This article is about the comic about the fictional municipality in Häme

Häme

Häme is the name of a geographical region in Finland. It is an ancient Finnish word, etymologically related to sápmi, the endonym of the Sami people...

. Mämmilä is also a real-life village in Pello

Pello

Pello is a municipality of Finland.It is located approximately north of the Arctic Circle in the western partprovince of Lapland and is part of the Lapland region. The municipality is at the national border with Sweden by the Tornionjoki-river. The municipality has a population of and covers an...

, Lapland, 66°49′N 24°0′E.

Mämmilä is a full-page comic strip by Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 cartoonist Tarmo Koivisto

Tarmo Koivisto

Tarmo Koivisto is a Finnish comics artist and writer, cartoonist, and graphic artist. He is best known for his ongoing comic strip Mämmilä. Koivisto is also known by his artist name Tape.-Biography:...

 and co-written by Hannu Virtanen.

Mämmilä is a fictional small country municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

, supposedly in the Häme

Häme

Häme is the name of a geographical region in Finland. It is an ancient Finnish word, etymologically related to sápmi, the endonym of the Sami people...

 region, and was originally modeled on the municipality of Orivesi

Orivesi

Orivesi is a town and a municipality of Finland. It was founded in 1865.It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Pirkanmaa region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is .The municipality is unilingually...

. The cartoon depicted various contemporary issues in Finnish life, from various social changes to the coming of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n refugee

Refugee

A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...

s and membership in the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

. The municipality has numerous colorful characters, from local political leaders and potentates to Varpu-Viljami (local dowser

Dowsing

Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth radiation , without the use of scientific apparatus...

) and Mohammed al-Zomal (Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

n refugee).

Unusually for comic strips, the storyline happens in real time, and the characters in Mämmilä age normally, at the same pace as the comic strip in real life. For example, a girl called Sari was born in the comic in 1980, and is now an adult punk-style girl.

The strip was originally published 1974 in a Swedish-Finnish

Sweden Finns

Sweden Finns are a Finnish speaking minority in Sweden. The Finnish-speaking Swedes are not to be confused with the Swedish speaking Finland-Swedes in Finland . In 2008 there were over 675 000 people in Sweden who were either born in Finland or have at least one parent or grandparent who was born...

 magazine, Suomen Sanoma (Finnish News) in Sweden. The magazine was published only a couple of times per year, so the strip moved to Finnish magazine called Me (We) in 1976. In 1983, Helsingin Sanomat

Helsingin Sanomat

Helsingin Sanomat is the largest subscription newspaper in Finland and the Nordic countries, owned by Sanoma. Except after certain holidays, it is published daily. In 2008, its daily circulation was 412,421 on weekdays and 468,505 on Sundays...

began its monthly magazine, and Mämmilä moved in there. HS dropped the strip after 13 years, because the readers wanted a strip about life in Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

. Tarmo Koivisto still draws Tää kaupunki (This city) strip, written by various HS journalists.

In 2002, Tarmo Koivisto published a comic album WWW.MAMMILA.FI in which the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 and shady business practices come to Mämmilä. It was under work for five years.

In late 2006, Suomen Kuvalehti

Suomen Kuvalehti

Suomen Kuvalehti is a weekly Finnish magazine, published by Otava every Friday. The magazine has a circulation of 101,000 and its editor is Tapani Ruokanen. Suomen Kuvalehti aims to write broad articles about current topics.The comic strip Blondie regularly appears in the magazine...

, a weekly magazine wanted to publish Mämmilä. Because Koivisto has had many pages done for the next album after 2002, the storyline is not in real time right now, but eventually it will be.