Finland

Winter adventure holidays, with activities that range from skiing to driving a reindeer sled, are available in Finland. Ski weeks at Vuokatti cross-country ski center near Kajaani cost $502 to $625 for the flight from Helsinki, accommodations, two meals a day, lessons, guided ski treks and saunas. A ski tour in eastern Finland, covering up to 28 miles a day, lasts a week and costs $580 for flights within Finland, accommodations in hotels, cottages, huts and farmhouses, three meals a day, guides and saunas.

The Finns are playing as a team, not as selfish stars, in an Olympics where they have eliminated all the big countries and many of hockey's big names. Saku Koivu and Ville Peltonen each scored a goal and set up another as Finland beat Russia, 4-0, in the men's semifinals last night, setting up an all-Nordic gold-medal game with neighboring Sweden. The Swedes eliminated the world champion Czech Republic, 7-3, in the other semifinal. Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki, supposedly only the third-best goalie on Finland's roster has become one of the surprise stars of these Winter Games.

This one was supposed to be a laugher, a sure ticket to the semifinals as a reward for the Canadian men's hockey team winning its round-robin group. And when Joe Nieuwendyk and Shayne Corson scored within the first 2 minutes, 13 seconds of Canada's quarterfinal game against Kazakstan yesterday at Big Hat, that notion was only reinforced. But when Kazakstan forward Konstantin Shafranov blasted a shot off the arm of goaltender Patrick Roy to cut Canada's lead to 2-1 at 3:46 of the first period, the Canadians suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in a tight game.

When Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrives in Finland today, it will be the first official state visit by a Soviet leader in more than three decades, but Finns will be almost as interested in another member of his entourage. He is Vaino Valjas, the Communist Party leader of Estonia, the tiny Baltic republic that has become a paradigm of perestroika while it seeks to gain political and economic independence from Moscow. Finland is bound to Estonia by language and history, and there is increasing pressure on the Finnish government - from both Finns and Estonians - to help the Soviet republic break out of the Kremlin orbit.

Led by Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki, Finland blanked the United States, 4-0, last night to stay unbeaten at the hockey world championships in Riga, Latvia, while Olympic champion Sweden also closed in on a quarterfinal spot by beating Belarus, 4-1. With the win, Finland moved to second place in the Group E standings with five points, one behind idle Canada. The Czech Republic, which beat Norway 3-1 earlier, is third with four points. The United States is fourth with two points.

Finland will commemorate a memorable event in its history with two stamps recalling the 50th anniversary of the end of the Winter War with the Soviet Union. The outnumbered Finns lost the war and some territory, but their plucky resistance to a superior invader won worldwide admiration and assistance. Several countries sent volunteers to fight with the Finns. The two stamps, both 2 markka in value, will be issued Tuesday, the actual anniversary date of the war's end. One stamp commemorates the end of the war with a design of a single crystal merging into a field of snow amid dying flames.

The new teaching technique of "concept mapping" will take Roy B. Clariana to Finland this winter. An associate professor of instructional systems at Penn State Great Valley, Clariana has been awarded a Fulbright Teaching and Research Award to support his work. Concept mapping is a way of linking ideas on a computer screen to organize them and to see how they interact with each other, Clariana said. Students can use concept mapping to help them organize ideas into clusters, much like old-fashioned paper-and-pencil outlines.

It wasn't just a loss. It wasn't just a rout. It was a shutout. The Russians - heirs to the dominant Soviet hockey machine - didn't even score. Finland stunned top-seeded Russia, 5-0, last night and emerged as a legitimate Olympic gold-medal contender after being seeded seventh. Russia remains in the running, but no longer is the team to beat. Russian assistant coach Igor Dmitriev called the 5-0 romp embarrassing. Asked the reaction of Viktor Tikhonov, coaching his fifth straight Olympics, Dmitriev said, it would take a while to determine that.

The thank-you was a long time coming. Forty years ago, Quaker philosopher Douglas V. Steere persuaded the American Friends Service Committee to undertake a relief program in Finland, a nation that had been devastated by World War II. The relief efforts sent food and clothing to Finnish children in the grim months after the war, helped rebuild Finnish homes, and helped resettle Finns living in a portion of the country annexed by the Soviet...

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev last night acknowledged the neutrality of Finland, something no Soviet leader had done. Ending the first day of his three-day state visit with a dinner toast in the sumptuous Gothic Room of the Presidential Palace, Gorbachev told President Mauno Koivisto: "I want to greet neutral Finland. " Those six words effectively revised a 1948 agreement that bound Finland to certain military obligations in the event of an attack directed at the Soviet Union.

