Finland is a pretty rad place: it’s got a population less than that of Scotland yet it still churn out more professional snowboarders than you can shake a stick at, it’s capital city has one of the funnest names to say, it spawned the Dudesons and even it’s skiers are internationally praised by the likes of us.

But everyone knows that the fairest and truest yardstick every nation is judged by is the Eurovision Song Contest. ‘What?’ I hear you say? ‘What about the USA?’ Their constant no show at the event of year is all you need to know about that nation…

And so on with the main point – as you might remember from 2006, Finland put forth Lordi as their entry, not even mere mortals but beasts from another realm, come forth to announce the ‘arockolypse,’ whatever that is. Eight years later, their eventual victory still stands out as the Eurovision’s finest hour.

The official video (we didn’t know that mythical inter-dimension goblins needed a Youtube channel) above is just as magnificent as the performance – it features zombie cheerleaders, a high school massacre and a hot Asian girl – but for the full picture you really need to see them both. Here’s the live performance from 2006:

Amazing. Just amazing. ‘Hard’ rock coupled with puns that would dislocate even our deputy editor’s brain if he tried to keep up, this right here is the absolute pinnacle of musical evolution.

Similarly, in 2003 Austria bizarrely let slip that their meticulous, oompah obsessive, humourless and cheap-but-crap beer fueled culture is just an ironical facade to keep the best mountains in Europe to themselves. This is the evidence, make sure you watch it with subtitles.