Turisas are a Finnish folk metal band from Hämeenlinna. They were founded in 1997 by Mathias Nygård and Jussi Wickström and named after an ancient Finnish God of war.
Turisas is a folk metal band, incorporating elements of power metal, with some influences taken from symphonic metal. Turisas is known to play all of their solos on electric violin, as opposed to traditional guitar solos. The album title Battle Metal has given rise to the term "battle metal" being used as a description of folk metal (used mainly by Metal Hammer magazine and its readers) but it is not a canonical metal subgenre.