size, Turku has a moderate public transportation network of bus routes. The bus network is managed and supervised by the City of Turku Public Transport Office, and is operated mainly by private companies. Regional buses are operated by private companies, most importantly TLO, with very frequent services especially to the neighbouring cities of Naantali, Raisio, and Kaarina.

Rail traffic to and from Turku is handled by the Finnish national carrier, VR. As with most other Finnish cities, railways were an important method of transportation in the first half of the 20th century, but have since seen a sharp fall in popularity. As a result, the number of services has fallen and only the railways towards Tampere and Helsinki are now in use. The railway stations currently used for passenger traffic are the Turku Central railway station in Pohjola, and two smaller stations in Kupittaa and the Port of Turku.

There is no local rail traffic at the moment, as the city's popular tram services were discontinued in 1972, and the various local railway lines to neighbouring towns and municipalities were all abolished during the late 20th century. However, there are plans for a light rail system in the Turku region in the near future. This system would more ably serve major suburbs of the city such as Varissuo and Runosmäki, as well as the neighbouring cities.

The Turku Bus Station and the Turku Central Railway Station are currently located in different places. The City of Turku is planning to combine these two in a new greater station complex in the near future. This new travel center will consist of a hotel and several shopping estates. This center will connect all public transportation from commuter trains to long distance buses.

Turku Airport is located eight kilometres to the north of the city centre, partly in the neighbouring municipality of Rusko.

There are also daily ferry services from the Port of Turku to Sweden and Åland, operated by Silja Line, Viking Line and SeaWind Line. These are something of a Finnish cultural tradition (see ruotsinlaiva), and people often travel long distances across Finland to Turku just to take a cruise across the Gulf of Bothnia.

The archipelago sea boat traffic is handled by S/S Ukkopekka. Old steamship cruise Turku-Naantali-Turku.

Turku is the only city in Finland to have three long-distance railway stations: Turku Central, Port of Turku, and Kupittaa. Even Helsinki has only two: Helsinki Central and Pasila.

At the end of 2004 the Turku region (including the economic districts of Turku and Åboland) had a population of 319,632, out of which 174,824 people lived in the city of Turku. The city's population density is 718 inhabitants per square kilometre.

89.4 % of Turku's population speak Finnish as their native language, while 5.2 % speak Swedish. The next most widely spoken languages are Russian (1.3 %), Arabic (0.6 %), Albanian (0.5 %), and Kurdish (0.4 %). 95.8 % of the population are Finnish citizens, and the most sizeable minorities are from Russia, Estonia, Iraq, and Iran. Like all other Finnish cities, Turku does not collect information about the ethnic and religious makeup of its population.

Famous people from the city of Turku include Paavo Nurmi, Mauno Koivisto, Saku Koivu and the 18th century botanist, Herman Spöring. The Turku region has also brought forth many prominent personalities, including the marshal, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim.

Turku is the birthplace to a number of prominent National Hockey League (USA and Canada) players including Saku Koivu, Mikko Koivu, Miikka Kiprusoff, Sami Salo, Aki-Petteri Berg, Petteri Nummelin and Antero Niittymäki.

Turku is the central economic hub of southwestern Finland, and the capital of the Turku economic district.

Business district in The city's economy is centred around the Port of Turku and other service-oriented industries. The city is also a renowned high-tech centre – the Turku Science Park area in Kupittaa hosts over 300 companies from the fields of biotechnology and information technology, as well as several institutions of higher learning that work in closely with the business sector. This cooperative element is seen as a particularly important factor with regards to the city's expected future economic development, as outlined in the Turku Strategy that is published annually by the city council. Turku, with its good transportation network and close proximity to the Archipelago Sea, is also an important centre for tourism, frequently hosting various conventions and exhibitions.

As of 2007, the city's unemployment rate is 9.4 %. The problem of unemployment is however troublesome in the districts of Pansio, Lauste, and Varissuo, where it hovers at around 16 %.

The city collects an 18 per cent income tax (council tax) from its inhabitants, in addition to the progressively graduated taxation practised by the Finnish state. The total amount received through council tax in 2004 was projected at €400 million, a reduction of 1.0 per cent from the previous year. Taxes collected from corporations amounted to €39 million in 2004.

Turku has a longer educational history than any other Finnish city – the first school in the city, the Cathedral School, was founded along with the Cathedral of Turku in the late 13th century. The first university in Finland, the "The Royal Academy of Turku" (now University of Helsinki), was established in the city in 1640. In 1820, the first school in Finland conforming to the Bell-Lancaster method was founded in Turku with the aim of making primary education more inclusive to the lower classes.

