Everyone was surprised by Oceanborn’s success. During winter 1999, Nightwish gave many shows in its country and, by spring, Oceanborn came out in the rest of the world.

At the same time, Tarja studied ‘church music’ in the Academy of music before specializing in opera. Emppu worked for a carpet seller while Sami and Jukka were jobless. Tuomas was a teacher in senior high school.

On April 20th 1999, the Columbine tragedy happened. This event moved Tuomas so much that he wrote a song about it (‘The Kinslayer’ on Wishmaster) which was played on most of their shows until 2005. In May, the band continued their tour in Finland for two and a half months and played in almost all the big Finnish festivals. In August, the single Sleeping Sun was released in Germany and it sold 15000 copies within a month. This song was released when a sun eclipse was visible in most of Europe on August 11th 1999. The single also included the songs ‘Walking In The Air’, ‘Swanheart’, and ‘Angels Fall First’. Oceanborn and Sacrament of Wilderness quickly became gold records. From then on, German audience became extremely important. At the same time, it was confirmed that Nightwish would support Rage on a European 26 date tour thanks to Drakkar Records. Tuomas considered that experience as a good learning but he asked himself questions and sometimes described the band as a bunch of clowns playing heavy metal with a diva escaped from opera. “Why do Austria fans came over to hear their Finnish heavy metal?”, he would think. At the end, Oceanborn was an exhausting experience for Tuomas. He felt intense emptiness as if he would never be able to write a song again. He had given everything and all creative energy was gone. He felt deep resentment – the loss of a certain innocence due to success and the exhaustion of true enthusiasm he had felt while composing Oceanborn disheartened him and made him nostalgic. Tuomas then composed with a lot of difficulties. Yet, he gathered many ideas and found back the will to do better.