Copenhagen/Stockholm  - The New Year's Eve celebrations in the Nordic region were marred by reports of two stabbing deaths as well as scores of injuries caused by fireworks.

The two stabbing deaths involved a 37-year-old man in a Copenhagen night spot, and a man in his 30s on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, but there were no other police details.

Meanwhile in Denmark, emergency services group Falck Thursday reported 43 injuries related to fireworks, compared to 40 last year.

Victims included a 14-year-old boy who sustained burns caused by fireworks and was taken to the University Hospital in Copenhagen.

A 13-year-old boy lost a finger due to an exploding firework in the city of Aalborg.

In neighbouring Sweden a 12-year-old boy was taken to hospital in Stockholm for treatment of an eye injury after being hit in the face by a fireworks rocket.

Finnish hospitals reported some 20 eye injuries caused by fireworks, a decline by half compared to last year's tally, Finnish news agency STT reported.

But the festivities were also an occasion in Sweden for a record number of text messages sent on New Year's Eve, telecommunication operators said Thursday.

Finnish-Swedish group Telia Sonera said more than 24 million text messages were transmitted in its network from midnight Tuesday to 6 am Thursday - an increase by 2.6 million text messages on 2007 - peaking late on New Year's Eve.

"New Year's Eve can also be called text messaging eve," Telia Sonera's head of mobile services Erik Hallberg said in a statement.

Rival Tele 2 reported that 28.4 million text messages were sent on New Year's Eve and until 9 am on New Year's Day, up 65 per cent on 2007.

In her New Year's Day speech Finnish President Tarja Halonen focused on the global financial crisis and underlined the need to promote environmental protection including of the Baltic Sea.

She also expressed concern over violence in Finland, mentioning a trade school shooting in September that claimed 11 lives.

Halonen welcomed measures to reduce "the harmful effects of alcohol and restricting the availability of handguns."

Both Queen Margrethe of Denmark and King Harald of Norway held televised addresses earlier on New Year's Eve.

The queen touched on the financial crisis noting that "we have for a long time been used to everything getting better and better, that tomorrow would always be brighter. Now prospects are darker."

But compared to other places in the world, Denmark remained "among the most privileged countries in the world. That gives us obligations," the monarch said.

In Oslo, King Harald also mentioned the financial crisis, urging Norwegians not only to think about their own interests.

He also expressed concern for discrimination against people of different ethnic backgrounds and called for tolerance and support for "people struggling with substance abuse problems." (dpa)