The Bunny Hopping championships are underway this weekend in Jyväskylä, Finland, where various bunny trainers get to pit their creatures (with names like wrestlers and gladiators) against each other on courses assessed for height and length. Today was the preliminary rounds, tomorrow at ten we see the elite finals and the distance heats.

Bunny Hopping has been a thing for twenty years, starting over there in That Fancy Sweden before migrating first to the Swedish-speaking west coast of Finland.

“The Swedes have been doing it for longer,” seethed one competitor. “So they’ve got the jump on us.”

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Short History of Finland. Just when he thinks there is nothing left to talk about…