Fabulous Festivals of Finland

Guys--you ever get a hankering to sling your wife over your shoulder and carry her across waist-deep water? What if there was a prize involved? What if that prize was the equivalent of the wife’s weight in beer? What if they threw in a bag full of wife carrying products? Well, if you're going to be around Sonkajärvi, Finland from June 30 to July 2, you might want to enter the international wife carrying contest. After all, Conan O’Brien thought it was a bang-up idea, although I doubt if he knows what "wife carrying products" there might be floating around in the world either. Find out lots more: Wife Carrying In SONKAJÄRVI Since 1992.

Evidently this all started in the late 1800s, when a brigand called Rosvo-Ronkainen would only allow men who could carry lots of loot into his merry band of robbers, so he had a test track for just this sorta thing--except in those days they'd just steal some women from neighboring villages to carry rather than going through the traumatic bother of marrying them. (And just in case you thought the Fins were crazy, the wife carrying festival evidently caught on in the US in 2005 as well.)

Need a tamer festival that doesn't involve marriage or heavy lifting? Well, then you'd be interested in the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships in Savonlinna, Finland, especially if you've ever been in a confined space with a sad and lonely husband who just had to make a long and gushingly apologetic phone call to a women he'd accidentally dropped in a muddy pothole during the wife carrying competition.

And there's even more off-beat Summer fun according to the Finnish Tourist Board, including the Kutemajärvi Sex Festival: Crazy Events in Finland.

Travel Resources: Finland | Scandinavia Map | Buying a Cell Phone for Europe