Intro/outro sound is Prime Light Harp Melody 165 BPM.mp3 by snikpohneb — https://freesound.org/s/173463/ — License: Attribution 3.0
Part one about Helsinki, Finland can be found here. Part two can be found here.
For seven years in a row, Finland has ranked as the happiest country in the world. While a lot of people have speculated on why that is (and a lot of haters say it’s not really true), here’s what I have to say after visiting.
Existing as a person with a body can feel unsafe in many places in the world. In Finland, I was struck by how safe I felt.
Any woman in America knows that it’s dangerous to walk alone late at night. Any woman who’s done it anyway knows the gnawing sense of dread that haunts you, provoking you to take useless precautions like holding your keys like a dagger inside your pocket. I would never walk alone late at night and drunk, in the US. I know some do, but I know my paranoia would eat me alive.
I did walk alone late at night and drunk in Helsinki, though. And it felt completely safe to do so. At one point, a guy passed me going the other way, but my hackles never went up. He said “Hej,” I said “Hej,” and everything was fine. The lack of tension was shocking.
My favorite restaurant in Helsinki was on the corner of a redlight district. I sat eating kabob (the likes of which I’ve never found before or since), looking down the street toward the XXX video stores and the Chinese massage parlors, etc. I imagine this sort of street in the US would be mainly deserted, with some sketchy-looking people casting furtive glances around. But here? I saw multiple women pushing their prams along the street, looking completely unconcerned.
What I would give, to feel so safe in a big city in the US.
And while safety and happiness don’t necessarily grow at a 1:1 ratio, they’re very highly linked. Just think about it: how happy can you be when you feel threatened? If you’re worried about getting assaulted, how chipper can you be? And if you’re struggling to make ends meet, or concerned that a major life event could cause you to struggle, doesn’t that impact your life satisfaction?
Finland has so many social safety nets in place to catch people when they fall. Their citizens aren’t worried about upset at every turn. Thus, even if it’s cold and dark and their lack of vitamin D can make them cranky, they rate themselves happier than the average American by quite a bit. They can have faith that their lives aren’t so fragile.
People talk about how stoic Finns seem in casual conversation. They can come across as cold. Maybe I wasn’t overly aware of this, being myself an awkward person. To me, the Finns I met seemed perfectly pleasant and helpful. They didn’t engage in a lot of small talk, but that’s honestly a relief to me, as I don’t care much for small talk myself. I don’t really consider that to be an indicator of unhappiness.
Of all the people I met in Helsinki, only one of them seemed to be in a truly foul mood: an American tending a bar downtown. I couldn’t understand why he was so upset. Clearly he was living in a beautiful country, in the safest city I’d ever experienced, but he was busy complaining about the sweet drink they had on tap.
My Finnish friend Elisa and I both ordered the sweet drink, and once we were out of earshot, laughed off the bartender’s funk. Some people wear their bitterness like a badge of honor.
I fell in love with Finland during my stay. Personally, I totally understand their high happiness ranking.