Kalevi Keihänen

Åke Kalevi Keihänen (28 June 1924 – 9 February 1995) was a Finnish travel agency entrepreneur, director of Keihäsmatkat and a groundbreaking figure in Finnish tourism. Keihänen became known for his extravagant behaviour, long hair and unique style of dress – in advertisement photography, he wore a chinchilla fur coat with only a pair of swimming trunks underneath. The coat was said to have cost him 120,000 markka. Keihänen was said to have copied his style of dress from the Danish travel agency entrepreneur Simon Spies.

Career Kalevi Keihänen was born as the son of a shopkeeper in Vahto near Turku, and the family moved to Kihniö in northeastern Satakunta when Kalevi was only a little boy. Keihänen took part in the Lapland War. After the war he moved to Tampere, where he started a car rental business. Keihänen started his career in the travel business in 1954 by organising trips for sportspeople to the EM sports championships in Bern, Switzerland. He later organised ship trips to Visby, Sweden.

In 1965 Keihänen founded his own travel agency Keihäsmatkat, which began selling cheap trips to holiday resorts in southern Europe for Finns in the late 1960s. Keihänen himself blamed the state-owned airline Finnair for the downfall of his companies.

In the 1980s Keihänen was sentenced to prison for tax evasion.

The latter part of Keihänen's life was shadowed by a grave illness, and he spent the end of his life in Pikku-Huopalahti in Helsinki. Keihänen died in 1995 at the age of 70, and he has been buried at the Turku Cemetery. In an article in Helsingin Sanomat in 2007, the authors of Suomen kansallisbiografia listed Keihänen as one of the biggest influencers in the time of independent Finland, and he has been described as the father of mass tourism in Finland.

Keihänen in popular culture The refrain of Irwin Goodman's song "Minä ja Urkki" mentions Keihänen. Juha Vainio made a song called "Varsinaiset Seiväsmatkat" about Keihäsmatkat. "Seuramatkat", another song by Juha Vainio, was about the liquor-infested flights of the Härmä boys to holiday resorts in southern Europe, full of sunshine and cheap booze. The cheerful refrain "Nää on suuret suomalaiset seiväsmatkat" ("These are the great Finnish spear flights") was a reference to Keihänen's company Keihäsmatkat. The song was recorded in 1967 by Reijo Tani (1931–2011), the drummer of the Kotka-based band of Pertti Metsärinne, written by Jukka Lindfors.

Kalevi Keihänen's character, played by Seppo Sallinen, appears in Timo Koivusalo's film Rentun ruusu which is about Irwin Goodman's life. There is also the character of travel agency entrepreneur Kille Kiekkonen, modelled after Kalevi Keihänen, in Matti Kassila's 1973 film Meiltähän tämä käy, played by Pekka Autiovuori.

The mustard company Colman's advertised their mustard in Finland in the middle 1970s with Kalevi Keihänen's name and picture.

A TV series about Keihäsmatkat named Keihäsmatkat was published in January 2020, with Keihänen played by Janne Kataja. The series was produced by the company Hihhihhii Oy, owned by Kataja and Aku Hirviniemi. According to Kataja, the series is a fictional story including factual events.