Chief Exports

I'm too lazy (at the moment) to actually look up what the chief exports of Finland happen to be, but I don't think one would to too far amiss in guessing that Finland's chief exports would include fish, forestry equipment, hockey players, reindeer products, and death metal. What? Yes indeed, death metal. I wager that there is no country on Earth that produces as much metal on a per capita basis as Finland.

I mean, just off the top of my head, here are Finnish metal bands that I know of: Insomnium, Children of Bodom, Swallow the Sun, Beherit, Mors Principium Est, Impaled Nazarene, Amorphis, Ensiferum, Finntroll... And there are more, many more.

So what gives over there in Finland? What makes Finland such a power in metal circles? Is it the fact that winter lasts nine months and they've got nothing better to do than write moody black or death metal songs? Or is this some kind of deliberate government policy? Have they set up musical analogues of the Eastern Bloc "Institutes of Physical Culture"? And what does the Finnish government say to all of this? Are they discomfited by this weird embarrassment of dark riches? Or do they pocket the taxes from the record sales and grin all the way to the sauna?

I bet the latter.