Helsinki is the capital and most populous city in Finland. It is located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and serves as the seat of the Uusimaa region in southern Finland. Approximately 0.67 million people live in the municipality, with 1.25 million in the capital region, and 1.58 million in the metropolitan area. As the most populous urban area in Finland, it is the country's most significant centre for politics, education, finance, culture, and research. Helsinki is situated 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the north of Tallinn, Estonia, 360 kilometres (220 mi) to the north of Riga, Latvia, 400 kilometres (250 mi) to the east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Helsinki has significant historical connections with these four cities.
Jorma Jaakko Ollila is a Finnish businessman who was chairman of Royal Dutch Shell from 1 June 2006 to May 2015, and at Nokia Corporation chairman from 1999 to 2012 and CEO from 1992 to 2006. He has been a director of Otava Books and Magazines Group Ltd. since 1996 and UPM-Kymmene since 1997, and an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, a New York–based boutique investment bank founded by Joseph R. Perella and Peter Weinberg in 2006.
Tampere University is a multidisclipinary public university located in the city of Tampere, Finland. It is the second largest university in the country by student enrollment.
Teuvo Peltoniemi is a Finnish writer, journalist, researcher, educator, and eHealth developer specialized on addictions. Since the 1970s he has been contributing by research and journalism to increase public awareness in Finland for many taboo societal problems, like general speed limits, family violence, sexual abuse of children, situation of children of alcohol abusing parents, and net addiction. After retirement he now writes about social issues in his blog at Iltalehti evening paper, and in science journals and books as well as maintains two sites on the Finnish Utopian Communities. and
Somalis in Finland are residents and citizens of Finland of Somali ancestry. As of 2022, 24,365 Finns had a Somali-background, making it the fourth most common foreign country of origin and the largest from Africa.
Erkki Johan Bäckman is a Finnish political activist, propagandist, author, eurosceptic, and convicted stalker working for the Russian government. Bäckman has been a prominent Finnish propagandist in Russia who has actively participated in long-standing operations to propagate anti-Finnish and anti-Western Russian propaganda.
Finland is one of the last countries in the world still burning peat. Peat has high global warming emissions and environmental concerns. It can be compared to brown coal (lignite) or even worse than this lowest rank of coal. Peat is considered the most harmful energy source for global warming in Finland. According to IEA the Finnish subsidies for peat in 2007-2010 undermined the goal to reduce CO
2 emissions and counteracted other environmental policies and The European Union emissions trading scheme.
Markku Jalmari Kivinen is a professor of sociology and the director of the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, Finland, since 1996.
Juha Sihvola was a Finnish philosopher and historian. He was a university professor of general history from 2000, and part of The Academy of Finland's Centre of Excellence program upon Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics, serving as the Deputy Director of the Centre of Excellence from 2008. In the years 2004–2009, he was the Director of Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.
Irreligion in Finland: according to Statistics Finland in 2020, 29.4% of the population in Finland were non-religious, or about 1,628,000 people. The Union of Freethinkers of Finland and other organisations have acted as interest organisations, legal protection organisations and cultural organisations for non-religious people. In a 2018 international ISSP survey, 40% of the Finnish population said they did not believe in God, 34% said they believed in God and 26% did not know. Nearly one out of every five people in the country is not a member of a religious organisation, and the number of people with no religious affiliation has doubled in two decades.
Riitta Jallinoja is a Finnish sociologist, who was appointed Finland's first family sociology professor at the University of Helsinki in 2002. She is known, among other things, for studying the role of women, the family and modern life.
Jan Erola is a Finnish communications entrepreneur and former journalist and book publisher. Erola is the publisher of the online publication Nordic Defence Review and is also the CEO of his own Kravat Oy, a communications consultancy company. Since January 2000, he has appeared hundreds of times as a regular news commentator in the popular Jälkivisaat weekly news analysis section of Yleisradio's TV1 morning television.
Sigfrid Rafael Karsten was a Finnish social anthropologist and philosopher of religion, known especially for his work among the indigenous people of Southern America.
Elina Haavio-Mannila is a Finnish social scientist and Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Helsinki where she served as the Docent of Sociology (1965–1971), Assistant Professor (1971–1992), and Professor (1992–1998). She is known for researching gender roles and gender in Finnish life. Much of the research in the latter field was done together with Osmo Kontula. In 1958, she became the first woman in Finland to earn the Doctor in Social Sciences degree.
Maria Karoliina Ohisalo is a Finnish politician and researcher who served as Minister of the Interior between 2019 and 2021. The former chairman of the Green League, she has been a Member of Parliament since 2019.
Mika Mäkeläinen is a Finnish foreign news journalist and non-fiction writer, who has served as both the United States and Asia correspondent for the Finnish public broadcasting company Yle. Mäkeläinen was stationed in Washington, D.C., between 2006 and 2009 and in Beijing between 2015 and 2017.
Iiris Suomela is a Finnish politician formerly serving in the Parliament of Finland for the Green League at the Pirkanmaa constituency. She was a member of the Grand Committee and the Finance Committee. She has also formerly been vice chairperson for Tampere city council, and a Member of the Board of Directors of University of Tampere.
Glory Leppänen was a Finnish actress, theatre and film director, and writer.
The National Socialist Union of Finland, later the Finnish-Socialist Party was a Finnish Nazi political party active in the 1930s, whose driving force and ideologue was Professor Yrjö Ruutu. With an ideology based on Ruutu's theories, the party came to reject orthodox German Nazism.
Mika Petteri Aaltola is a Finnish political scientist and director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He has gained media attention during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he follows and regularly comments on. Aaltola holds a doctorate in social sciences. He works as docent at Tampere University, and is a part-time professor at Tallinn University. In 2024, he ran as an independent candidate for President of Finland.
