5 Euros Stoat, Short-tailed weasel

Part of Finland's long-running "Finnish Nature" series, this issue was struck by the Mint of Finland at Vantaa as a circulation-quality collectible — nominally legal tender but rarely encountered in everyday transactions. The stoat was chosen partly for its ecological significance in Finnish forests and partly to continue the series' pattern of featuring animals that register strongly in Finnish cultural consciousness, where rural wildlife remains a fixture of national identity in ways that feel less sentimental than simply accurate.

The bimetallic format was adopted across the series to discourage counterfeiting of what were, functionally, collector pieces priced above face value at point of sale.