Hanna Pakarinen

Hanna Helena Pakarinen (born April 17, 1981 in Lappeenranta, Finland) is a Finnish pop and pop-rock singer who rose to fame as the winner of the first series of the Finnish singing competition Idols in 2004. Since then she has also participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007, and has sold over 91,000 certified records in Finland, which places her among the top 50 best-selling female soloists in her home country. Hanna was born in Lappeenranta, South Karelia (though she now resides in Helsinki she still proudly speaks the local dialect of the region). Throughout her early twenties she worked as a forklift driver, an unusual occupation for a female, and was part of a local Finnish band named Rained. In the summer of 2003, a...