Eva Polttila (born April 1, 1946) is a retired Finnish

television news anchor A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet. ...

. She worked in

YLE Yleisradio Oy (Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, founde ...

from 1969 to 2009. In television news she started in 1981 and at the time she was the first woman to read news regularly in Finland. Polttila is one of the most famous news anchors in Finland and she was given the title "the most reliable woman in Finland" when her long-time colleague

Arvi Lind Arvi Kullervo Lind (born December 21, 1940) is a retired Finnish television news presenter. He worked as the news anchor on Yleisradio TV1 from 1965 to 2003. Along with Kari Toivonen, he was one of the longest-serving employees of Yleisradio ne ...

retired in 2003.

Personal life

Polttila was born and grew up in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

. Her mother was the writer Brita Polttila, who was of

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

-born of German-Polish and English origin. Brita married poet

Arvo Turtiainen Arvo Albin Turtiainen (16 September 1904, Helsinki – 8 October 1980) was a Finnish writer and recipient of the Eino Leino Prize The Eino Leino Prize is an annual prize award to top writers in Finland since 1956, with particular emphasis on po ...

in 1953. Eva Polttila is married to a retired journalist of economics Juhani Ikonen. In her spare time Polttila does gymnastic exercise and

nordic walking Nordic walking is a Finnish-origin total-body version of walking that can be done both by non-athletes as a health-promoting physical activity and by athletes as a sport. The activity is performed with specially designed walking poles similar to s ...

and she has also worked as an ambassador of motion in the Suomi liikkeelle -campaign. Eva Polttila announced on September 1, 2009, the 50th anniversary of the first YLE TV News broadcast, that she will retire at the end of September. Her last news broadcast was on September 29, 2009, at 20.30

EEST Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) is one of the names of the UTC+03:00 time zone, which is 3 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used as a summer daylight saving time in some European and Middle Eastern countries, which makes it ...

Prizes

Eva Polttila was given the journalist prize of the republic of Finland in 2008. Polttila is also a four-time winner of

Telvis {{unreferenced, date=January 2010 Telvis is a Finnish television award presented by the '' Katso'' magazine. As of 2006, Telvis has been awarded 44 times (from 1962), making it the oldest television award in Finland. The Telvis statue has been desig ...

References

Finnish journalists 1946 births Finnish people of German descent Finnish people of Polish descent Living people Finnish television journalists Finnish people of English descent Finnish women journalists {{finland-journalist-stub