Exactly 50 years ago Finland started officially it's path in the Eurovision song contest and what a long and windy, a very rocky one it was but of course we didn't know it then! January 22, 1961 the eight finalist songs - picked by a jury out of 280 proposals -were first aired on radio for the first time. They repeated that four days in a row and people voted one song from each artist to the final. Three weeks later Kai Lind, Christina Hellmann, Laila Kinnunen and Ritva Mustonen were on stage in Helsinki's Työväentalo and live on TV. The evening end with a litle fiasco when the jury couldn't pick up the winner that would be told in radio and TV-news only the next day. That would be Laila Kinnunen with Valoa ikkunassa (Light in a window). She would go on to pick points from Denmark and the future Big5 countries France, United Kingdom and Italy finishing 10th out of 16. It was a start of a beautiful hate and love relationship.
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