Suuret suomalaiset
Encyclopedia
Suuret suomalaiset was a 2004 television show broadcast in Finland
by YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company), which determined the 100 greatest Finns of all time according to the opinions of its viewers. The viewers were able to vote during a programme which lasted from October to December 2004. The show was a Finnish spin-off
of the BBC
's programme Great Britons
.
, C.G.E. Mannerheim and Urho Kekkonen
. The winner was baron
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
, a war hero, Marshal of Finland
, and former president
.
After the results were published, lots of speculation started on the issue of whether YLE had manipulated the results in order to keep humoristic candidates out of the top ten. YLE has condemned the accusations but has refused to publish the number of votes that candidates below top ten received.
The person most conspicuously not appearing on the list is the international diplomat and former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari
, who has been a perennial favourite in Finland for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was finally awarded it in 2008.
A similar humoristic voting was for 100 greatest Romanians, where Bulă
, a stock character
of Romanian jokes was voted #59.
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...
by YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company), which determined the 100 greatest Finns of all time according to the opinions of its viewers. The viewers were able to vote during a programme which lasted from October to December 2004. The show was a Finnish spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's programme Great Britons
100 Greatest Britons
100 Greatest Britons was broadcast in 2002 by the BBC. The programme was the result of a vote conducted to determine whom the United Kingdom public considers the greatest British people in history. The series, Great Britons, included individual programmes on the top ten, with viewers having further...
.
The winner
During the final stage of voting, people had the chance to vote for the following three leading candidates: Risto RytiRisto Ryti
Risto Heikki Ryti was the fifth President of Finland, from 1940 to 1944. Ryti started his career as a politician in the field of economics and as a political background figure during the interwar period. He made a wide range of international contacts in the world of banking and within the...
, C.G.E. Mannerheim and Urho Kekkonen
Urho Kekkonen
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen , was a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland and later as the eighth President of Finland . Kekkonen continued the “active neutrality” policy of his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a doctrine which came to be known as the “Paasikivi–Kekkonen...
. The winner was baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War, Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces during World War II, Marshal of Finland, and a Finnish statesman. He was Regent of Finland and the sixth President of Finland...
, a war hero, Marshal of Finland
Marshal of Finland
Marshal of Finland was the title awarded to the Finnish Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim on his 75th birthday on June 4, 1942. The fully honorary rank was specially created for Mannerheim...
, and former president
President of Finland
The President of the Republic of Finland is the nation's head of state. Under the Finnish constitution, executive power is vested in the President and the government, with the President possessing extensive powers. The President is elected directly by the people of Finland for a term of six years....
.
Top Ten
- C.G.E. Mannerheim (President of FinlandPresident of FinlandThe President of the Republic of Finland is the nation's head of state. Under the Finnish constitution, executive power is vested in the President and the government, with the President possessing extensive powers. The President is elected directly by the people of Finland for a term of six years....
, 1944–1946, and Marshal of FinlandMarshal of FinlandMarshal of Finland was the title awarded to the Finnish Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim on his 75th birthday on June 4, 1942. The fully honorary rank was specially created for Mannerheim...
) - Risto RytiRisto RytiRisto Heikki Ryti was the fifth President of Finland, from 1940 to 1944. Ryti started his career as a politician in the field of economics and as a political background figure during the interwar period. He made a wide range of international contacts in the world of banking and within the...
(President of Finland, 1940–1944) - Urho KekkonenUrho KekkonenUrho Kaleva Kekkonen , was a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland and later as the eighth President of Finland . Kekkonen continued the “active neutrality” policy of his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a doctrine which came to be known as the “Paasikivi–Kekkonen...
(President of Finland, 1956–1981) - Adolf EhrnroothAdolf EhrnroothAdolf Erik Ehrnrooth was a Finnish general.Ehrnrooth entered cadet school in 1922 and served in the Uusimaa Dragoon Regiment ....
(infantry general, a figurehead for the Finnish veteran community) - Tarja HalonenTarja HalonenTarja Kaarina Halonen is the incumbent President of Finland. The first female to hold the office, Halonen had previously been a member of the parliament from 1979 to 2000 when she resigned after her election to the presidency...
