What is "aava"

"Aava" ("Open landscape") is a song by Edea, which was the Finnish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1998.

The song was performed twenty-first on the night, following Belgium's Mélanie Cohl with " Dis oui" and preceding Norway's Lars Fredriksen with " Alltid sommer". At the close of voting, it had received 22 points, placing 15th in a field of 25, thus relegating Finland from participation in the 1999 Contest.

The song consists largely of the repetition of the phrase "open landscape wide", taking advantage of the sounds of the Finnish language (in which the phrase is rendered "avaa maa avara". It thus stands as something of a one-off in Contest history, and is regarded with interest by many fans of the Contest. It is not the song with the briefest lyric in contest history, that distinction being held by Norway's Secret Garden with " Nocturne", but it does hold the record for the fewest different words, a total of 7.

It was succeeded as Finnish representative at the 2000 Contest by Nina Åström with " A Little Bit".