Jesse Joensuu 's winning goal with nine seconds left lifted Finland past the United States, 3-2, on Thursday for a place in the semifinals of the hockey world championships in Helsinki. Joensuu opened the scoring at 13 minutes, 27 seconds in the second period, before the Anaheim Ducks' Kyle Palmieri scored 20 seconds later. Bobby Ryan added a goal for the U.S. early in the third period. The Minnesota Wild's Mikko Koivu tied it with 6:58 left in the third.

PASTOR MALDONADO held off Fernando Alonso to win the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday in Barcelona, but the celebration quickly gave way to concern when a fire in the team garage left 31 people injured.Maldonado, making his first visit to the podium, is the first Venezuelan winner in F1. This was the Williams team's 114th triumph but first since the 2004 Brazilian GP. Maldonado's victory provided a flourish for Frank Williams as the...

By Harri Nykänen Translated from the Finnish by Kristian London Bitter Lemon. 247 pp. $14.95 Reviewed by Peter Rozovsky The protagonist of Harri Nykänen's Nights of Awe is named Ariel Kafka, and he's one of two Jewish police officers in Helsinki. Now, Finland's entire Jewish population is no bigger than a couple of good-sized Long Island bar mitzvahs, so it's no shock that Jews would be somewhat exotic figures there. Nykänen has Kafka react with head-shaking amusement to well-meaning questions about Jews, and the deadpan humor is of a piece with what Nykänen did so well in Raid and the Blackest Sheep , the only previous book of his available in English.

For 90 years, Asko Vuorinen's ancestors lived in the stately, red farmhouse atop the hill, 400 miles north of Helsinki, Finland, they called Mulikka. "The original house dated back to 1564, and it is said that nearly everyone from the area goes back to Antti Mulikka, who came there, far inland, and built the house," said Vuorinen. In time, Vuorinen discovered that Antti Mulikka's great-grandson, Eric, was banished by the Swedish government, to the colony of New Sweden and built a house similar to the original farmhouse there.

AFTER SPENDING 11 seasons with the Eagles, Tra Thomas says there was "No question I would return back here" after retiring. Thomas is gearing up for next month's opening of 7 Deuce Sports (175 Rt. 70 E.) in Medford, N.J., a 7,000-square-foot training facility for high-school and middle-school athletes. He hopes to enlist professional coaches to work there a bit in their off seasons. The offensive tackle, who retired last year after a knee injury ("Instead of trying to be that old guy hanging on," as he says)

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale explores the dark side of the Santa Claus myth - if myth he is - and finds humor, and horror, lurking there. Set in the breathtaking alpine ranges of northern Finland, writer-director Jalmari Helander's wicked yuletide fable starts with two kids sneaking around a top-secret archaeological dig. There is something, or someone, way down in the bowels of the earth, encased in wood and a massive block of ice. And there...

Position: Left wing Height, weight: 6-foot, 182 pounds Age: 26 Birthdate: Oct. 6, 1983 Hometown: Born and raised in Savonlinna, Finland Years pro: 2 How acquired: Via trade from the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for defenseman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen and a fifth-round pick in the 2011 NHL draft on Feb. 6, 2010. Season: When it started, no one even knew who Ville Leino was. They do now. After a disappointing regular season in which the rookie netted just six goals in 55 games with the Red Wings and Flyers, Leino was a healthy scratch for Philadelphia in the first four games of the playoffs and was only inserted into the lineup in Game 5 against the New Jersey Devils because of injuries to Jeff Carter and Simon Gagne.

THERE'S A twinge of guilt in Peter Laviolette's voice each time he speaks of Ville Leino's plight this season. "Part of my job is to get the most out of everybody," he was saying yesterday. "When we didn't get Ville in the lineup . . . I take responsibility for that. " It's a good word for any discussion about Ville Leino, responsibility, a good launching point. Because like several of the players imported into the Flyers' mix, descriptions of the 26-year-old Finn are so varied it's hard to believe there aren't a few versions of him out there, or that Ville Leino is as common a name in Finland as John Smith is here.

Russia is on a roll Pavel Datsyuk of the Detroit Red Wings had a hat trick, Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin added his fifth goal in five games, and unbeaten Russia cruised into the ice hockey world championship quarterfinals with a 6-1 victory over Denmark on Sunday in Cologne, Germany. The defending champions improved to 4-0 and lead Group E with 12 points. Russia, a record 25-time champion, also extended its worlds winning streak to 23 games, dating to a 2-1 overtime loss against Finland in 2007.