I have been working during the last months on a really great project. We asked people about what makes them happy. It was a photo competition in Finland where people could send max. 3 items about something or someone what makes them happy and tell couple of sentences about the photo.
We made a webpage for the competition where we have been sharing the photos we received. It was nice to see that even though we think so that materialistic things are so important, most of the photos focused on the same sources of happiness. It was (in random order): nature, family members or beloved ones, pets, sometimes some nice food, or being at a nice event.
Once during this whole process also I stopped for a second to think about the question and wrote a short summary about the things what make me happy.
It was:
“I am the most happy when i can work on things i believe in. when i feel that i have a positive impact on the world. Also walking in Keskuspuisto (Helsinki) makes me very happy every time. i feel that it is my forest and somehow i feel very connected to that natural environment. i am happy when i meet someone i like and we have a good conversation. when i can feel close to a stranger even though i know that they will leave soon and we might not ever see each other again. i am also happy when i love someone and i can feel that i belong to that person. i am happy when i can see the good in someone who made me sad or dissapointed me because i see then that there was a reason why i tursted him first and things are not 100% black or white. it makes me happy to see if someone creates something good and is succeeding.”
The photo competition was closing on April 26th but I am already thinking if we should keep the #mhawhappiness hashtag and our email adress and encourage people to keep on sending photos also in the future. We`ll see this later on.
But one is sure already: there will be a photo exhibition from our favorite twenty three photos at RUPLA in Helsinki (Finland) . The opening event will be on the 23rd May staring at 17:00 at the same place. If you are in Helsinki that time you are more than welcome to join the opening event and if not please feel free to have a look at the photos what people sent to us.
Photo competition alert in Finland :)! Topic: “Tell us what makes you happy!”. Deadline: April 26th. You can send max. 3 items to yeesiphoto2016@gmail.com if you got interested. The winning twenty photos will be displayed at a photo exhibition in Rupla Art Gallery during the Mental Health Art Week 2016. All photos will be added to the photo competition`s online page: https://yeesimhaw2016.wordpress.com/.
(* have to add this info here since many people have asked: mental health = mental well being, taking care of your inner balance)
Visitors can vote for their three favorite photos during the exhibition. After the exhibition the votes will be counted and the photographers of the three photos which got the most quotes will be rewarded with a gift card worth of 50 EUR.
Feel free to share the info if you have some photo-enthusiastic friends who might be interested.
this is the official flyer of the event in Finnish:
It is hard to say what is typical for a whole nation-still we have to admit that there are cultural habits which are more representative for one country than for the other. Or more exactly said: certain things you do at one place and it is totally ok and understood. You do the same thing at an other place and it does not come through at all or it might be even totally misunderstood.
To start with an easy one: such thing is personal space for example. Physically and through gestures Finn respect the personal space of each other a lot. You might have seen this funny picture already about Finns waiting in the bus stop..
The distance between people standing in the bus stop. Source: Reddit
and it is totally true. Someone said that the comfortable personal space between strangers in Nordic countries is approx. 1,5 meters. It might be exaggerated but I would say that 1 meter might be on the comfortable limit. Also on the bus if there are still free seats people prefer to take a free seat instead of sitting next to someone.
What else? People do not like to make eye contact with strangers and even when talking to friends and family constant eye contact is not very common. It might be a sign of rudeness in other cultures not to look each other in the eye when talking- in Finland it is simply just a cultural habit. A lot of habits might be rooted in functionality and social behavior: Finns do not like small talk too much and do not like faking social situations. On the other hand if you become friends with Finnish people they really mean what they are saying and they will be friends who you can count on. It is just so that with Finns you may proceed a bit slower until you reach this point and until then there are a lot of small unwritten social rules which might be handy if you know them.
Some other conversational rules are: if you are standing too close to someone while talking you will notice that the other person is trying to get a bit further from you. You should notice and respect it and leave as much personal space for the other person what he/she can feel comfortable with.
Also touching strangers while talking to them might feel awkward to the other person. Being a Finnish-Hungarian double citizen it took time also for me to learn these rules and sometimes I was staring awkward when I first saw how people interact. In more Southern cultures it is acceptable for example to tap on someone`s shoulder or hold his arm for a sec as a sign of sympathy. In Finland for most people physical contact while talking even within friends is not so common. Finns do not give kisses on the cheek when greeting each other. Mostly the greeting is saying hi or shaking hands (even with women), people who know each other and are friends or family greet each other with a hug.
An other strange/funny thing might be that depending on the house where you live in it might not be common for neighbors to great each other while seeing each other in the stairwell. It is because it is simply not common to great strangers. It might sound rude but in Finland it is simply logical: of course you see that there is an other person but why to say hi if do not know who he is :)..
