Finland: Mobile Phones, Salmon, Reindeer & Aurora Borealis

Finland - land of a thousand lakes (over 60,000 of them), 2850 miles of seashore and probably liveable only because of the "warm" Gulf Stream around it. The country that seems to fall off the world map, up there near the Arctic Circle, now better known as the land of Nokia, LINUX and Mika Hakkinen. A frozen country (a long time in the year in any case) with the hottest gizmo's and technologies. The country that created Nokia and the Billion $ ring-tone industry.

I first travelled to Finland in 1997, when Nokia had just launched their products in India, we had recently seen some mobile phones and when the Indian IT industry was still focused on the US. Finns were curious to know what India was doing in the IT industry and were glad to meet somebody who seemed to be knowledgeable!, knew some things about the world and who was friendly, unlike as they said "some people from parts of Europe south of their country" (a dig at some of our colleagues from other parts of Europe).

Most (un)wired country in the world

Can you think of any country where you can travel without any cash at all? Where its not even necessary to get a few $s worth of exchange when you step out of Helsinki's Vantaa airport? You could in Finland. Everyone from the taxi driver to buses and hotels accept credit cards or smart cards. Everybody carries the latest (Nokia) phones, GPS devices and Communicators. Kids carry the smaller and cheaper mobile phones and Finns are busy with their connected mobile devices - SMSing, WAPing, GPRSing, 3Ging, mobile chatting, WLANing and Bluetoothing! Linus Torvalds when asked why Finns are so techie and why they love their devices had said - "Come to Finland in the cold winter. You'll see that all you can do is s***w around or write code!" Many Finns proudly (re)quote this. Vesku Pannanen (inventor of ring-tone technology) while discussing the idea of a mobile applications platform, looked at me and said "we don't do generic platforms, we build lots of applications, launch them quickly, use them for six months, throw them away and build new games/applications"

Finns - A fun loving people
Most Finns (50%+) own boats, are obsessed with fishing, have saunas in their backyards (they invented them, though Swedes claim that too) are fun loving and love their communication gizmo's. Many of them also own summer homes, up north in Lapland where they go to in the summer and where you can see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). A country that has more women amongst them than men, is very techie-entrepreneurial with many young pony-tailed CEOs who have seen the world (on motor-cycles!). On one of my visits, when I was with some of my Finnish friends at a local bar, they pointed to a lady at a table nearby and asked me "Do you know who she is? - She is one of our ministers". Nordic/Scandinavian countries are perhaps, the only part of the world, where you could have a drink with the head of state at the next table at a local bar!

Finns seem to have a great liking for maroon and olive green jackets, almost their national colour as it were, and can be easily recognized at various world airports by these jackets and their men with their broad and (mostly) bald pates. Most Finns have long last names spelt with double consonants (Saukkonen, Pannanen, Hakkanen, Raikonnen) much like the Estonians, Hungarians with whom they share cultural similarities (St. Petersburg is nearby, a part of Estonia)

Restaurant hopping in a boat!!
The towns and countryside of Finland has many lakes (such as towns called Nokia and Fiskars) and is quite a maritime nation. In the summer, most Finns spend time on their boats. My friend Esa, took me along on his boat, showed me all its parts and how to steer it through the (choppy & cold) waters. We went "pub/restaurant hopping" in his boat, moving from place to place, anchoring at places close to restaurants and pubs along the shores that looked good.

Finnish Food & Drink

Most tables at offices anywhere in Finland, have cookies, coffee, Finn-crisps, cheese always laid out, waiting to be served to visitors as soon as the conversation begins. Finnish banquets have huge spreads of different kinds of coarse grain breads, crisps, salmon, Baltic Herring, burbot roe (caviar equivalent) and many other kinds of sea-food. Kaalikaaryleet (cabbage rolls stuffed with vegetables, meat, breadcrumbs) is a popular, Finnish street food. Lappi Ravintola a Lapland Restaurant that we went to had a long list of items on its menu, but on closer examination, was just a list of various reindeer or salmon dishes, including their desserts! The log cabin style restaurant decor with back lit films of the northern lights, gave the restaurant much needed warmth in the cold winter. Finland is also know for its own brand of vodka - Finlandia and a bunch of wild berry based liqueurs (cloudberry, seabuckthorn, cranberry).

Winter or Summer - its always cold

I am not sure which place has worse weather, England, Seattle or Finland. It is cold and gloomy most of the year and is perhaps why its also known for high suicide rates much like Seattle. Everything freezes in winter, gets dark by 3 pm and for most people the Antarctic cant be any colder. Once on a cold winter night, sitting with my friends Esa and Peter at the Torni Bar, they asked me to guess what the temperature outside was. For the answer they asked me to turn around and see the temperature displayed on a large city-square LED board that displayed: -35 degrees Celcius! The summers are much better, especially with their 20 hour sunlight! and +10 degrees Celcius temperature.

eVector - the company with the Finnish inspiration

I once (Y 2000) co-founded a company called eVector - a product company (venture funded by Intel Capital, Reuters Greenhouse Fund, JP Morgan Chase) that built a mobile data services platform - a product that helped wireless carriers and corporates integrate and launch applications for mobile devices. An early inspiration for this product was our awareness of the mobility scene in Finland and our contacts with some Finnish companies including Hewlett-Packard, Finland and Nokia. When we launched our company at the Taj in Bangalore, I had invited a few of my Finnish friends and the Finnish press to the launch. In my speech, I acknowledged several people and Finland for being our inspiration. The Finnish press at the post launch press meet, wanted to know if we had stolen any intellectual property from Finland! I had to explain to them what I meant by "inspiration" and assure them that no code or technology had been stolen from Finland!

Those planning their next vacation, checkout Finland, the land of Nokia, most successful democracy and a place to see reindeer and the Aurora Borealis!