As someone just getting access to the net in '94/'95 and also learning programming via Turbo Pascal around that time, ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi was a lot more important! Now sadly gone.
I lived in Oulu and would go to a local library to download game programming tutorials for Turbo Pascal from x2ftp, not quite realizing that the library was pretty much half-way on the direct line connecting my home and the location where the x2ftp server was located. The name, as I heard afterwards, came from it being hosted and managed by the association of Computer Science and Engineering students of the University of Oulu (https://otit.fi/en/kilta/) in a bomb shelter under the main campus building, stairs down from the entrance designated as X2.
One of my favorites as well! I had a poke around and it seems there's a downloadable archive of it, though at "only" 500MB I'm not sure how complete it is: https://archive.org/details/X2ftpArchive
There's a mirror available at ftp://foto.lu.lv/pub/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming. Only via FTP, as far as I can tell. It works well with e.g. Filezilla. Log in as anonymous...
I believe it might be just because it is really easy to incorporate an association in Finland and an association that is a non-profit organization founded for public benefit will be considered tax exempt by default. Many of these services have been run by the incorporated associations as opposed to just a loose group of individuals or a single person.
The FUNET though is the Finnish university research network and thus I believe the Funet FTP server has always resided on a server funded by the government but still mostly maintained by volunteers.
I think... both for Finland and Sweden: We wanted to stand out internationally. And there were lots of clever people in the right places early on. And there was money to spend on that exciting new stuff, after the first few early press rounds.
But since this on top of HN I hope someone who actually knows will show up soon. :)
(https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.msdos.programmer/c/Kcoc7...)