by Charles Lear
Reports of UFO sightings and alien encounters come from all over the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe. Place a finger at random on a globe and chances are some sort of UFO history from that area has been recorded. This week, the finger has landed on Finland, and Finland not only has a UFO history but also has active UFO researchers as well.
The history of UFO reports in Finland is much like that of other countries except that it starts earlier than most, dating back to the early 20th century. As was the case for much of Scandinavia, Finland had reports in the 1930s and 1940s of mystery lights, aircraft and rockets.
During the winter between 1933 and 1934, many people in Sweden reported seeing mysterious aircraft, some with bright lights (unusual for the period) that were able to fly in harsh weather conditions, day or night. The Swedish Air Force sent out planes to look for the aircraft, and ski patrols were sent to man mountaintop searchlights. The Finnish Army sent up their own planes, and the first report of “a shining bright light, just like a blowtorch” came from Kemi, a town just east of the Swedish border. The report received a good deal of press coverage and Finnish authorities declared without proof that the light was from something of Russian origin. At a 1937 press conference, spokesmen for the Finnish military declared that all the sightings could be explained by weather formations and inaccurate observations.
In 1946, Scandinavia experienced a wave of reports, beginning in Helsinki, Finland, describing rockets that flew over witnesses, sometimes changed course, and returned from where they came. There were reports of some rockets crashing into lakes, but none were recovered despite careful searches by officials. The immediate thought was that the Russians were testing captured German technology after the war, but this has never been established. The reports caused genuine, worldwide military concern, which is confirmed by documents from the period.
The Finnish UFO Research Association was founded in Tampere, Finland in 1973. According to its website the organization has 200 members throughout Finland, 59 of whom work as researchers. There are databases for observation, contact, and paranormal reports. The most recent observation report describes a sighting in the city of Vantaa on April 4, 2021. The witness reported seeing a spherical object approach, estimated to be the size of a car. According to the witness, the object changed direction and flew off. The video included with the report shows what appear to be visibility marker balls on an electrical wire.
While the report above seems to have a mundane explanation, in the section under the heading, “Articles,” the FUFOR site has an article headlined “UFOs in Finnish Airspace.” The article discusses sightings by pilots serving in the Finnish Air Force and flying for Finnair. According to the article, authorities in Finland, like those of many countries, are reluctant to discuss UFOs, and the only incident to receive official acknowledgement by the Air Force occurred at Pori Airport in 1969.
The incident at Pori occurred on April 12, 1969 during a jet-training mission involving twenty pilots who reported seeing what they thought were seven yellow balloons floating 2000 meters over the airfield. They were picked up on radar, and a flight controller told one of the pilots in training, Tarmo Tukeva, to investigate. Tukeva was vectored in and he reported that, as he approached, the objects accelerated to where he was unable to keep up. The objects were picked up within moments on radar at Vaasa Airport, approximately 190 km away.
In spite of the official stance on UFO reports, Finnish Air Force Commander Rauno Meriö was himself a UFO enthusiast. Meriö graduated from Cadet School in 1955 and was Commander of the Air Force from 1975 until 1987. According to the FUFOR site, Meriö translated pieces of UFO literature into Finnish. The website “World Beyond the Veil” has a posting describing the Pori incident which says that, in spite of Meriö’s interest in UFOs, he has refused to comment of sightings.
An alien encounter that received international attention was said to have taken place in the village of Imjärvi Finland in 1970. On a winter day at around 4:45 p.m., two men, Aarno Heinonen, 36, and Esko Viljo, 38, were cross-country skiing. They stopped to rest and reportedly saw, through a break in the trees, a yellow-orange, oblong object in the sky. They heard a sound like the humming of bees and then saw a grey disk, about 2 meters in diameter, hovering 3-4 meters above the ground. A ball, approximately 15 cm in diameter, descended as the object emitted gray-red smoke. The ball hit the ground and changed into a disk emitting beams of colored light. It then changed back into a ball and returned to the object.
Then, the men saw a thin creature, 90 cm tall, with a curved nose, light green uniform, white gloves, and a pointed hat. On its chest was a black box with a white button that emitted a pulsating light. Then, the creature and the craft were shrouded in smoke and disappeared.
The entire sighting lasted about 15 seconds. Both men were left with severe muscle pains and sought medical attention. Heinonen went on to become a contactee, claiming interaction with a female humanoid and healing ability.
A sighting that is less well known outside of Finland was reported from the town of Nivala. Said to have occurred on August 15, 1993, it involved a strange sight seen by two sisters through a window of their house. A clip on youtube tells the story. According to the narrator, a 73-year-old woman saw a large red globe hovering outside a back window of her house. It then turned into a triangular, roofless room with two ladders hanging down. Two humanoids carrying baskets came down the ladders and began collecting samples from the ground. Their movement was reported to be as if they were “on hyper-speed film.” When they were done, the room turned back into a globe that then expanded until it was its originally seen size, at which point it vanished.
The sisters then tell their version of what is presumably the same incident, but the details of the triangular room and the humanoids are not included. One sister says that she felt something grab her left shoulder as she was sleeping and she heard a voice “as if from a barrel” say, “wake up, wake up.” She says the room was extremely bright and that she walked out of the room to a window to look outside. She saw a bright ball hovering nine feet above the ground and she called for her sister to come look and confirm what she was seeing. She says, “One foot closer and earth’s gravity will pull it down and we will explode and we won’t be around anymore the next morning.” Both sisters reported they became very tired.
The other sister describes lifting her left hand to shield her face because her eyes hurt. She describes a burn on her wrist that appeared two days later. It got “hotter and hotter” and she went to the hospital. She says the doctor asked if something had bitten her and that she told him “no” and then asked if he believed in UFOs. She says he didn’t say much and just listened and then gave her antibiotics, which she says helped.
It may amuse the reader to know that, while researching this blog, the writer was surprised to come across a blog he’d written previously on UFO history in Finland. It is hoped that the reader will excuse some of the subsequent copying and pasting done in the creation of this blog. The writer has obviously experienced a case of missing time.