Mauno Wilkkinen

Mauno Wilkkinen (official name Mauno Samuli Vilkkinen; 15 August 1910 Vampula – 11 April 1995 Somero) was a Finnish world traveler known especially for his long bicycle journeys in various parts of the world. He was nicknamed Someron teräsvaari (English: Old man of steel from Somero), a title that was also printed on his own business card. Between 1972 and 1981, Wilkkinen cycled around the world, visiting 71 countries during his travels.

Life Wilkkinen was originally from Vampula According to Horila, he stayed in Mexico for more than a month. A South American newspaper compared him to Paavo Nurmi in putting Finland on the map, and the comparison was repeated in other publications as the trip progressed.

Wilkkinen compiled an extensive archive from his travels. According to Horila, it included about 6,000 photographs, an extensive collection of newspaper clippings, and guestbooks that had accumulated about 5,200 names and addresses. Correspondence from 1972–1984 filled seven folders, and the number of both received and sent letters was approaching two thousand each. According to Se! magazine, his archive contained over 6,000 photographs and at least the same number of letters. On his trips, Wilkkinen also visited Finns living abroad; according to Horila, he met about twenty Finnish ambassadors and visited 41 consulates.

Journalist Antti Arve has noted that although Wilkkinen was widely written about in foreign newspapers and interviewed for numerous radio and television programs in various countries, his trip received significantly less attention in Finland than, for example, the crew of the Finnish boat in the 1981 Whitbread Round the World Race in the same year.

Wilkkinen's life's work has been recorded and studied especially by Arve, who first met Wilkkinen in the summer of 1981 after his return from the round-the-world trip and interviewed him for several hours for Turun Sanomat. On his own bicycle trips in South America, North America, and Asia, Arve met numerous people who had encountered Wilkkinen, and wrote extensive obituaries about Wilkkinen for Iltalehti and Fillari magazine in 1997. Alongside Arve's writing, Fillari magazine proposed that Wilkkinen's travel estate should be properly placed in a museum as significant historical material.

Later years and death After the round-the-world trip, Wilkkinen continued bicycle traveling. As late as 1990, when he turned 80, he returned to Somero from a seven-month trip during which he had visited Florida and Canada.

Wilkkinen died on 11 April 1995 in Somero. He was blessed at Vampula Church on 22 April 1995. According to Fillari and Iltalehti magazines, he died of cancer.