Google, Google on the screen, who's the most famous Finn there's ever been?

Linus Torvalds sweeps the pool

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By Anssi Miettinen
     
      A while back the Finns voted on who they thought was the Greatest Finn of all time, but the most famous Finnish personage has yet to be revealed.
      This is rather strange, when you think about it. These days it is relatively easy to determine how well and how widely somebody is known. Just fire up the PC and type the name into Google and in a fraction of a second the search engine reports the number of hits - in other words the number of web-pages on which the person is mentioned.
     
Finnishness is a particularly useful attribute in this respect, as you are not likely to find as many duplicates for someone called Juhana Helmenkalastaja as you do for John Smith. Hence the chances are that the number of hits for any given name will refer to the person intended.
      We fed into Google the names of around 160 famous Finns, alive and dead. In order to increase the accuracy still further, the names were entered in quotation marks, meaning "the exact phrase" was being sought (otherwise a simple search on Jorma Ollila, for example, would give you all the Jormas and all the Ollilas lumped together).
      Writing the name as "Jorma Ollila" also limited the myriad entries of scientists and researchers, who would otherwise have dominated the lists because of their presence as source references in research papers. In most cases these are entered in the format "Surname, Firstname".
     
The problem of Finland's Äs, Ös, and Ås was overcome by adding together the "correct" spelling and the Anglicised forms, so that we searched for instance both on Kimi Räikkönen and his alter ego Kimi Raikkonen, and then we took the sum.
     
Our winner, by a country mile, was super-geek Linus Torvalds. The man behind the Linux operating system racked up 2.1 million hits.
      This is an astonishing figure, and falls only a little short of the great blonde bombshell Pamela Anderson, who incidentally can also call on distant Finnish family roots. Considering Pamela's other attractive points, Torvalds's achievement is even more impressive.
      Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who was voted "Greatest Finn" last December (see attached story), got only 76,500 hits. In his case we made an exception and merely fed in the word "Mannerheim". When the whole package of names was entered, the war-hero and President got a meagre 1,320 hits.
      The high placing (6th overall) of Hollywood film director Renny Harlin - who is incidentally preparing a movie about the life of Mannerheim - could be considered a bit of a surprise, as it is generally thought that Harlin's career has seen better days. However, the Internet is filled to bursting with pages maintained by movie-freaks, who list all manner of actor/producer/director/key grip/gaffer details.
      Art-house film director Aki Kaurismäki benefited in the same way. He was 11th overall and got nearly 110,000 hits. Getting on for one-third of these were admittedly for "Aki Kaurismaki"
     
Author Arto Paasilinna, who has not been shy of trumpeting his popularity in foreign markets, turns out to have had a point. He has succeeded in getting recognised abroad, since he was by far the best-known Finnish writer, with 97,400 hits.
      Paasilinna wiped the floor with such literary names as Tove Jansson (the creator of the Moomins, 54,800), Mika Waltari (23,800), and Minna Canth (22,000).
      Way back behind them came contemporary authors like Kari Hotakainen (8,340 hits) and the popular novelist Jari Tervo, who got only a measly 668 hits despite being seen and heard on our TV screens every Saturday night on the Finnish version of Have I Got News for You.
     
Musicians and contemporary composers did well in the fame stakes, with the top spot taken fairly predictably by L.A. Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (73,800). Salonen finished one place above fashion model and occasional singer Janina Frostell. It is fairly likely that most Internet searches on Frostell are directed towards pictures rather than text or audio.
      Violinist Linda Brava (also known as Linda Lampenius) got 48,100 hits, possibly with something of the "Pamela/Janina Factor" involved, and she narrowly beat out the equally delicious Tarja Turunen of rock band Nightwish.
      Both of them were well clear of opera soprano Karita Mattila, who collected 27,600 hits.
      Contemporary composers Magnus Lindberg and Einojuhani Rautavaara placed 44th and 46th respectively, weighing in with around 25,000 mentions each.
     
