Saturday is a dual holiday in Finland, with the dominant Evangelical Lutheran Church observing All Saints' Day and Finnish Swedish Heritage Day honouring the nation's largest linguistic minority.
In Finland, All Saints' Day, also known as the Feast of All Saints, All Hallows' Day or Hallowmas, is a day for remembering loved ones who have died, especially during the past year.
Many Finns visit cemeteries to light candles and place flowers or wreaths at family graves. The custom became more common in Finland after the Second World War.
The Christian holiday All Saints’ Day is usually observed on November 1, but the Finnish and Swedish Lutheran churches have celebrated it on the nearest Saturday since the mid-1950s. The feast day may fall anywhere between 31 October and 6 November, often the darkest time of the year, before snow cover in most of the country.
While the Finnish All Saints' Day could be seen as a more solemn counterpart of the Latin American Day of the Dead. Some here also still celebrate kekri, a pre-Christian harvest celebration that is closer to the Gaelic festival Samhain. In recent decades, celebrations of the American Halloween have become more mainstream and commercialised in Finland.
With the holiday on a Saturday, there are few schedule changes. Most public transport runs on Sunday timetables, with extra busses to cemeteries. Some public services that might otherwise be open on Saturdays are closed, as are Alko shops.
Swedish Day festivities broadcast from Åland
Flags also fly on Saturday to mark Finnish Swedish Heritage Day, celebrating the nation's main linguistic minority.
Yle broadcasts the main Svenska Dagen festivities from Mariehamn, capital of the Swedish-speaking province of Åland, beginning at 6pm on Saturday.
The gala, including prize ceremonies and music, is hosted by the Swedish Assembly of Finland (Svenska Finlands Folkting), a consultative parliament.
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" We've chosen to organise the Swedish Heritage Day celebration in Mariehamn since Åland is celebrating 100 years of self-governance this year. It's especially fun to now be able to arrange a celebration with the audience present after a long break," Folkting spokesperson Stina Heikkilä told Yle.
According to Statistics Finland, as of the end of last year 5.2 percent of the population spoke Swedish as their native language. Fifty years ago it stood at around 6.6 percent. That share has gradually declined over the past century or so, following the end of Swedish rule over Finland in 1809 – even in officially monolingual Åland.
Finland's second largest minority language is Russian, spoken by about 1.5 percent of residents, followed by Estonian at 0.9 percent and Arabic at 0.6 percent.
