Russian romance is a part of an endangered musical genre that is about to be brought back to life.

Carelian-born Cossack Viktor Klimenko has garnered fame in the Gospel music scene, but has now gathered together a varied group of talented artists to save a culture that is slowly withering away: the music of the Russian pre-communist era brought over by fleeing emigrants that is renowned for its gripping gypsy songs with a twist of romance.

Rosa Karo’s latest film offers a light alternative for cinemagoers.

FAIRYTALES have become rather rare in today’s world, where films that portray uttermost misery seem to be the most applauded. Cinema houses are packed with works that – although possibly cinematic masterpieces – will make you cry, shiver, or simply bring you down for hours, sometimes even for days.

Creeping onto the Finnish music scene with her haunting melancholia, Mirel Wagner’s unique voice is beginning to make waves overseas.

With a growing fan base both here and abroad, 23-year-old Espoo resident Mirel Wagner continues to win plaudits for her intoxicatingly dark tales, which twist together elements not normally found in modern popular music. Released earlier this year, her remarkable debut album was preceded by the single No Death, a morbid tale of a physical embrace with a deceased partner.

Paavo Arhinmäki leads from the left.

Anyone with even a mild interest in Finnish politics over the past decades knows that Paavo Arhinmäki, Finland’s Minister of Culture and Sport, has been riding other vehicles but the gravy train. The Left Alliance – whose predecessor was Finland’s second-biggest political party at the time of Arhinmäki’s birth – has endured a decline in support virtually since the late 1970s. It has hardly been the party for fortune-hunting “political poussins” (poliittiset broilerit), as Finns jokingly dub their youthful career politicians. But Arhinmäki, true to his values, has not jumped on alternatively coloured bandwagons like so many Finnish left-wing politicians before him.

LIKE MANY foreigners in Finland, Tonislav Hristov came here to follow his heart. In love with his Finnish wife, he settled down, learned Finnish, and began a filmmaking career. Then disaster struck. The breakdown of his five-year marriage led to a “tragicomic” period of dating and soul-searching documented in Sinkkuelämän Säännöt (“Rules of Single Life”), in which Hristov and his single immigrant friends try to get back in the saddle and sort out their love lives. The film won best documentary at the Sofia International Film Festival this year and is out now on DVD in Finland. We spoke with Hristov on the phone from his native Bulgaria – where he is tying the knot a second time.

There’s really nothing that can beat an ice cream – or is there?

What has been a hit for quite few years over in the States and other European cities has finally landed in Finland as well. Introducing: frozen yogurt. Now, yes, it has been available from the supermarket freezers before and there have even been the odd stalls at markets that may have provided a taster of its goodness, but the very first permanent frozen yogurt shop Kippo now stands at Iso Roobertinkatu in Helsinki.

GETTING together 10-12 June, Helsinki’s 4th annual Bassline Festival makes a welcome return to the busy summer calendar, with a packed programme spilling across four locations around town.

Taking place at Sinebrychoff Park, Mbar terrace, Lasipalatsi Square and outside the front of Kiasma, the three-day festival carries a very palatable price tag for punters: everything on offer is free.

Things get started on Friday afternoon with what has quickly become a tradition for the festival, with the hotly-anticipated skateboarding Best Tricks Contest in front of Kiasma from 16:00-20:00.

Juhannus, or Finnish Midsummer, is a time when the cities traditionally empty out and Finns flock en masse for bonfire and alcohol-fuelled revelry at cottages in the countryside. Since many of Finland’s roughly half a million part-time leisure residences also go without bourgy mod cons like running water or electric stoves, it’s also generally a time to get back to an older way of life: chopping firewood, pumping well water and, erm, emptying the outhouse. But if you’re one of the many without access to a cottage or, moreover, someone who doesn’t consider backbreaking menial tasks of the Iron Age an ideal way to spend a holiday, all is not lost. Helsinki celebrates Midsummer in its own more urban way nonetheless.

Helsinki Pride, the largest event in Finland to promote tolerance and equality with sexual orientation, takes place across the capital at the end of June. The weeklong event will cover issues of human rights and diversity of love – along with a number of concerts and hard partying, no doubt.

The event is most visible on Saturday 2 July, when the colourful Pride parade takes off from the Central Railway Station. Despite the unfortunate hate crime attacks last summer, a huge number of people are expected to gather together in the name of equality. The parade ends up in Kaisaniemi Park where the crowd is entertained by PMMP and the Martina Aitolehto dance group.

COMMENCING 29 April, Taidehalli is hosting a couple of notable Finnish artists at opposite ends of their careers.

Age of Elegance – Claire Aho is a much-anticipated collection from “The Grand Old Lady of Finnish Photography”, with the display consisting of Claire Aho’s fashion, advertisements and covers from the ’50s and ’60s.

With a career that began back in the 1940s, Aho is a respected pioneer of Finnish colour photography and is known for her work in magazines, advertisements and book covers, as well as for her colourful portraits.