This year’s favorite is Finland, and it’s easy to see why.
Linda Lampenius and Pete Parkkonen’s “Liekinheitin” (or “Flamethrower”) checks every Eurovision box.
It’s essentially a duet between Parkkonen, 36, a Finnish pop star, and Lampenius, 56, a onetime violin prodigy, in which Parkkonen sings about his passionate obsession for a woman who treats him badly and Lampenius responds with forceful melodies on her instrument, a 1781 Gagliano that some reports say is worth about $660,000.
At one point she sprints along the stage in heels while carrying it.
The competition doesn’t usually allow live instrumental performances, but Eurovision organizers have given Lampenius special permission to play onstage, given that the violin line is so critical to the song.
In the buildup to Saturday’s show, so much focus has been on Lampenius’s playing that some fans may have missed her struggles on the way to the Eurovision stage.
After studying violin at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Lampenius became a crossover violin star in the 1990s when EMI signed her for both classical and pop records. Serious British newspapers put her on their magazine covers. So, too, did Playboy (which called her the “Brahms Bombshell”).
Amid that success, Lampenius said in a recent interview, she met Peter Nygard, the Canadian fashion mogul, and had such a disturbing experience with him that she told a Finnish journalist that other women should be very careful in his company. Nygard sued Lampenius for defamation, demanding $10 million.
At the time, Lampenius said, she agreed to settle out of court because couldn’t afford to fight the lawsuit. Nygard “ruined my life,” Lampenius said, including compelling her to buy a full-page ad in a leading Finnish newspaper to apologize as part of the settlement.
After that, Lampenius said, she was playing corporate performances in Russia and Asia to generate much-needed income.
That all changed in 2020, when Nygard was arrested in Canada on sexual assault charges, and again in 2024 when he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for sexually assaulting four women, one of whom was a teenager at the time of the attack.
After the ruling, Lampenius considered herself free of the nondisclosure agreement. The Finnish newspaper in which she placed the apology ad also offered to reimburse her for the cost, according to YLE, Finland’s national broadcaster.
Now, she has signed a new major label deal and is hoping to win Eurovision with a song that has already topped Finland’s pop charts.
“This is my revenge to him,” Lampenius said.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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