What is the national sport of Finland?

If, over the past few years, you have viewed that northern European country through the prism of this column, the question will probably prompt a flutter of trepidation. It’s a corner of the world that has given us swamp soccer and competitive wife-carrying. It’s a region in which, under the guise of sport, people attempt to cross unfrozen lakes on snowmobiles and have modified the humble playground swing to enable 360-degree rotation.

For the average non-Finn, the answer to the question provides little illumination. The national sport of Finland is pesäpallo.

So now we have another question. What on Earth is pesäpallo?

One thing it isn’t is baseball, though the two can be easily confused. Case in point: The two American students sitting behind me on the bus into Helsinki from the airport a couple of years ago. They noticed a game in progress on a school sports field. “Hey, they play baseball here.”

It was an express bus; the game flashed by at 70 mph. Had we lingered, it wouldn’t have taken long for my fellow passengers to realize there was something strange about the layout of the playing area. And they might also have asked, “What in the name of Walter Johnson does that pitcher think he’s doing?”

Pesäpallo, aka pesis, was conceived in 1922 by a former Olympian named Lauri Pihkala. He sought to create a team sport combining elements of baseball with aspects of local bat and ball games. It is unclear whether his primary motive was to improve baseball or to devise a game that would provide rowdy fun during the summer months. Given that he was Finnish, probably both.

The first modification was to move the pitcher to the home plate. Yes, you imagine that right. The pitcher stands eye to eye with the batter. Instead of being thrown horizontally at high velocity, the ball is tossed into the air. The batter thwacks it when it comes down (by which time the pitcher has retreated to safety).

In contrast to baseball, there is no celebration if the batter hits the ball out of the field. That’s a foul, not a home run. Instead, the onus is on the batter to keep the ball within the playing area, aiming for the spaces between the fielders.

Instead of running to the right after a successful hit, the batter goes left to first base, then takes a sharp right to second base, then left to third base, and left again to the home plate. Anyone switching to pesäpallo from baseball should probably be issued a map.

The eccentric design of the pesäpallo field makes for a highly tactical sport. On the sidelines, team managers wield fans of brightly colored sticks to signal covert instructions to their players.

In common with baseball, pesäpallo is played at different competitive levels, from grassroots to the major league (known as Superpesis). Curiously, the elite teams are all based in small towns and villages scattered around Finland’s vast rural hinterland. Matches often attract crowds outnumbering the local population.

For post-match bonding, players and spectators can opt for a game of mölkky, another subversion of an American favorite. Similar to ten-pin bowling, mölkky has some typically Finnish quirks. For instance, there is no bowling ball. The 12 numbered pins must be toppled using a throwing pin. Each time a competitor knocks over a target pin, its number is added to the score. The aim is to accumulate exactly 50 points.

For visitors to the country, pesäpallo and mölkky are representative of Finland itself. Oddly familiar yet completely different.