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March 21, 2024 - 4:00pm
It’s that time of year. Finland, my country of birth, was – once again – ranked the happiest country in the world. This is the seventh year in a row the World Happiness Report came to that inevitable conclusion.
Given that the pursuit of happiness is a central life goal to so many of us, you may be wondering if Finland is the right place for you. Let’s say you are a young person living in Italy, ranked 41st in happiness, or Peru (68th): maybe it’s time to start learning Finnish and finally purchase that one-way ticket to Helsinki.
Before you commit to anything so drastic, let me tell you about a recent study looking at those who have left home to live someplace else. A 2021 survey of 12,140 expats from 59 countries ranked Finland as the 39th best place to live. The country did particularly poorly on questions about the ease of settling in, whether one felt at home, and the level of friendliness. On these elements of a good life, Finland was ranked near the very bottom, along with Sweden, Denmark, and Norway – the Nordic countries which dominate the World Happiness rankings. It appears that living in the happiest countries makes you miserable unless you were born there. What’s going on?
Notably, the rankings disseminated by the World Happiness Report are based on a single question. Respondents are asked to express their overall life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10, in which the highest number represents the best possible life for you – a presumable dream-come-true situation.
It is fair to assume that the meaning of “the best possible life” is culturally prescribed. The United States, my adopted home country, is notorious for encouraging people to “think big”, “shoot for the stars”, and – in some cases – “get rich or die trying.” By contrast, the Nordic culture is famous for its spirit of restraint, moderation, and reasonable aspirations, as captured by the Swedish term “lagom”, or “just enough”.
Within the Nordic mentality, it does not take much for one to conclude that one’s life has turned out pretty well. Who cares if I live in a small apartment and can’t afford a car, a Finn might say, I’m surrounded by well-maintained public parks, libraries, communal saunas, and easy access to a state-of-the-art mass transit system. Combined with a generous welfare state, which has virtually eliminated homelessness and other forms of absolute poverty, there a very few people in these countries with culturally approved reasons to feel dissatisfied.
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SubscribeMonocultures are usually the happiest for obvious reasons: multi-ethnic societies can also be happy if they have only one culture: multicultures are disaster, always have been and always will be, because of the frictional clash of Laws and social mores. I know, I live in Scotland.
How dare you reject the Salad Bowl! Its created unparalleled unity and cooperation throughout the West!
Scotland is great. Months of short dark days, gales and rain followed by a few months of long day/night light. Plus midges, ticks, punitive income tax, car wrecking potholes, tourists shitting all over the main beauty spots and driving like morons. What’s not to like
Plus a racist FM and stupid hate speech law from 1 April
That explains why Palestine and Pakistan are above India in that ranking.
Considering it has one of the highest rates of suicide in the world I have always doubted this claim to be the happiest place on earth at the same time.
Only the happy ones remain…
Hahaha! Great comment 🙂
These types of surveys may be interesting water-cooler talk, but they’re not science or definitive.
Trust the Science, Jim!
Yeah! You can’t argue with Science!
“the” science – plz
It’s not possible to learn Finnish.
The closest language to it is Turkish??? Scientists looking at Finnish DNA think they were conquered 7000 years ago by an Asian mongol like tribe and literally all the men were slaughtered. That is why they have blond haired blues eyes people with slightly Asian features.
Hungarian, not Turkish (Estonian is kind of a Finnish dialect). But the similarities are in (complex) grammar, not vocabulary. As in Hungary, if you see a sign in a shop door, you can get no clue as to what it might mean from knowledge of other Indo-European languages. Fortunately most things are repeated in Swedish (the second official language, and a kind of dialect of German (I’m going to get into so much trouble …)) and nearly everyone speaks English :).
It is one of the very few European languages that is not part of the Indo-European language group.
Around 1978, the news program 60 Minutes did a (hilarious) profile of Finland. Everywhere the host went, the Finns were somewhat unfriendly and sometimes a little hostile. Basically, they all seemed depressed. The grey scenery didn’t help. My favorite scene was of a weekly dance for older people. Arms out and hands on shoulders, the dancers shuffled around the dance floor. No one had a smile on their face. They all looked a little constipated. Don’t get me wrong, I just remember the show, because it was so funny. In 1977, I was friends with a Finnish exchange student. She was delightful.
I used to work with a guy whose wife was Finnish, and he accordingly visited Finland regularly. He said that the strangest thing about the Finns was that they didn’t say very much, unless they were drunk. In that circumstance, they would talk to you endlessly in Finnish, despite the fact that they knew you couldn’t speak it, and the fact that they were entirely fluent in English.
I’m not sure I’d be that happy if Russia was just over the horizon.
If you look at the suicide rate, then one could observe a slight contradiction. Except if Finns are happily committing suicide. Self reporting is nonsense.
I’ve always suspected that sameness works for folks who don’t know anything else. Homog
Homogeneity is very comfortable. It also weakens the ability to cope with
A few years ago the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan (population 791,000) was constently ranked the happiest on earth. What happened? Did the entire population suffer a collective nervous breakdown? Maybe they are all nervous of the malevolent Giant Panda over the mountains to the northeast.
I thought the Danish usually topped these surveys!
Anyway, given the question, it seems more accurate to call it ‘contentment’.
They should be nervous. Look what happened to Tibet. still, Finland has its own malevolent bear next door.
It’s better to seek contentment than happiness.
This was a very interesting and entertaining read (both the article and the comments). Thank you!