Turku is home to about 35,000 higher education students. The University of Turku is the second largest university in Finland (18,000 students), as measured by student enrollment, and one of the oldest as well, having been founded in 1920. Turku is also home to several other establishments of higher education, namely Åbo Akademi, Finland's only Swedish-language university, Turun kauppakorkeakoulu (Turku School of Economics), and Turun ammattikorkeakoulu (Turku University of Applied Sciences) which is second largest polytechnic in Finland after Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

The central hospital of Turku, Turku University Hospital, is affiliated with the University and it is used as a teaching hospital.

Turku is one of only two cities in Finland to have an established international school (the other city being Helsinki). Turku International School, located in the eastern district of Varissuo, has been operating since 2003. By an agreement signed between the city of Turku and the University of Turku, Turun normaalikoulu takes care of the teaching in the international school.

The most widely read newspaper of Turku, and the area around it, is the daily regional morning newspaper Turun Sanomat, with a readership of over 70 % of the population every day. The free-of-charge Turkulainen newspaper is also among the most popular newspapers, together with the local edition of Metro International and the national evening tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. There are also a number of local newspapers such as Kulmakunta (for the eastern suburbs of Turku, including Varissuo and Lauste), and Rannikkoseutu (for the area around the neighbouring cities of Raisio and Naantali). Åbo Underrättelser, a Swedish language newspaper published in Turku, is the oldest newspaper in Finland, having been published since 1824.

The newspaper, Turun Sanomat, also operates a regional television station, called Turku TV. The Finnish national broadcaster, Yleisradio, screens local news, daily from Monday to Friday, for the Southwest Finland (including the regions of Finland Proper and Satakunta) residents. All Finnish national TV channels are viewable in the Turku area. In addition, a number of local radio stations, eg Auran Aallot and Radio Sata are operational.

Cultural venues in Turku include several theatres, cinemas, and art galleries, and a city philharmonic orchestra. The city's cultural centre organises a number of regular events, most notably the Medieval Market in July each year. Turku is also the official Christmas city of Finland, and 'Christmas Peace' in Finland is declared on every 24 December at the Cathedral of Turku. The Turku Music Festival and the rock festival Ruisrock (held on the island of Ruissalo) are among the oldest of its kind in Scandinavia. The city also hosts another rock festival, Down by the Laituri, and one of the largest electronic music festivals in Northern Europe, UMF (Uuden Musiikin Festivaali, "New Music Festival"), in addition to a vibrant nightlife, centred around the Market Square.

There are also numerous museums, such as the Turku Art Museum and the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art. The Åbo Akademi University maintains the Sibelius museum, which is the only museum in Finland specialising in the field of music. Apart from these, there are also several historical museums that display the city's medieval period, such as the Turku Castle, which has been a functional historical museum since 1881, and the Aboa Vetus museum, built in the late 1990s over the 14th century archaeological site. The Luostarinmäki handicrafts museum, converted from residential buildings that survived the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, was the first Scandinavian venue to receive the "Golden Apple" tourism award.

Turku is a candidate city for European Capital of Culture in 2011, and the city council has approved numerous projects to boost the city's image in preparation for that status.

The Declaration of Christmas Peace has been a tradition in Finland from the Middle Ages every year, except in 1939 due to the Winter War. The declaration takes place on the Old Great Square of Turku, Finland's official 'Christmas City', at noon on Christmas Eve. The declaration ceremony begins with the hymn Jumala ompi linnamme (Martin Luther's Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott) and continues with the Declaration of Christmas Peace read from a parchment roll in Finnish and Swedish.

Football is the most popular sport in Turku. The city has two teams in the Veikkausliiga: FC Inter and TPS. Both teams play their home matches at the modern Veritas Stadion in the district of Kupittaa.

Ice hockey is very popular sport in Turku. The local club TPS (which is part of the same organisation as the football team) plays in the sport's top level in Finland, the SM-liiga. It is based at Turkuhalli to the southwest of the city centre. TPS has won the Finnish ice hockey championship ten times. The city's other major ice hockey team is TuTo, which play at the country's second level. A new ice hockey arena was constructed for Tuto in the Kupittaa park in 2006.

The Paavo Nurmi Marathon is an annual sporting event in Turku, named after the world-famous runner who was born and raised in the city.

Turku has also been the site of sporting history, as on June 21, 1954 it was in Turku where the Australian John Landy became the second person to run the mile under four minutes.

The medieval keep of Turku Castle as seen from the harbour side.

Turku Museum of Art is a classical example of Romantic nationalism in architecture.

Pharmacy museum.

The Court of Appeal.

Luostarinmäki handicraft museum.

Western side of Aura river in central Turku.

Turku orthodox church stands next to the main Market Square.

Brinkhall Manor in Kakskerta island.

Church of Kakskerta.

Old Mill in Samppalinna.

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