From the ranks of the captains of industry and commerce there could only be one winner: Nokia's Chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila was in a class of his own with 47,500 hits.
      The mysterious "Jorma Olilla" often referred to in foreign papers also scored over 700 times.
     
In the Internet era it is possible to bounce up to the top of the pack as a representative of a distinct sub-culture.
      As an example of this, the late Tom of Finland, renowned in gay circles as an artist and illustrator, scored 62,200 hits.
      This makes Tom (who was born Touko Laaksonen in 1920) more famous than the current Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, who had to make do with 59,000.
     
The Net also has its own private celebrities, of whom the rest of us have probably never heard a word. One example is a programmer gent named Lars Wirzenius, one of the Linux development team, who collected 35,500 hits.
      This haul put him into 38th spot, immediately above rally-driver/MEP Ari Vatanen and the "Third-Greatest Finn" from last year's vote, President Urho Kekkonen himself.
      Another unsung hero among the common Finnish people is Jarkko Oikarinen, the inventor of IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, the mother of all online chatroom systems.
      Oikarinen's 14,600 hits raised him above the likes of former Prime Minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki, multiple Olympic gold medallist Lasse Viren, and celebrated Finnish painters Albert Edelfelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
      In the same vein, virus policeman Mikko Hyppönen from the data security firm F-Secure collected nearly 41,000 hits. This was enough to beat out sporting icons like ski-jumper Matti Nykänen, footballer Jari Litmanen, and slalom specialist Kalle Palander.
     
You might imagine that the titans of the 21st century Attention Economy would do well on the Net, but you'd be wrong.
      Former TV-presenter turned corporate training guru Jari Sarasvuo scored only 1,170 hits. Sarasvuo was the front man for the Finnish localisation of Donald Trump's reality TV show The Apprentice, known here as Diili (The Deal).
      Juhana Helmenkalastaja, one of the attention-driven contestants on Diili, who then achieved a certain local notoriety after his eviction, came right at the bottom of our list of 160 famous folks.
      Helmenkalastaja got a pathetic 128 hits.
     
     
Here are the Top Ten:
     
     
1. Linus Torvalds (Linux mastermind) 2,160,000
     
2. Kimi Räikkönen/Raikkonen (Formula One driver) 401,000
     
3. Darude (musician) 252,000
     
4. Mika Häkkinen/Hakkinen (former F1 driver and World Champion) 214,400
     
5. Jean Sibelius (composer) 180,000
     
6. Renny Harlin (film director) 150,000
     
7. Ville Valo (HIM vocalist) 147,000
     
8. Alvar Aalto (architect) 139,000
     
9. Tarja Halonen (President) 121,000
     
10. Erkki Liikanen (Governor, Bank of Finland; ex-EU Commissioner) 120,000
     
      Halonen (5th) and Sibelius (8th) were the only two in this list to get into the finalists of the Greatest Finn competition. Aalto and Sibelius are the only two individuals in the Top 10 list who are deceased.
      "Greatest Finn" Mannerheim finished in 16th place. His runner-up, another wartime figure, President Risto Ryti, was well down the fame field in 106th, behind "Matti Virtanen", an archetypal Finnish name combination of the "John Smith" variety.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the May edition of the monthly supplement Kuukausiliite
     
Translator's Note: The complete list of 160 persons is available in Finnish at the link below. The test was carried out in mid-April. As a sidenote, "Helsingin Sanomat" scores 386,000 Google hits, "Helsingin Sanomat International Edition" scores around 37,000, and the curious hybrid "Helsinki Sanomat" bags a creditable 2,120 hits from the spelling-challenged.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  War-time leader Mannerheim voted "Greatest Finn" (7.12.2004)

See also:
  Complete Google List (in Finnish)

Links:
  The Top 10 Great Finns (YLE)
  Google (go on, you know you are dying to try your name)

ANSSI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anssi.miettinen@hs.fi