{"id":408844,"date":"2026-04-24T16:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/408844\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T16:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:15:09","slug":"finlands-secret-to-happiness-dont-get-your-hopes-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/408844\/","title":{"rendered":"Finland\u2019s secret to happiness? Don\u2019t get your hopes up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denmark has sold the world hygge, the notion that a handful of candles and a beige blanket will make your life palpably better.<\/p>\n

Swedish writers have pushed the concept of lagom, or the golden mean. There has even been a recent attempt to rehabilitate German brusqueness, or Direktheit, as a pathway to prosperity and contentment.<\/p>\n

Finland, however, has struggled to formulate a glib cultural export brand of its own, despite having been named last month the world\u2019s \u201chappiest\u201d country for the ninth year in a row.<\/p>\n

That is about to change. Next year the film producers Johannes Lassila and Miikko Oikkonen will open a \u201cFinnish happiness experience museum\u201d in Helsinki, advertising the peculiar virtues of their nation\u2019s way of life.<\/p>\n

\"JohannesJohannes Lassila, left, and Miikko OikkonenBERNHARD LUDEWIG<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a saying in Finland that whoever has happiness or fortune should hide it,\u201d Lassila said. \u201cThe Finns have never been as good at self-marketing as the Swedes or the Danes. We\u2019ve had more of an engineering mentality: if we built the best screw in the world, then we would assume it would sell itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is still quite hard for many Finns to think of themselves as a country uniquely blessed with wellbeing. Their economy has been going sideways ever since the global financial crash of 2007. Their politics are messy and dyspeptic. Their winters are long and harsh.<\/p>\n

As a preview exhibition for the museum, which opened at the Nordic embassies compound in Berlin this week, emphatically underlines, they also conceive of themselves as a laconic and introverted people to whom nothing could be more alien than spontaneous displays of gaiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you imagine Finland as a Shangri-La, and then come here and stand here in the central square in November, you will be struck that nobody is smiling,\u201d said Lassila.<\/p>\n

A few sparsely drawn cartoons on one wall detail a series of \u201cvery Finnish problems\u201d, such as when the bus shelter is already occupied by a single person and so everyone else feels obliged to stand outside in the rain, or when \u201cyou\u2019ve already said to the salesperson that you don\u2019t need help, but actually you do\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Finns are not afraid of the Russians,\u201d Oikkonen said at the show\u2019s launch. \u201cThey are afraid of having to accidentally spend time in the lift with their neighbours.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is that what the surveys are really identifying in Finland is not happiness in the sense of jollity, but rather satisfaction with life.<\/p>\n

Loosely speaking, this has two components. The first is an objectively very satisfactory quality of life, composed of high equality, trust, social cohesion, decent public services, and communities that often revolve around clubs, collective cultural activities and outstanding libraries.<\/p>\n

In the exhibition this is encapsulated by the \u20ac170 \u201cbaby boxes\u201d handed out to the parents of every newborn, which include a set of clothing and a sleeping bag from one of the country\u2019s most prominent fashion designers, condoms, lubricants, soaps and the cardboard box itself, which doubles as a bed. Scotland adopted the policy in 2017.<\/p>\n

\"AFinnish boxes for newbornsBERNNHARD LEDWIG<\/p>\n

Finnish commentators readily acknowledge that their country\u2019s sense of solidarity has much to do with being a young and quite homogenous nation who put a great deal of effort into healing the divisions left behind by a brutal civil war that followed independence from Russia in 1917, and cemented their society during the long slog against the Soviets in the Second World War.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These bonds are born more of necessity than of sentimentality, but that appears to make them all the stronger. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much that we want to help each other as that we need to help each other,\u201d said Lassila. \u201cIf you\u2019re in trouble, I know that I need to help you. And I know that you would help me in the same situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also helps that Finns spend a great deal of time in nature. \u201cIt is said that the Japanese go out into the forest to commit suicide,\u201d said one figure in the Finnish cultural scene. \u201cWe go out into the forest to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ViewsThe museum interiorBERNNHARD LEDWIG<\/p>\n

That is the demand side of the equation. Yet there is also a supply side. Finns, according to Lassila, are accustomed to doing \u201cmore with less\u201d and making do with what they have got: they cut their expectations to match their cloth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This equanimity has solid historical roots. Large parts of Finland barely eked out a living from subsistence agriculture and forestry until well into the early 20th century. Times were often so hard that families would make bread by roasting, grinding and baking the bark of birch trees, known as pettuleipa.<\/p>\n

One of the country\u2019s most cherished short stories, Juhani Aho\u2019s 1883 work When Father Brought Home the Lamp, depicts the intense excitement and longing a farmer\u2019s son feels when the family obtains a glass oil lantern for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper, recently praised Finland\u2019s gift for Realit\u00e4tsbew\u00e4ltigung, loosely meaning the ability to look reality in the face and master it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no equivalent term in Finnish but the principle nonetheless pervades the country\u2019s culture. Tiina Paavilainen, the architect who oversaw the building of the Berlin exhibition, said it had even shaped a good deal of Finnish design, which tends to hew closely to the natural shape, texture and colour of the underlying materials.<\/p>\n

\"ThreeFinnish design on display in the museumBERNNHARD LEDWIG<\/p>\n

In Lassila\u2019s view, if Finland has anything to teach the rest of the world about happiness, it is precisely this art of pragmatically, untheatrically and uncomplainingly dealing with what is in front of you.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us take it for granted,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to recognise that it\u2019s a good thing and that we have to ensure it stays with us and doesn\u2019t just disappear to some place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark has sold the world hygge, the notion that a handful of candles and a beige blanket will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-408844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}