Post by Aaron Paraiso (who has lived in Finland for some years)

Hearing neighbours’ screams of joy in the middle of the night, cracking open the champagne and staying up till dawn waiting for the next morning’s news broadcast. These are all some of the experiences I had in 2006 when Finland won the Eurovision Song Contest.
One would assume at first that I, a Hawaii-born person, wouldn’t know much about Eurovision. Especially since most Americans don’t really know what it is. “Eurowhat? Oh I don’t really follow the soccer”. But I have definitely had my fair share of exposure to it, having lived in Finland a large chunk of my life and the last several years in Australia – a country with a large following and growing interest in the contest.
Finland has competed in Eurovision almost every year since the competition started. The acts sent to the contest by this small Nordic country have always appealed to the population within its borders. Many of the songs of past entries have even become classics in the country, heard on Easy Listening radio stations, Tango functions and karaoke nights alike. But the songs were never considered memorable by the rest of Europe, often failing to qualify for the Finals since the introduction of the Semi-finals in 2004. Not even creating an English version of the Finnish language entries gave them much of a boost.
To be honest, when I first heard that the band Lordi was competing in the Finnish National Final, I thought it sounded like a joke. ‘Of course they won’t win. They couldn’t be further from the Eurovision norm’ I thought. I wasn’t alone on this either. The group was well known within Finland before this time. Popular in some circles with their hard rock songs such as ‘Would You Love a Monsterman?’ and ‘Devil is a Loser’. They were not however, what anyone would consider as mainstream music.
In the months leading up to the National Final, both the song and band grew on me. A lot. It went right from the bottom of my list, to the top. I didn’t see that one coming. Perhaps it was partly due to the heavy media coverage and the so called ‘controversy’ of them competing. Although those factors may have played on my subconscious to make them more appealing, nothing could have beaten seeing them perform live on that dark winter night in Turku, Finland. The magic of the live performance, along with their monster-like costumes and pyrotechnics won me over. Apparently it also worked for public watching the show on television, because that night it was announced hard rock group from Lapland was headed to Athens!
Over the following months, their media coverage increased. Both on a national and European level. There was lots of hype about the uniqueness of the current Finnish entry, and whether it would appeal to the continent as a whole, or flop like a dog’s ears with its head out the car window. One thing was sure though, it was not going to be easily forgotten. You can never plan to be in the winning country at the moment when the live votes come through and we see who gets all the ‘Douze Points’. You can double your chances if you live near a land border and are able to pick up and go on a moment’s notice, or perhaps you may rely on betting odds. But you can never be absolutely sure until the time comes.
Being in my adopted home country when they took home the title of Eurovision Song Contest Winner 2006 was incredible. Of course I envied my fellow OGAE counterparts who were in Athens at the time to cheer them on. But just experiencing the atmosphere and mood of everyone around in the winning country, and putting an end to that joke ‘Hell freezes over, Finland wins the Eurovision Song Contest’ where it was most relevant, is an experience they will never have. I can’t wait to see what happens next year when I’m in Stockholm.