(current and the first female President of Finland, 2000– ) - Arvo YlppöArvo YlppöArvo Henrik Ylppö was a Finnish pediatrician who significantly decreased Finnish infant mortality during the 20th century. He is credited as the father of Finland's public child welfare clinic system, and held the title of archiater for forty years. He is often referred to as the Dr...
(famed paediatrician) - Mikael AgricolaMikael AgricolaMikael Agricola was a clergyman who became the de facto founder of written Finnish and a prominent proponent of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden . He is often called the "father of the Finnish written language". Agricola was consecrated as the bishop of Turku in 1554, without papal approval...
(Protestant reformer and creator of literary FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
) - Jean SibeliusJean SibeliusJean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
(world-famous composer of romantic musicRomantic musicRomantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
) - Aleksis KiviAleksis KiviAleksis Kivi , born Alexis Stenvall, was a Finnish author who wrote the first significant novel in the Finnish language, Seven Brothers...
(author of the first significant Finnish novel, Seitsemän veljestä / Seven BrothersSeven BrothersSeven Brothers is the first and only novel by Aleksis Kivi, the national author of Finland, and it is widely regarded as the first significant novel written in Finnish and by a Finnish-speaking author. Published in 1870, Seven Brothers ended an era dominated by Swedish-speaking authors, most...
) - Elias LönnrotElias LönnrotElias Lönnrot was a Finnish philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. He is best known for compiling the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic compiled from national folklore.-Education and early life:...
(collator of the Finnish national epic KalevalaKalevalaThe Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
)
Humoristic voting and speculation on manipulated results
Everybody in the top ten can be regarded as "serious" candidates, but right after those first ten are a number of candidates that have probably been selected in a more humorous sense. Positions 11-14 are held by:- Position 11, Matti NykänenMatti NykänenMatti Ensio Nykänen is a Finnish former ski jumper who won five Olympic medals , nine World Championships medals and 22 Finnish Championships medals . Most notably, Nykänen won three gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Yvonne van Gennip of the Netherlands, the most...
– A four-time OlympicOlympic GamesThe Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
gold medalist who is also known for his later ill-fated careers as a singer and a stripperStripperA stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
. He is a person loved dearly by the Finnish sensationalist press. Most of his scandals are caused by his aggressive behavior while drunk. - Position 12, Väinö MyllyrinneVäinö MyllyrinneVäinö Myllyrinne, was an acromegalic giant who was at one time the world's tallest person...
– The tallest Finnish person ever. In the Finnish languageFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, the words "great", "tall" and "big" can all be expressed with the word "suuri", which is used in the name of the program. Thus, voting for Myllyrinne was a kind of joke. Some people circulated messages on the InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
that urged people to vote for Myllyrinne. - Position 13, Ville ValoVille ValoVille Hermanni Valo is a Finnish singer, songwriter and frontman of the Finnish rock band HIM. He has received the "Golden God" award in 2004 by the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer. Valo has a baritone vocal range. Valo was ranked number 80 in Hit Paraders Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time...
– The vocalist of the famous Finnish alternative rockAlternative rockAlternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band HIM. - Position 14, LalliLalliLalli is an apocryphal character from Finnish history. According to legend, he killed Bishop Henry on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi in Finland on January 20, 1156.- Legend :...
– A mythical and possibly non-historical figure who, according to a medieval legend, killed the Swedish Bishop HenryBishop HenrySaint Henry was a medieval English clergyman...
in Finland in 1156.
After the results were published, lots of speculation started on the issue of whether YLE had manipulated the results in order to keep humoristic candidates out of the top ten. YLE has condemned the accusations but has refused to publish the number of votes that candidates below top ten received.
The person most conspicuously not appearing on the list is the international diplomat and former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari
Martti Ahtisaari
Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari is a Finnish politician, the tenth President of Finland , Nobel Peace Prize laureate and United Nations diplomat and mediator, noted for his international peace work....
, who has been a perennial favourite in Finland for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was finally awarded it in 2008.
A similar humoristic voting was for 100 greatest Romanians, where Bulă
BULA
Bula or BULA may refer to:*The Canadian aircraft category Basic Ultra-Light Aeroplane*Bula, Camarines Sur*Bula, Indonesia*Bula River in Tatarstan and Chuvashia, Russia*Beach Ultimate Lovers Association...
