Readers came to the Yle News website from 210 countries over the course of the year. They viewed nearly 15,000 different pages within the site, but the top ten most-viewed stories were as follows:
At number ten came a photo gallery of Snowstorm Antti, a wild blizzard that heralded the start of winter for southern Finland. While it is not exactly surprising that Finland suffers colder conditions in the winter months, the figures show that people are keen to find out about the weather.
In ninth position was another hardy perennial: the continued travails of Finland’s mobile phone giant. Nokia’s fall has been precipitous, and such has been the flood of negative stories (job cuts, real estate sales and poor financials, among others), it took a really doom-laden prediction of Nokia’s final demise to capture the imagination of our audience.
Next, at number eight, came a story that has become all too familiar. First there were school tragedies in Jokela and Kauhajoki, and this year the southern town of Hyvinkää experienced the sorrow of a mass shooting. This differed in that the culprit targeted bar-goers, sniping from a nearby rooftop at people outside a pub. Two were killed and several injured, and Finland once again hit the headlines worldwide as the tragic story spread.
The seventh most-read article of the year was a short-lived spat involving New Zealand’s Minister of Transport, Gerry Brownlee. Mr Brownlee clearly isn’t a regular reader of our site, or at least he wasn't back in March when he imagined Finland to be ‘a nation of uneducated, unemployed people with a high murder rate and little respect for women'. He quickly apologised after facing ridicule in both countries.
In sixth is further evidence of Finland’s excellent education system. A study by the Economist Intelligence Unit found Finnish schools to be world leaders, hardly a surprise given the praise heaped on Finnish educators by international comparisons in recent years. The story was, again, a worldwide hit, showing that good news about Finland also travels fast.
At number five is Finland’s Top 100 on Twitter, a veritable who’s who of Finnish Twitter. Although most tweet in Finnish, the English version of the list was very popular with our readers.
Next up in fourth place is a spectacular visual representation of Finland’s charms: a time-lapse video of the Northern Lights over Lapland. For those unable to experience them in person—and even for people living in Finland it can be a bit of a long shot—video is the next best thing.
The third most-read story was an intriguing theory about Finnish frugality. A Harvard University professor was reported as arguing that Finns save more because the Finnish language has no future tense. The theory goes that this makes the future ‘seem less distant’ and causes a more cautious approach to spending.
In second place was the historic presidential election that confirmed Finland would have a non-Social Democratic president for the first time since Urho Kalevi Kekkonen left the post more than three decades ago. The first round of the election saw upstart challenger Pekka Haavisto, who is not only a member of the Green League but also openly gay, make it through in second place. He knocked veteran eurosceptic centre party candidate Paavo Väyrynen into third place, delighting his largely young, urban, internationally-minded supporters, who also seemed to be heavy users of social media. That translated naturally enough into a lot of readers for our election coverage.
The top story, with more than 15,000 pageviews, was about the decision of some Finnish polytechnics to stop holding entrance examinations in developing countries. They were concerned about the ability of some students to support themselves. More than 10,000 of the pageviews came from within Finland, suggesting that foreign students at Finnish institutions were the biggest part of the audience. They were certainly keen to comment on the article on our Facebook page.
