13 Facts About Rovaniemi

1.

Rovaniemi is a unilingual Finnish-speaking municipality and, uncommonly for larger Finnish towns, it is known by its Finnish name and spelling in the Swedish language.

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2.

Rova part in the name Rovaniemi has often been considered to be of Saami origin, as in Northern Saami denotes a forested ridge or hill or the site of an old forest fire.

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3.

Township decree was promulgated on 27 June 1928, as a result of which Rovaniemi seceded from the old rural municipality as its own market town on 1 January 1929.

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4.

From 1 to 6 July 2021, Rovaniemi recorded 122 hours of continuous sunshine, which is a new world record.

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5.

Since Rovaniemi is the capital of the region of Lapland, many government institutions have their offices there.

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6.

Rovaniemi is home to not only the University of Lapland but the Lapland University of Applied Sciences, which comprises institutes of information and traditional technology, business, health and social care, culinary studies, forestry, rural studies, and sports.

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7.

Rovaniemi is considered by Finns to be the official home town of Santa Claus.

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8.

Rovaniemi has hosted several international ski competition, including the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1984, several FIS Nordic Combined World Cup and FIS Ski Jumping Continental Cup events, the 2005 FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships, the 1970 Winter Universiade and the 2008 Winter Transplant Games.

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9.

Rovaniemi Airport is located about 10 kilometres north of the Rovaniemi city centre, and it is the third-busiest airport in Finland after Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and Oulu Airport.

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10.

In March 2022, Rovaniemi suspended the agreement with Murmansk, Russia due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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11.

Rovaniemi appears in the video game Tom Clancy's EndWar as a possible battlefield.

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12.

Rovaniemi is a central scene in a documentary film Reindeerspotting.

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13.

Rovaniemi appears as one location of Gavin Lyall's 1963 book The Most Dangerous Game, a spy-thriller set in Lapland and the northern USSR.

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