, a stock character
Stock character
A Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...
of Romanian jokes was voted #59.
Advocates
In broadcast order:- Jari TervoJari TervoJari Tervo is a well-known Finnish author of prose. He is a major name in current Finnish literature.He writes traditional plot-driven prose, sometimes more humoristic , sometimes more like a detective story . Often he includes autobiographical elements...
, author, humorist and TV personality from the show Uutisvuoto (Have I Got News For YouHave I Got News for YouHave I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been broadcast since 1990, currently the BBC's longest-ever running television panel show...
); for Arvo Ylppö - Paula LehtomäkiPaula LehtomäkiPaula Lehtomäki is a Finnish politician. She started her political career in 1996, when she was elected to the Kuhmo Town Council. In 1999 she was elected to the Finnish Parliament, and again in 2003. In 2002, she was elected to be the vice chairman of Keskusta...
, current Minister for Foreign Trade and Development (Kesk.Centre Party (Finland)The Centre Party is a centrist and Nordic agrarian political party in Finland. It is one of the four largest political parties in the country, along with the Social Democratic Party , the National Coalition Party and the True Finns , and currently has 35 seats in the Finnish Parliament...
); for Urho Kekkonen - Pirkko SaisioPirkko SaisioPirkko Saisio is a Finnish author, actress and director. She has also written under the pen name Jukka Larsson and Eva Wein. Saisio has a broad literary output, dealing with many kinds of texts from film screenplays all the way to librettos for the ballet...
, FinlandiaFinlandia PrizeThe Finlandia Prize is the most prestigious literary award in Finland by the Finnish Book Foundation. It is awarded annually to the author of the best novel written by a Finnish citizen , children's book , and non-fiction book...
-winning author; for Mikael Agricola - Kaari UtrioKaari UtrioKaari Marjatta Utrio is a Finnish writer. She has written tens of historical novels and many non-fiction books on historical topics...
, author and feminist; for Tarja Halonen - Jukka Virtanen, author, director and actor; for Aleksis Kivi
- Lasse LehtinenLasse LehtinenLasse Lehtinen is a Finnish politician, former Member of the Finnish Parliament and former Member of the European Parliament...
, author, Member of the European ParliamentMember of the European ParliamentA Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...
(PESGroup of the Party of European SocialistsThe Group of the Party of European Socialists was a political group of the European Parliament. It was made up of MEPs elected from the lists of member parties of the Party of European Socialists....
); for Risto Ryti - Sari KaasinenSari KaasinenSari Johanna Kaasinen is a Finnish singer. Together with her sister she began a Finnish folk music band called Värttinä....
, musician in the traditional music band VärttinäVärttinäVärttinä is a Finnish folk music band which was started as a project by Sari and Mari Kaasinen back in 1983 in the village of Rääkkylä, in Karelia, the southeastern region of Finland. Many transformations have taken place in the band since then...
; for Elias Lönnrot - Arto NybergArto NybergArto Kalevi Nyberg is one of the best known journalists on Yleisradio in Finland. He hosts his own talk show called Arto Nyberg...
, journalist, TV personality, host of the talk show Arto Nyberg; for Adolf Ehrnrooth - Pekka KuusistoPekka KuusistoPekka Kuusisto is a Finnish classical and jazz violinist.Pekka Kuusisto began studying the violin at the age of three. His first violin teacher was Geza Szilvay at the East Helsinki Music Institute. In 1983 he enrolled in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He began to study there with Tuomas...
, musician, composer, prize-winning violin player; for Jean Sibelius - Riitta UosukainenRiitta UosukainenRiitta Maria Uosukainen is a Finnish politician and former Member of Parliament. She is one of the eight people to gain the highest honorary title, valtioneuvos, given by the President....
, veteran politician (Kok.National Coalition Party (Finland)The National Coalition Party is a liberal conservative political party in Finland founded in 1918.The National Coalition Party is one of the four largest parties in Finland, along with the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the True Finns...
), first female Speaker of the Parliament of Finland; for C. G. E. Mannerheim