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Silicon Sauna sojourn

As Finland celebrates its centennial this year, Disrupted explores why this country, nicknamed "Silicon Sauna", is a hotbed for startups and inventions

Published Fri, Dec 22, 2017 · 09:50 PM

    IN FINLAND, you're never far from tech wonders. They can be found at the airport, at the buffet in a city hotel, and even inside a glass igloo near Santa Claus Village.

    I discovered these when I was in Finland two weeks ago for my family's annual getaway. While my parents and sister were excited to see the Northern Lights - even in the -22 deg C cold - I was just as thrilled to discover "techy stuff" to write about in this column. #nerd

    I was, after all, in a country known for tech. Think Nokia, the Finnish company that once created the world's coolest mobile phones; Slush, a tech startup event launched by Finnish youths that has become one of the world's largest; Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the instant messaging service that was extremely popular in the late 1990s; and Rovio, which created Angry Birds, one of the most downloaded mobile games of all time.

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