Mysterious world of happiness. If you drive through Finland, you will find a striking number of people who are afraid of Russia and an imminent war. In particular, many Finns tell you that, given the silence of those around them, they sometimes desperately long for Italy or other places where they expect warm, friendly coexistence. They express similar escape fantasies when it comes to the arctic climate and the eternal winter darkness.
But then, in mid-March, the World Happiness Report comes out, and who is the happiest year after year? Finns. Now for the seventh time in a row. And the reasons are being researched for the seventh time.
Alexander Stubb, Finland’s newly elected president, succinctly listed on X what he believes leads to Finnish life satisfaction: “Nature, trust, education.” The thing about nature is immediately obvious, even from the center of Helsinki you can be in the most beautiful solitude idyll in twenty minutes.
Maybe even better: Finnish nature in summer.
(Photo: Jussi Nukari/dpa)
Finns also regularly do very well in studies of trust in state institutions. There is hardly any corruption, the welfare state works, and the country continues to rank among the top in the PISA tests.
All of the same can be said about the other Northern European countries, which is why Denmark, Iceland and Sweden follow directly behind Finland in the World Happiness Index published by the University of Oxford. Norway is in seventh place. Those who were able to be born in Northern Europe are lucky.
Maybe it’s also because of this stable portion of self-irony
In studies of the Finns’ stable sense of happiness, there is always amazement as to how it could be that people who seem so melancholic simultaneously claim to be completely satisfied year after year. But perhaps the key to winning the World Happiness Index lies precisely in this melancholy. The Swedish-Finnish pastor Annika Stenvall summed up the connection like this: The special thing about Finnish melancholy is that you first have to be a little unhappy in order to feel happiness. After all, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to appreciate what it means to be happy. Some historians and economists apply this argument to economic contexts. Precisely because the Finns were doing so much worse economically than other European countries in the 1990s, they now know much better about their high standard of living.
Perhaps, and this is not a scientifically supported argument, it is also because a striking number of Finns have a healthy distance from themselves and go through life with a stable portion of self-irony. While most nations mainly make derogatory jokes about everyone else, the Finns love making fun of their own shortcomings. When talking to a Finnish person, how can you tell whether they are an introvert or an extrovert? The introverted Finn looks at his shoes while speaking, the extroverted person looks at your shoes. But both apparently do it with a quiet inner feeling of happiness.