Hymy is a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 magazine, which was launched in 1959 by publisher Urpo Lahtinen

Urpo Lahtinen

Urpo Lahtinen was a Finnish magazine publisher. He was born on 22 April 1931 in Helsinki and died in 1994. Urpo Lahtinen started his journalistic career in 1952 writing for the Social Democratic paper Eteenpäin in Kotka, continuing in Kansan Lehti of Tampere...

 and was named after his wife Hymy Lahtinen. In the 1960s and 1970s Hymy became a success with sensationalist stories containing lots of sex and gossip about Finnish celebrities, often verging on the invasion of privacy

Invasion of privacy

United States privacy law embodies several different legal concepts. One is the invasion of privacy, a tort based in common law allowing an aggrieved party to bring a lawsuit against an individual who unlawfully intrudes into his or her private affairs, discloses his or her private information,...

. Typical Hymy stories would be about the singer Irwin Goodman

Irwin Goodman

Irwin Goodman was a popular Finnish rock and folk singer. In the late 1960s he was widely known as a protest singer. He recorded over 300 songs, most of which were his own compositions, with lyrics written by Vexi Salmi...

, Finland's first openly gay celebrity Monsieur Mosse

Monsieur Mosse

Monsieur Mosse, originally Raimo Jääskeläinen, was a Finnish make-up artist . Monsieur Mosse was the first openly gay Finnish celebrity, who "came out of the closet" in 1971. His nickname refers to his role as a UN ranger called Mosse in the Åke Lindman-directed film Laukaus Kyproksella. In 1970s...

, or the notorious pictorial on Jörn Donner

Jörn Donner

Jörn Johan Donner is a Finnish writer, film director, actor, producer, politician, member of the Donner family and founder of Finnish Film Archive. He has been associated with several different political parties, and has at different times been a member both of the Finnish parliament and the...

 naked on a Gambian beach with a local underage young girl. The most famous writer for Hymy was Veikko Ennala

Veikko Ennala

Veikko Ennala was a Finnish journalist. His best-known work was for the magazine Hymy, published by Urpo Lahtinen....

, and probably one of the most infamous stories was about the author Timo K. Mukka

Timo K. Mukka

Timo Kustaa Mukka was a Finnish author who wrote about the lives of people in Lapland.-Life and work:Timo Mukka was born in Bollnäs in Sweden...

, which many thought was one of the main causes of the author's early death soon afterwards. This resulted in a Finnish law called the Lex Hymy, regulating any press stories published about private persons.

In March 2008 the magazine published story of the Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva

Ilkka Kanerva

Ilkka Armas Mikael Kanerva is a member of the Finnish Parliament. He was born in Lokalahti, now a part of Uusikaupunki in Finland Proper. He was the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2008. He was forced to resign from the position due to a scandal involving hundreds of text messages he...

's SMS messages to an erotic dancer. After the magazine on April 1, 2008 published several of the messages, Kanerva was dismissed.