Finland's Diary

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- And I guess this is an appropriate way to end this diary – Yes, this is the last post, at least for now. The next years would be a little bit too recent events, even if nine years is a quite long time. But as I would need to jump over some years, it´s not that lot. I hope this didn´t come too suddenly, I have mentioned about this in some other posts already... but I´m not sure have anyone actually read these extra notes ^^’.

I actually think I jumped a little bit too much at some points, but I didn´t want to mention everything, as this would have continued forever.

The picture in this post is quite simple, I wanted it to be a little bit similar than the very first picture was.

And, by the way, those little poems are from the real stamps.

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- But those two will not be here at the same time, it could end in disaster – It was what Sweden wanted. They were ready to remember the past events with Finland, but asked that they wouldn´t need to do so with Russia in this case. The Swedish kingdom was cut in half back then, so I guess that was understandable.

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- The Great Recession (2007–2012) was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. In terms of overall impact, the International Monetary Fund concluded that it was the worst global recession since the 1930s (the Great Depression). The causes of the recession largely originated in the United States, particularly related to the real-estate market, though choices made by other nations contributed as well.

Finland didn´t recover by 2012 (and the whole mobile phone business kind of crashed in 2008, too), in fact Finland fell in a deep, deep recession in 2014, and only in 2017 it started to look like the worst was behind, which isn´t even sure yet. There could be a new global recession behind the corner already.

This caused Finland to argue, probably for the first time ever, with the EU about loan packages, because people didn´t understand how Finland could loan money to other countries in recession if so many cuts are being made in their own country. This also caused a raise of a quite populist party in Finland.

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- The Bronze Soldier is the informal name of a controversial Soviet World War II war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia. The disputes surrounding the relocation peaked with two nights of riots in Tallinn (known as the Bronze Night), besieging of the Estonian embassy in Moscow for a week, and cyberattacks on Estonian organizations.

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- The Eurovision Song Contest is the longest-running annual international TV song competition, held, primarily, among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956.

- My band won the Eurovision Song Contest - Lordi performed "Hard Rock Hallelujah" in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest and won the contest with 292 points.

- This was never supposed to happen – There was a saying in Finland, that life outside of the Earth will be discovered before Finland wins in the Eurovision Song Contest. The Finnish songs have always been a bit outside of the common taste (and the competition has never been that popular in Finland, Sweden is crazy about it). and especially when there was a rule that you need to use your own language, Finland was a little bit lost because everyone else sang in a related language (Indo-European language group) and Finland was almost the only outsider” (Uralic language group). Finland is a bilingual country, so Finland sometimes used Swedish, too, but with no success.

The only Finnish song that ever got 12 points (from Ireland) and lead the statistics some time was "Lapponia" (1977. About a lonely witch woman who lives in the north. A man falls in love with her, but witches can´t love mortals).

The least successful song Finland has ever sent to the contest was called “Nuku pommiin” (Fell asleep because a bomb) in 1982. Fell asleep because of a bomb is an Finnish idiom meaning to oversleep, but the song actually dealt with the nuclear threat and idiotic leaders who should negotiate more with each other and wake up or else they won´t necessary ever wake up. But the song also mentions that sleeping to the bomb would probably be a easier choice than the current situation because you would most likely die immediately and that would be calming...

Finland was really, really fed up with the Cold War at that point. Luckily nobody understood what the song was about. It also sounds pretty horrible, so no wonder it got no votes.

- I did win in the Intervision Song Contest - The Intervision Song Contest is an international song contest consisting of both Post-Soviet states and members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It was previously the Eastern Bloc equivalent to the Eurovision Song Contest.

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The 2004 enlargement of the European Union was the largest single expansion of the European Union (EU), in terms of territory, number of states, and population to date.

Part of the same wave of enlargement was the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, who were unable to join in 2004, but, according to the Commission, constitute part of the fifth enlargement.

- And also Czechia and Slovakia, who divorced moved to separate houses - Czechia and Slovakia decided to become independent together in 1918, and in 1993 they decided to become independent separately. The dissolution was completely peaceful.

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- The 1995 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships was played in Stockholm and Gävle Sweden, from 23 April to 7 May 1995. In the tournament finals, Finland won the gold medal by winning over Sweden 4–1 at the Globen arena in Stockholm.

The gold medal was the first in Finland's history (Sweden had won championships even before). Sweden had written a fight song, "Den glider in", which also was intended to be the official song of the championships. After the finals, the song became very popular in Finland.

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- The Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare, occurred on January 25, 1995, when a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway. The rocket, which carried scientific equipment to study the aurora borealis over Svalbard, flew on a high northbound trajectory, which included an air corridor that stretches from Minuteman III nuclear missile silos in North Dakota, all the way to the Russian capital city of Moscow.

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- The 1995 enlargement of the European Union saw Austria, Finland and Sweden accede to the European Union (EU). This was the EU's fourth enlargement and came into effect on the 1 January of that year.

On 30 March 1994, accession negotiations concluded with Austria, Sweden, Finland and Norway. Their accession treaties were signed on 25 June of that year. Each country held referendums on entry resulting on entry for all except Norway (its second failed referendum).

- Norway decided that he doesn’t want to join - Norway had negotiated to join alongside the other three but following the signing of the treaty, membership was turned down by the Norwegian electorate in the 1994 national referendum. Switzerland also applied for membership on 26 May 1992, but withdrew it after a negative referendum result on 6 December 1992.

Thanks to a prosperous oil industry and shrewd investment of the returns, Norway has accumulated one of the largest pension funds in the world, second only to Japan’s, and its per capital GDP is the fourth highest in the world.

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- MS Estonia, was a cruise ferry built in 1979/80 at the German shipyard Meyer Werft in Papenburg. The ship sank in 1994 in the Baltic Sea in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century.