12 Very Finnish Things That Only Happen During the Ice Hockey World Championship

As I write this, Finland are about to face hosts Switzerland in the World Championship final in Zurich and by the time you read it the result will be in. It will matter enormously, because in this country it always does. For fifty weeks a year Finland is the most reserved nation in Europe, a place that keeps a respectful distance at the bus stop and treats eye contact as a minor act of aggression. Then the championship reaches its closing stages every May and the whole careful arrangement falls apart. Here is what happens the moment the Leijonat, the Lions, take the ice. Ihanaa, Leijonat, ihanaa!

1. The whole country tunes in the moment it reaches a semifinal

For the group stage, a sizeable share of the country will tell you, with total conviction, that it is not following the hockey this year. Then Finland reach a semifinal or a final and the indifference evaporates overnight. People who could not have named a single player on the Tuesday will be explaining the finer points of the penalty kill by the Saturday, with the settled confidence of someone who has supported the team since birth.

2. Hockey becomes lätkä and lätkä becomes everything

Nobody calls it ice hockey. It is lätkä and during the championship lätkä quietly annexes every other topic of conversation. Colleagues who have shared an office in near silence since 2019 will suddenly find themselves agreeing, with real feeling, that the third line needs more ice time.

3. Perkele finally achieves its full potential

Finland's most versatile word gets a proper workout. A missed open net, a soft goal against, a referee with too many opinions, every one of these can be addressed with a single well-placed perkele. By the third period the word is functioning as ordinary punctuation.

4. Torilla tavataan stops being a meme and becomes actual logistics

Torilla tavataan means see you at the market square and for years it has been the internet's favourite joke about Finnish celebration. During the championship it turns into a genuine instruction. If the Leijonat win something worth winning, Helsinki's Kauppatori fills with thousands of people who have spent their entire lives avoiding crowds and have decided, just this once, to make an exception.

5. The city builds a fence to protect a statue from the celebrations

Helsinki has a beloved fountain statue on the Market Square called Havis Amanda, known to everyone as Manta. Whenever Finland looks likely to win something, the city wraps her in steel and board in advance, because a century of experience says a Finnish hockey title ends with thousands filling the square and a determined few climbing the 1908 statue and swimming in her fountain. The barrier is essentially a municipal weather forecast. The city is not bracing for rain. It is bracing for joy.

6. Otherwise reasonable adults rearrange their lives around puck drop

Dinner gets moved to fit around the first period. Plans made weeks in advance get quietly cancelled the morning of a game. A grown man who has never once been late for anything will leave a wedding early because Finland are playing Czechia and some things simply cannot wait.

7. The sauna turns into a tactical briefing room

Finns process all important matters in the sauna and in May there is nothing more important than the quarter-final. The pre-game sauna sets the mood and the post-game sauna delivers the verdict. A win and a loss are both best understood at ninety degrees with the lights turned low.

8. Beating Sweden becomes more important than the trophy itself

There is the World Championship and then there is the game against Sweden and a Finn will tell you these are not the same competition. An early exit can be forgiven within a week. A loss to the neighbours lingers for considerably longer. Beating Sweden has very little to do with the standings and rather a lot to do with several centuries of being treated as the smaller sibling and politely declining the role.

9. Sisu gets the credit for things that were clearly just good hockey

When Finland claw their way back from two goals down, nobody mentions the tactics or the coaching or the goaltender having the game of his life. It was sisu, the untranslatable Finnish capacity to keep going long after going has stopped being reasonable. Sisu wins these games entirely on its own and the players are merely present while it happens.

10. The national silence is briefly suspended

For most of the year you genuinely cannot tell whether your neighbours are home. During a Finland game you will know the precise second they score, because the wall between your two flats will transmit a noise you did not know they were capable of producing. Then the game ends, the silence returns and everyone behaves as though nothing ever happened.

11. Everyone has a firm position on 1995, regardless of whether they were alive for it

Finland won their first world title in 1995 and the country has never entirely recovered. It is the year that handed Finnish hockey its origin story and gave several generations a permanent point of reference. People who were toddlers at the time will describe the night as though they were standing in the building.

12. Victory is met first with stunned restraint and then with none whatsoever

This is the most Finnish moment of the entire tournament. The final buzzer sounds, the gold is won and for a long second absolutely nothing happens, because nobody is quite sure it is allowed. Then the dam gives way, the square fills, the perkeles turn joyful and a nation that does not hug strangers spends one extraordinary night hugging strangers. By the following morning everyone is back to keeping a polite distance at the bus stop, quietly pretending the whole thing never took place.

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None of this is detached from the result. The result is the entire point. A gold medal gets replayed for the next thirty years and a loss to Sweden is carried around like a small private grief well into the autumn. The behaviour above returns every single May because the championship returns every single May, but whether the square fills with joy or empties into silence is decided entirely by the scoreboard. For two weeks the most reserved country in Europe lets the result run its feelings out loud in public and the morning after the final it quietly takes that permission back and returns to keeping a respectful distance at the bus stop.