If you were to construct a set of emoji for Finland, what icons would you use? Here’s what I’d use: the flag of Finland … and I don’t know what else, to be honest (also, I cannot describe what the Finnish flag looks like).
That’s a problem, which is why the country has become the first to propose a set of country-specific symbols espousing its heritage and culture. Three of the 30 in total were revealed this week. “We have been anything but serious when creating these emojis. Hopefully they will open up not only our weirdness but also our strengths of which unarming honesty is one example,” said Petra Theman, director for public diplomacy at the nation’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Here are the emoji:
The Nokia 3310
Did you know that Nokia is a Finnish company? I knew that, but some people don’t. The 3310 is the web’s meme phone. There’s tons of great content out there about how the 3310 is basically indestructible. You could kill a man with one of these (I’VE HEARD). Do you remember the ’90s? This phone was popular during that decade. You or your parents had one, I bet.
The Sauna
That’s just classic Finland. You step off the plane (or boat?? Unclear) to Finland and before you can say, “One sauna, please!” they’ve directed you to the sauna.
The Headbanger
Is Finland metal? Yes, they love heavy metal. According to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, “It is dark in Finland and so is the music. There’s a small headbanger living inside of each Finn.” That sounds like a threat!
All of this is, of course, a ploy by the Finnish tourism industry to get us to blog about Finland, so, uh, they did that. These aren’t coming to your phone anytime soon unless the Unicode Consortium is metal as hell.
