List of Famous people born in Finland

Marjo Tuulevi Matikainen-Kallström is a politician and former Finnish cross-country skier.

Heikki Vihtori Hasu is a retired Finnish Nordic skier who competed in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics.

Laura Anneli Lepistö is a Finnish former competitive figure skater. She is the 2010 world bronze medalist, the 2009 European champion, and a two-time Finnish national champion.

Marjut Rolig is a Finnish former cross-country skier who competed during the early 1990s. She won two medals at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville with a gold in the 5 km and a silver in the 15 km.

Martti Ilmari Simojoki, previously Simelius was the Archbishop of Turku, and the spiritual head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland between 1964 and 1978. Simojoki became the first bishop of the Diocese of Helsinki that was established in 1959.

Helena Sofia (Helene) Schjerfbeck was a Finnish painter. A modernist painter, she is known for her realist works and self-portraits, and also for her landscapes and still lifes. Throughout her long life, her work changed dramatically beginning with French-influenced realism and plein air painting. It gradually evolved towards portraits and still life paintings. At the beginning of her career she often produced historical paintings, such as the Wounded Warrior in the Snow (1880), At the Door of Linköping Jail in 1600 (1882) and The Death of Wilhelm von Schwerin (1886). Historical paintings were usually the realm of male painters, as was the experimentation with modern influences and French radical naturalism. As a result, her works produced mostly in the 1880s did not receive a favourable reception until later in her life.

Her work starts with a dazzlingly skilled, somewhat melancholic version of late-19th-century academic realism…it ends with distilled, nearly abstract images in which pure paint and cryptic description are held in perfect balance.

Jarno Karl Keimo Saarinen was a Finnish professional Grand Prix motorcycle road racer. In the early 1970s, he was considered one of the most promising and talented motorcycle racers of his era until he was killed during the 1973 Nations Grand Prix in Italy. Saarinen's death led to increased demands for better safety conditions for motorcycle racers competing in the world championships. He remains the only Finn to have won a motorcycle road racing world championship. Saarinen was inducted into the F.I.M. MotoGP Hall of Fame in 2009.

Satu Maijastiina Hassi is a Finnish politician, and former Member of the European Parliament for the Green League. She served as the Minister of Environment and Development Co-Operation in Paavo Lipponen's second cabinet between 15 April 1999 and 31 May 2002. In accordance with her party's position on the issue, she quit the cabinet in protest of the government's decision to build a fifth nuclear power plant in Finland. Hassi served as the leader of her party between 1999 and 2001. She was a member of the national parliament from 1991 to 2004; she left the parliament when she was elected to the European Parliament as the sole Finnish Green representative in the 2004 election.

Archbishop Leo (Makkonen) of Helsinki and All Finland, head of the Finnish Orthodox Church, was born in Pielavesi in eastern Finland on June 4, 1948. After completing studies in 1972 at the Kuopio seminary, he was ordained deacon on 20 July 1973 and priest two days later.

Anni Helena Takalo is a Finnish former cross-country skier. She was born in Nivala, and was dominant women's cross-country skiing in the 1970s, earning five Winter Olympic medals and four FIS Nordic World Ski Championships medals.