Very Finnish Problems

To those of you who use Facebook I give a Finland tip. The Suffolk-born Brit Joel Willans has Finnish wife and has lived in Finland for more than 16 years. He has gained a huge popularity in all social media channels with his concept Very Finnish Problems. He looks at us Finns lovingly but sarcastically & ironically. His humour is hilarious. I suggest you take a peak! Here are the links to Facebook: Very Finnish Problems, InkTank and Very Trump Problems.

I have now read two of his books under this concept and laughed and laughed my head off. You see, as a foreigner he seems to notice better how we are than ourselves. So accurate, ingenious and enjoyable.

For instance one little municipality near Helsinki is Nurmijärvi. Their coat of arms represents seven blond haired guys from The Seven Brothers of Aleksis Kivi, one of our national writers. But you can guess easily whom Willans sees here!

He makes fun of Finland’s long & dark & cold & snowy winter, of course. But also the never-ending light of summer in the Finnish Lapland deserves his  attention. The thought of never-ending light is wonderful right?


The reality is a bit different. The never-ending light lasts for about there months. Never-ending light is cool about 48 hours. After that you realise that never-ending light means never-decent sleep, and that hurts your head... a lot. I stayed in summer Lapland for about a week. By day three I was putting towels over the curtains and wrapping my face in pillows while wearing sunglasses, anything and everything to keep the never-ending light at bay. It didn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. The never-ending light won.

We have this world famous candy company Fazer. One of their iconic products are Vihreät kuulat - Green Jelly Balls. They are a MUST candy here at Christmas time. Willans says that the company sends them to the British Royal Family every time they celebrate weddings or birthday anniversaries... Do the royals love this candy, he did not know.

According to Willans we possess a certain type of Nordic Zen that can be found on icy lakes ice fishing, in our vast forests and spending time at our over half a million summer cottages. One representative of this silent Nordic Zen is the Formula 1 driver Kimi Räikkönen whom the whole world knows. We still are a bit forest ferals.

Then I just have to tell you this. Willans had just come to Finland and was sitting at dinner with his new Finnish family. Animals make different sounds depending where they live, right. The British pigs say oink oink, their Finnish cousins röh röh. The discussion went on smoothly until the owls came to picture. The Finnish owls say hu huu - but what might their British cousins say? They say Twit twoo, Twit twoo. The result was a hilarious laughter or icy silence depending on the age of the guest. The reason: when pronounced twittoo twittoo it resembles in Finnish fuck you, fuck you.

To finish, we are a small nation and we go crazy every time we get some international attention. We have a saying ’Torilla tavataan - See you at the market place’. This is how tens of thousands of Finns have celebrated our ice hockey World Championships in 1995 and 2011 and our only Eurovision Song Contest win by the heavy metal band Lordi - at the Senate Place in the center of Helsinki.

Well, this was another insight to Finland, to our souls and our awckward manners. Hope you enjoyed!

#MOSAIC MONDAY