Scandinavia Has a Lot of Metal Bands. This Map Shows Just How Many.
Welcome to Fun with Geography! Today, we’re doing to look at a very special map of northern Europe.
Scandinavia is known for its love of metal. Of course, the US has a number of famous metal bands, as does Canada and the UK, but when the numbers are broken down for the number of metal bands and the size of the populations, Scandinavia wins hands down. And sitting at the top is Finland. (Even Barack Obama gave this fact a shout-out.)
Having lived in Thunder Bay for four years, a city that boasts the largest community of Finnish people outside of Finland, the fact that Finland has more metal bands per million people than anywhere else doesn’t surprise me. Thunder Bay had tons of metal bands and local bars hosted regular metal shows featuring local bands.
Czech linguist and mathematician Jakub Marian did some research and created a map of Europe showing the density of metal bands in each country. The number is how many bands per million people. Finland boasts 630 metal bands per million. Considering the Scandinavian country only has about 5.5 million people in total, that’s a lot of metal bands. Sweden comes in second with 425, Iceland in third with 341, and Norway in fourth with 299.
For comparison, the United States has 72 metal bands per million and the United Kingdom has 69.
In case your European geography is a little rusty, here’s an interactive map to help you figure out which country is which on the infographic map.
