Most Finnish towns have at least one ice rink. Many children learn to skate before they can ride a bike. Schools often have a rink in the playground in winter, and frozen lakes work just as well as professional rinks for kicking around.
Finland has won the World Ice Hockey Championship many times. For such a small country - only about 5.6 million people - that is amazing. Finnish hockey players are famous around the world for being calm under pressure, working together as a team, and never giving up.
Ice hockey is a fast sport. Players reach speeds of 40 kilometres per hour on skates, sliding across the ice. The puck can fly at well over 150 km/h. To stay safe, players wear lots of padded protection - helmets, shoulder pads, leg pads, big gloves. A goalkeeper wears so much padding that they look almost twice as big as the other players.
When Finland wins a big championship, the whole country celebrates. The team comes home, the players parade through the streets of Helsinki on an open-top bus, and tens of thousands of people fill the streets to sing, cheer and wave Finnish flags. Even the President shows up.