On the other hand this distance does also a lot for the mutual respect of each other and the common mental well being of people living in this society. To tell some examples: people do not talk about their salaries or financial status and it is very uncommon (and sometimes even considered rude) to ask even friends about how much they earn. It is simply considered as a part of their personal space. No one comments about each others appearance or clothes unless it is something positive or someone asks for an opinion. The same way it is totally not accepted to ask married friends or couples about if and when they want to have children and how many of them they want. The logic behind this is that people will tell things themselves anyways if they want to talk about them. A lot of unwritten social rules in the Finnish society represent the principle of “Live and Let Live”.
To be continued…
PS: As I was browsing photos about waiting for the bus I found a really funny webpage about socially awkward situations in Finland. It is called “Finnish nightmares”: www.finnishnightmares.blogspot.com.
You can also eat reindeer-meat in Finland. People do not eat it usually on daily basis of course but many restaurants have reindeer dishes on their menu if you want to try it and you can buy it also at certain shops.
Karjalanpiirakka
It is worth to mention that the latest Scandinavian food trends have reached Finland as mentioned before and in the everyday many people like to try new things. This is how for example raw cake and vegan food were a big hit in 2015.
You will surely notice..
that rye bread (ruisleipä) is something typically Finnish and many Finns like it a lot. Another fun fact is that Finns drink a lot of milk and coffee. Almost every dairy product has also a lactose-free version, this is because many people are lactose-intolerant in Nordic countries.
We already covered mämmi, another famous local sweet is licorice (lakritsi) which has a typical and unique salty-sweet taste. The most well known Finnish sweets company is called Fazer. You can find Fazer products in every shop. Speaking about brands: K-Kauppa shops have their own brand called Pirkka and S-Market and Prisma have their own brand called Rainbow. These product lines are usually cheaper than the products of other brands and their product portfolio covers products from household items to spices.
Licorice (lakritsi)
Many Finns like to eat oatmeal with berries for breakfast (aamupuuro). Although nowadays food habits differ from household to household. Speaking of berries: there are a lots of them and it will take a while until you will memorize which one is which but Finns will really appreciate it if they see that you can already differentiate berries. Just couple of them in Finnish: mustikka, mansikka, tyrni, puolukka, herukka…
In Finland selling alcohol (besides cider, beer and low-percentage wine) is a state-privilege. The Finnish state is selling alcohol in a store chain called ALKO. Here you can find all sorts of alcohol products and citizens above the age of 18 years are entitled to purchase alcohol here. Finns drink usually cider, beer and shots while going out with friends, wine consumption is somewhat moderate compared to other parts of Europe.
One more thought about local food culture: many Finns eat lunch at their workplace where they can choose from a menu of main dish, salad and dessert. Nowadays also coffee shops and restaurants have lunch offers (lounastarjous) which is in many cases rather a lunch buffet consisting of many different dishes or soup as main dish with salad/bread or salad as main dish.
If you got interested in Finnish foods you might like this page of Helsingin Sanomat called “Makujen hakukone” (Search engine of tastes). If you add the ingredients you have in your fridge, the search engine will recommend you recipes from its database of 4000 Finnish recipes. Have fun exploring!
The first thing what foreigners usually notice about Finnish food is the lack of spices. Some might even say at first sight that Finnish food is boring. Although many people who spend a bit more time with getting to know the local food culture find at least some dishes what they like a lot in the end.
Speaking of food culture in Finland is a bit hard because there are two main different trends: on one hand the food culture is very much influenced by international trends, especially in big cities. Many locals are open to new food trends and flavours. On the other hand Finns are very traditional about certain dishes what they eat at certain part of the year like mämmi or joulukinkku (Christmas ham).
Traditional Finnish food
The two main influences on the Finnish food culture were Sweden on the Western parts of the country and Russia in Eastern-Finland. Since Finland was not a very rich country until the end of the Second World War, Finnish people had to use what they could produce locally because most of the population could not afford to pay a lot for fancy ingredients. The harsh climate and short summers did not leave many choices: people had to use what they could grow during the short spring and summer and store throughout the year. This is why potato is a main ingredient of many traditional Finnish main dishes.
There was a positive side to limited choices as well: Finns learned to appreciate what nature provided them with and were trendsetters already before the trends came. Local and organic has been a part of Finnish food culture for a long time. Even nowadays people pick berries in the forest in summer, collect mushrooms in autumn and fish from rivers or the sea (you have to buy a fishing license before going to fish, you can pick berries freely anywhere without a license). The natural ingredients can be used for simple yet tasty dishes. Meatballs with lingonberry jam and potato (puolukkahillo ja lihapullat) are for example a true Nordic dish, just as salmon soup (lohikeitto) or freshly smoked fish at the mökki.
Meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam
Finns are very traditional about eating certain dishes at certain point of the year. At Christmas they have Christmas ham (joulukinkku) with carrot casserole, traditional Finnish rutabaga casserole and potato casserole. At Easter they eat mämmi and pasha and in summer they celebrate the crab season with eating crab (rapujuhla). Karjalanpiirakka is a typical Finnish pastry what people eat all around the year. If you want to try something unique you should try leipäjuustowith sea-buckthorn jam (tyrnihillo).
You can bring to Vappu picnic whatever you like. People often bring some champagne and strawberries for example. An other great invention which might make your picnic even more enjoyable is the disposable barbecue (kertakäyttögrilli) what you can buy in bigger shops or R-Kioski.
If you buy a disposable barbecue you can take it with you to the park and grill sausages, stake and vegetables on it during your picnic. If you use such a grill you should check before leaving that it burned to the end and you should spill some water on it before throwing it to the trash just to be sure.
May Day donuts (vappu munki), funnel cake (tippaleipä), colorful luftballoons and sima are also part of Vappu-tradition. Alcohol consumption is quite common during vappu so if you are in Finland at this time you should be prepared for some sort of festival feeling with lot of (drunken) people on the streets.
Source: Yle.fi
When Vappu is over, the next big celebration to look forward to is Juhannus. A huge percentage of Finns start their summer holidays after Juhannus. You can feel it even in Helsinki how empty the city gets after Juhannus when so many inhabitant leave to the mökki (weekend cottage) or for a holiday abroad.
Juhannus is considered the official start of summer in Finland. By then there is a lot of light during the day and nights are short and light. This video shows the difference between winter and summer in Finland quite well: Time lapse: the difference between summer and winter in Finland . Some people might have even sleeping difficulties in summer because of too much light during night. Travel eye masks (you can buy one in Clash Ohlson for example) can be of big help.
But back to Juhannus: for sure the biggest Juhannus-sensation for foreigners is the Juhannus-bonfire (Juhannuskokko).
Source: Yle.fi
The celebration of Midsummer`s Eve (Juhannus) used to be in ancient times a festival of summer solstice. Originally bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits as the sun was turning southward again. Later on the celebrations were Christinized but there were still many small rituals surviving in folk magic. Most of the rituals were connected to young maidens seeking suitors and fertility.
Nowadays Midsummer is a secular celebration for most of the Finns. It is a good occasion to celebrate the long days and summer, gather by a bonfire by the cottage or on some of the islands in Helsinki. Most of the people leave to a cottage in the countryside to celebrate Juhannus with family or friends. They go to the sauna together, swim in the lake and enjoy the view of bonfires on the shore or on the water. For young people Juhannus is the time of heavy partying again.
An interesting Finnish expression connected to Juhannus is cityjuhannus. It is an expression meaning that someone is spending Midsummer in the city and not somewhere in the countryside. You do not have to be sad if you can not spend Juhannus in the countryside. Municiplaities often organize Juhannus-events with bonfire which are free to attend. In Helsinki one of the most well-known of such events is on Pihlajasaari. You can get here by boat from the harbor next to Cafe Carusel. It is very beautiful to watch the Juhannus-bonfire on this island because you can see Helsinki on the other shore and often boats and smaller motor boats pass by behind the bonfire on the sea.
The public holidays in Finland during a year are: New Year (January 1st), Epiphany (January 6st), Easter (the exact time changes from year to year), May Day (May 1st), Acension Day (40th day after Easter), Whitsunday (50th day after Easter), Midsummer (the Saturday between 20th and 26th June), All Saints Day (the Saturday between October 31st and November ), Independe Day (December 6th) and Christmas (December 25th and 26th).
Part of these holidays are celebrated all over Europe like Christmas or Easter and can be traced back to the religious cultural history of Europe. Midsummer (juhannus in Finnish) is a typically Nordic-holiday which is nowadays celebrated only in Nordic countries. Idependence Day is connected to Finnish history and celebrating the independent state of Finland each year on December 6th.
Les talk a bit about specialties, habits or interesting/weird things.
Right to the middle, we have for example a beautifully looking Easter-food in Finland which is called mämmi. Some people like it, others do not like it so much. But as Easter is approaching you will see it in every shop. Why is it so exceptional? Because it looks like this:
Source Wikipedia
It is a rye-based dessert eaten with milk or cream and sugar and it actually tastes much better than it looks.
After Easter the next big thing to wait for is Vappu, May 1st. In Finland Vappu is a big collective celebration of the starting spring. The last snow is melting usually by Vappu. There is more light, everyone is much happier and more talkative and people start to wear more springish-summerish clothes.
