Social Engagements and the Finnish Social System

Helsinki, Finland – London, England, via airplane

The last few days it’s almost like Diana and I are back home again. 

We had coffee with Lily and Dilly from Australia in Tallin.

We had lunch with Walter in Helsinki.

We hung out with various people at the public saunas. We had breakfast with friends Mike and Mary from Hayward, Wisconsin, in Helsinki. (They are on a Baltic cruise and happened to overlap with us.)

And then we had drinks with Lionel from France – the French biker we met a few days ago who had biked through Kaliningrad. 

Who knew that Helsinki would be such a social Mecca? 

Oh, and we met two guys from Iraq. One was our Uber XXL driver – who drove us and our boxed bikes to the airport. And the other, Jakob, cut my hair. More on them in a moment. 

Two things I wanted to share before we get there . . .

First, I think it was probably a good idea to leave Schengen when we did. Diana skated right through the customs folks – but I ended up having a significant conversation about our stay in Europe before they let me through. 

After rifling through my passport – and seeing all the various stamps – the customs agent asked how long we had been in Schengen. When I told him it was something like 86 days he asked if I could share my calculations with him. 

We went through the whole thing . . . 

We entered Spain on April 30 and left Croatia on June 5. 

We entered Greece on June 12 and entered Turkey on June 16 . . .

. . .

My sense is that our analysis was probably right. If we had overstayed our welcome, but then left Schengen at a busy border crossing we probably would have been fine. But if, on the other hand, we had overstayed but then tried to leave through a quiet crossing like the Finland airport, at least one of us could have been in trouble . . .

No worries. 

We aren’t international criminals yet. Not Schengen outlaws. And, thanks to the Russian Mushroom Hunter we met in Estonia, we didn’t end up smuggling any illegal fungi into Suomi – the Finnish name for Finland. 

A few more thoughts on this Nordic country that is not officially part of Scandinavia . . .

Our tour guide tells us that the Finns arrived in this part of the world some 9,000 years ago. They spent the next seven or eight thousand years hiding in the forests, perfecting their sauna-making skills – before finally emerging about a thousand years ago – when the Swedes found them playing hockey and ice fishing on one of Finland’s 100,000+ frozen lakes. (I guess Finland has way more lakes than Minnesota! They even have bigger Northern Pike . . .)

Sweden had this big empire back then. I guess they weren’t super nice to the Finns and they made Swedish the official language. The Swedes ruled Finland until the Russians took over in the early-19th century. At first the Russians were nice to the Finns. They allowed them lot continue speaking Finnish and by not making Russian the official language. They also decided not to make the Finns convert to the Orthodox faith. (The Finns became Lutheran when a famous Finnish priest, who was a follower of Martin Luther, decided to translate the Bible into Finnish for the first time.) And the Russians helped the Finns make Helsinki – which had been a little village across from Tallin – the new capital. 

But then in the late-19th century, Tsar Nicholas II decided to crack the whip. Among other things, he made Russian the official language – and this is when the Finns started their independence movement. They achieved this independence – really for the first time in modern history – in 1917 – when the Soviet Revolution caused Russia to become distracted for a bit . . . (Important to note that even before that – in 1906 – Finland became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote – and to become members of parliament.)

They had their independence until 1939, when – and this may sound familiar if you read about what happened in the Baltic countries – the Russians invaded after Hitler and Stalin decided to divide up Eastern Europe. 

I don’t know the next few years very well – but basically Finland was like a ping pong ball – going back and forth between the Nazis and the Russians. But they REALLY didn’t like the Russians. They managed to repel them to some extent with the Winter War of 1939-1940 – which I want to learn more about because I think it involved the Finns skiing around and hitting Russians with their poles – or maybe luring them into the holes they had made in the ice for their sauna plunges. 

That’s Sisu, right there . . .

Anyway, in the end, Finland managed to retain its independence, even if Russia did manage to sneak away with about 10% of Finland’s land. (The Russians just never stop . . . Which seems so ridiculous considering they are, I think, the biggest country in the world. Maybe they should focus their attention on killing some mosquitoes in Siberia rather than trying to steal from everyone else . . .)

Okay – now modern times. 

It’s almost like Finland is a pretend country. Free education. Free healthcare. Free library – where you can check out books and videos and sports equipment, but also tools to build your house. Oh, and the library has a kitchen you can use, 3-D printers, basically anything you might need…

Then there’s a three year maternity leave – fully paid at whatever your normal salary is. Generous unemployment insurance that lasts until you find a new job – whenever that might be. Oh, and their prisons are kind of unusual. The prisoners can come and go as they please. And they keep collecting their unemployment insurance while they’re in prison. Can’t pay rent for whatever reason? The government just pays it for you. 

They have the second highest marginal tax rate in Europe – with a maximum of 67%. But apparently people are happy to pay it. My sense is that, to the extent that is true, it’s because everything just seems to work, at least partially because the population has been very homogeneous. 

Which brings us back to the Iraqis. I had a pretty extensive conversation with Jakob, the barber. He’s been living in Finland about ten years – since he came as a refugee after the war in Iraq. He’s owned his own business – the barbershop – for the last three years, and his wife, who’s also Iraqi, works as a dental assistant. Finland is okay, he says, but it is very expensive and it’s difficult to get ahead. 

Finnish itself is, I guess, brutally difficult to learn, and Jakob is much better at English. His wife, on the other hand, is fluent in Finnish. You have to know Finnish to gain citizenship, and she’s applied, but it can take three years to receive a decision. Regardless, she will still receive her three-year maternity leave when they have their first child in a few months. 

Oh, and fun fact about Jakob. He takes about two saunas each week – mostly with his wife. He picked up the habit in the first few years he was in Finland – when he started dating Finnish girls and they wanted to go on sauna dates. 

Finland is just pretty inspiring, really. It’s not like Norway – with its perfect fantasy world that is paid for with oil money. The Finns just have trees and lakes and saunas – and yet they seem to have constructed their own little paradise. 

Of course, with their long winters and their overconsumption of alcohol things are not all rosy. 20% of their people have clinical depression, and they have very high suicide rates. Because most of the suicides happen among men, Finland has many more women than men.

Moving to Finland seems like a good opportunity for guys looking to up their chances of finding that special someone . . .

Well, that’s really the end of that whole Schengen chapter for us. 

It’s back to the English-speaking world. 

We land in London in a few minutes . . .