We don’t want to host if KAJ’s sauna song wins Eurovision, says Swedish city of Malmö

There are inactive respective days to spell until the Eurovision last successful Switzerland, but the Swedish metropolis of Malmö has already pre-emptively said it does not privation to big the lawsuit again adjacent twelvemonth if the country’s hotly tipped sauna-themed introduction wins this year’s contest.

The opus – called Bara bada bastu (Just sauna) – is apical of the streaming charts successful some Sweden and Finland connected Spotify and is simply a favourite to triumph Saturday’s last successful Basel.

It is performed by the Finnish radical KAJ, who are among Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, and includes the lyrics “Just sauna, sauna / Steam it up, until the sweat conscionable sprays”.

But if KAJ are triumphant and the hosting rights to adjacent year’s contention autumn to Sweden, Malmö has ruled retired reprising its big metropolis relation from 2024 – wherever the metropolis became the venue for respective ample demonstrations against Israel’s information and the policing measure much than doubled from the archetypal fund to 92 cardinal kroner (£7m).

The aforesaid metropolis hosting the contention multiples times is not chartless successful Eurovision. Dublin was the big metropolis successful 1994, 1995 and 1997 – a 1990s Irish tally that began with the municipality of Millstreet successful County Cork staging it successful 1993. Ireland and Sweden person some won and hosted the contention 7 times.

Anna Wittgren, Malmö city’s caput of marketing, said policing costs were not a origin successful their determination due to the fact that that measure is not picked up by the city. Rather, she said, it was excessively large an lawsuit to big each 2 years.

“We did precise good past twelvemonth and present we’re passing the baton connected if it becomes necessary,” she said. “The Eurovision opus contention is exceptional successful that you lone person 10 months to organise and enactment connected a planetary lawsuit and we request to person it a small little often than each 2 years.”

The metropolis was “enormously proud” of past year’s event, she said, successful which “we showed that successful the tone of ideology we could location some protests and a world-class lawsuit successful harmless and unafraid ways for each participants”.

Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, and Örnsköldsvik person been tipped arsenic imaginable hosts successful the lawsuit that KAJ should win.

As good arsenic promoting the merits of sauna culture, Sweden’s introduction besides puts the spotlight connected Finland’s 290,000 Swedish-speaking colonisation and the Vörå dialect spoken successful the bilingual Finnish municipality wherever KAJ are from.

Use of the Swedish connection successful Finland dates backmost to astatine slightest the 12th period and remains an authoritative connection of Finland today.

Finland was portion of the Swedish kingdom betwixt 1323 and 1809, erstwhile it was captured by Russia and became portion of the Russian empire until Finland declared independency successful 1917.