These white caps are a symbol of vappu:
Source: http://fabulousfinnish.com/
People get these caps when they pass their university entrance exams. They keep their cap for the rest of their lives and at each vappu they wear it. University students also wear their student overalls which is a local specialty too. It is not only university graduates or Finns who can wear the caps. If you want to get one for yourself there are some shops easily found by google-ing which are selling them.
Vappu-picnic is also part of the tradition. The main day for a picnic is May 1st (some people are starting to celebrate already on April 30th).
Finnish people hold on to their traditions quite much and therefore there is a common “Finnish-ness” in all Finns but some regions are quite different from the other. Helsinki is for example in the Uusimaa-region of Finland.
The biggest regional difference within Finland is between Helsinki and the rest of Finland. While in the countryside people are living more traditional Finnish lives, Helsinki has become more and more cosmopolitan during the last decade what some Finns do not like so much. Still a lot of young people move after their studies to Helsinki because of the higher chance of finding a job.
But back to the regional differences: in Finland we have two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. At the Western and South-Western parts of Finland the percentage of Swedish speaking Finns is higher compared to other regions. Swedish speaking Finns are called suomenruotsalaiset in Finnish. Although they are a small percentage of the Finnish population (5.4%) , Swedish Finns are often in good economic position and are well educated- or at least this is the generalization about them.
An other big regional difference is that people in Helsinki live a much more urban life while people living in the countryside live a much more traditional, rural Finnish life. Many say that in order to get to know the real Finland you have to visit the countryside. There are a lot of places in Finland what you can not see as a tourist because Finland is more of a “lifestyle” than a destination.
Smaller cities are often not so interesting architecturally and are designed pretty much by the same logic. There is a tori, a market square, on the market square there is a market hall and opposite to the market hall there is a city hall. Then usually there is also a Sokos and an Antilla (shops) around the same market square. Then there are also some shops and museums.
But the nature is usually amazing in and around these small cities and if you have Finnish friends you will be able to see more what living in the countryside is really about. It is a somewhat slower lifestyle where people live much closer to nature. They have often a mökki -often used collectively by the whole family; sisters and brothers and their children- which is a small holiday cottage by the lake. They go there from spring to late autumn to spend the weekends or holidays there. Often they have also a boat by the mökki and go fishing on the lake in summer by boat, eat lunch at the mökki, sit in the sun for a while, read newspapers, chill, drink coffee and eat cookies with it and enjoy the slow life.
Usually there is also a forest next to the mökki: in summer people collect berries in the forest and in autumn they collect mushrooms. In winter when the lake (or the sea) is frozen and the ice is thick enough people go ice-fishing on it. They often bring some small camping chairs with them, some coffee or tea in a thermos. Then they cut a small hole in the ice and spend some hours there fishing. People also often go to ski or skate in winter. Finland is famous for its hockey team- the biggest success for Finnish people is when they can beat Sweden in any international tournament and the biggest loss if they lose against Sweden of course.
Some other smaller regional attributes are: Savo-people are told to be more cheerful but also mischievous. Countryside people sometimes think that people from Helsinki are arrogant and snobs. Helsinki people are sometimes thinking that Espoo-people are snobs (because many rich people who prefer the suburban lifestyle live in Espoo not in Helsinki) and people from Espoo say they don`t like Helsinki. Pohjanmaa-locals are told to be stubborn and so on.
Well this is mostly really just funny superficial joking around and there is no serious differences behind it..We could continue these generalizations but the best is if you go and get to know people from all these regions and decide for yourselves if these are true or not.
Photo by Monika Csapo
Finnish History
The one historical fact what every foreigner living in Finland hears first is: talvisota (Winter War, 1939) and itsenäisyyspäivä (December 6th). Finnish people usually don’t go back much longer than this when talking about their history. The reason might be that before that they did not have an independent state. They were first a part of Sweden and then a part of Russia. The biggest historical loss of Finland was the loss of FinnishKarelia to Russia during the Second World War. Many Finns are still very sensitive about this loss.
Finland has been an agricultural country for a long time after getting independent. Later with the rise of the paper- and wood- industry followed by the success of Nokia and the IT-boom it became more and more prosperous. Since its economic boom in the 1970s Finland’s GDP per capita has been among the world’s highest.
A smaller setback was the beginning of the 90s when the unemployment rate was historically high and the economy did not perform too well. Lately the losses of Nokia affected the economy in a negative way- especially because almost the whole Finnish IT-industry was a contractor of Nokia in a way. But the high-technology industries are still performing quite well and hopefully Finland will have a well-functioning economic system also in the future.
Finnish Crash Course 
