Finnish woman’s candid interview at hockey celebrations goes viral

A spontaneous interview with Nella Salonen, a bystander at Helsinki’s Market Square during Finland’s ice hockey world championship victory celebrations, has drawn widespread attention after her unfiltered remarks charmed social media, public broadcaster Yle reported Monday.

Salonen, reached by phone at work, described her now-famous comment—that the win’s significance was simply “getting to party”—as a joke. “I’d had one drink before the interview,” she clarified, dismissing online speculation that she was on sick leave due to drinking. “I’m at work right now. I’m not on sick leave.”

The 24-year-old interior architecture student said she arrived at the square 15 minutes before the interview, approached the Yle crew on impulse, and left shortly after. Though some compared her to the “Torilla tavataan” man—a fan famously filmed waving the Finnish flag after the 2011 championship—Salonen shrugged off the parallel. “Someone mentioned a video where a girl said her favorite animal was a pupu [Finnish slang for ‘butt’] and answered ‘no’ to everything else. I relate to that energy, but I’m not that person.”

She stood by her original remarks: “I still mean what I said.” Yet she downplayed her newfound fame: “This might last until the weekend, then the messages will stop. I don’t have much to offer—I’m just a regular person who said something silly.”

A self-described casual hockey fan (“the puck’s too small, it moves too fast”), Salonen singled out Kouvola’s arena as “one of the most beautiful in the world”—a design she admires for her own work. She missed Monday’s victory parade, unaware it was happening. “Wait, there’s something today?”