The Finnish Line

Dodgy European events never cease to amaze us. We’ve always been a fan of October Fest of course and the odd bit of cheese rolling, but we’ve recently learned about a new one that has somewhat piqued our interest. Welcome to Finland’s World Wife Carrying competition held in Sonkajarvi, Finland, which involves husbands carrying their spouses in a way, which is referred to as ‘Estonian style’. Basically the wives wrap their legs round the man’s neck whilst hanging upside down, whilst being dragged over grass, through lakes and hurdling. The competition has been running for 16 years and has competitors from 11 different countries including Britain, Australia, Germany and France. We don’t quite know what the point of it is, but apparently the tradition is derived from the 19th Century when women would be stolen from villages. All sounds a bit karma sutra and dominatrix to us. We’ve also discovered that Finland also holds swamp soccer, air guitar, and mobile phone throwing events, so maybe think about giving a visit some time – then you too can win a medal for just being yourself (by that we mean looking like a complete and utter twat), we’re certainly going to get involved in order to boost our self confidence.