hercufles: do i need to finish witcher 1 to enjoy witcher 2?
Not really - important bits of the TW1 story are explained, and the impact of importing a TW1 save is not exactly great.
If you import a TW1 save you might have fun noticing references to events from TW1 - so far I've found just a few, but I 'm still early in Chapter 1. There might be some inside jokes as well, but I found none so far.
On the other hand, you might also get irritated by your experienced witcher becoming novice - again - and legendary equipment becoming barely better than what you find in the prologue.