Nokia 3310 will be part of Finnish Emoji Calendar

Finland has rolled pictures of a couple in a sauna, an previous Nokia telephone and a heavy-metallic music fan as a part of its personal set of national “emojis”, or symbols for use in digital communication. Send us your ideas, and we’ll have a designer create them. A little levity should help matters since Finland will be getting fully into its period of extreme darkness.

The first set, unveiled Wednesday, depict a man and a woman enjoying a sauna, an “unbreakable” Nokia 3310 smartphone and a head-banger reflecting a Finnish appreciation for hard rock.

Director of Public Diplomacy Petra Therman told the BBC the emoji were drawn with “a tongue-in-cheek approach” but aimed at promoting a unique Finnish culture. “There’s a small headbanger living inside of each Finn”, the site suggests. “One example is disarming honesty”.

The Finnish foreign ministry believes these are the world’s first national emojis.

Indeed, the three emojis the Finns have released so far are anything but self-serious. All the new emojis were chosen to represent Finland. Doesn’t want introducing. Sauna is as Finnish because it will get. “The hashtag, #Finland, has been used 259 times accumulating over 515,000 impressions”.

Were you recently on holiday in Finland, unable to express your happiness about the Nokia to all your tween friends through the medium of Snapchatted emoji? The full set will be available to download on December 1, and it will also appear in the Foreign Ministry’s online advent calendar, available in 13 languages including Chinese, Russian, and Portuguese.