Weird Finnish Sports
This picture was taken from: news.bbc.co.uk
Finland is said to be home of the weirdest sports championships. The participants are ready to do almost anything to win the crown. As summer in Finland is short, Finns came up with silly but full of adrenaline activities in order to celebrate this lovely part of the year. The most of the year in Finland is dark, cold and rainy, so they wanted to celebrate the short presence of the sun and warmth. Weird sports championships are also a good way of bringing tourists to the country.
The most popular activities are wife-carrying, air guitar and swamp soccer. Even other nations choose their own contestant to be represented in Finland. These, and others, activities let athletes train and add lots of fun to their daily training. Cross-country skiers, for example, use swamp soccer to train in the summer, when there is no snow, but still they work the same muscles.
Another discipline, mobile-phone throwing, combines recycling with play. Mobile phones are extremely important in Finland. People use them constantly so this sport is also a symbolical liberation from them.
Some sports, such as wife-carrying, have roots in the history. Legend says Ronkainen the Robber tested aspiring gang members by forcing them to lug sacks of grain or live swine over a similar course in the 19th century.
“At first it was difficult to promote them as they were small local events where people did not speak any foreign language,” said Liisa Renfors, at the Finnish Tourist Board. “But now they are raising the interest of foreign press and visitors – probably because they are so different from anything else going in their own countries.”
