Be sure to visit Pelkosenniemi, Finland for its annual Mosquito Swatting Championship. It is a much beloved, local event. Contestants try to swat the most mosquitoes in 5 minutes. I don’t know when the event takes place, but I imagine it is in the mosquito season. Visitors who attract mosquitoes like flies, hee hee, will be asked to sit in the back rows as the mosquitoes biting them diminish the number of mosquitoes available to the contestants. The record for squashed mosquitos in Pelkosenniemi is 21.
The Swedish town of Övertorneå holds its own mosquito-swatting championship every June. The event started when the town was denied permission to use chemicals to kill the little, flying biters. So the good Swedes made a festival about killing the pests. Contestants here get 15 minutes to kill mosquitos. The record for this town is 135. Tips for getting a high kill count include: working up a good sweat just before competing, standing as still as possible, moving as little as you can when swatting a mosquito, and wearing dark clothes.
Would-be entrants should know that the Swedish record holder guessed mosquitos bit him about 200 times.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., travel guru
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