The Lovably Quirky Finns

We flew to Helsinki in search of something a bit different after spending the previous month in London, and because the beginning of September conveniently marks the start of lower off-season airfares and hotel prices.

We got lucky. Mostly clear skies, sunshine and light-sweater days, which are by no means guaranteed in a country where winter has a habit of arriving early and staying late.

Helsinki itself is delightful: compact, handsome and wonderfully easy to navigate on foot, supplemented by an excellent system of trams, buses and ferries. Any decent guidebook or AI assistant can help you plot the cathedral, museums, markets and architectural highlights depending upon your interests and time on the ground.

So rather than write another guide to what to see in Helsinki, I decided to devote this blog to something we enjoyed even more: the Finns themselves.

During our seven days here we kept encountering traditions, habits and peculiarities that made us laugh and, ultimately, made us rather fall in love with the place. Because the Finns, it turns out, are delightfully quirky.

Heavy Metal Knitting

Let’s begin with a country that managed to combine two passions that, until now, I had never realized belonged together: knitting and heavy metal music.

Finland has a serious knitting tradition and an equally serious affection for heavy metal. Someone eventually asked the obvious question: Why choose?

Thus was born the Heavy Metal Knitting World Championship in the eastern Finnish city of Joensuu. The first championship was held in 2019, with contestants from around the world essentially performing knitting as though the needles were lead guitars. Knitting needles are mandatory. Head banging is strongly encouraged. Previous winners have come from Japan, the Netherlands and Britain.

It may be the most Finnish sporting event imaginable.

Wife Carrying

Then there is wife carrying.

Every summer in the small Finnish town of Sonkajärvi, couples from around the world compete in the Wife Carrying World Championship. The carrier races along a 253.5-meter course involving dry obstacles and a water obstacle while carrying his partner in whatever manner seems least likely to result in divorce.

The most memorable technique is the “Estonian carry,” in which the woman hangs upside down behind the man with her legs wrapped around his shoulders.

And the prize? The winning couple receives the woman’s weight in beer.

Suddenly pickleball seems painfully unimaginative.

Santa Is Finnish. End of Discussion.

Finland also takes a firm position on a matter the rest of us apparently thought was still open for debate: Santa Claus lives in Finland.

More specifically, his official hometown is Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, right on the Arctic Circle. And this isn’t merely something the local tourism office dreamed up. Rovaniemi holds a registered European Union trademark connected to its status as Santa Claus’s official hometown, registered through the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

In other words, the Finns have paperwork.

At Santa Claus Village, visitors can meet the big guy every day of the year. There is even an official Santa Claus Main Post Office, because presumably a man receiving letters from children around the world requires better infrastructure than the average postal customer.

Apparently the North Pole was merely a rumor.

Drinking Alone in Your Underwear

The Finns have a reputation for being quiet, private and somewhat introverted.

They are apparently sufficiently comfortable with this national characteristic that they have invented a word for drinking alone at home in your underwear: Kalsarikännit.

There is no intention of going out. No expectation that anyone will stop by. You are home, in your underwear, with a drink.

Finland is so proud of the concept that it created an official emoji for it.

In fact, Finland became the first country in the world to issue its own collection of national emojis celebrating difficult-to-explain Finnish customs and emotions.

I am beginning to think these people understand life better than we do.

Things Finns Apparently Consider Food

Every country has foods that make perfect sense to the locals and require a small leap of faith from visitors. Finland is no exception.

There is salmiakki, intensely salty black licorice flavored with ammonium chloride. There are foods flavored with actual tar, a taste rooted in Finland’s long relationship with its forests. There is game, including reindeer and moose.

One menu offered “moose balls,” which my husband initially interpreted anatomically. Thankfully they turned out to be meatballs.

Then there is leipäjuusto, known in English as “squeaky cheese” because that is precisely what it does against your teeth. It is traditionally served with gorgeous golden cloudberries or cloudberry jam.

And we must not overlook maksalaatikko, or liver casserole: minced liver baked with rice, butter and molasses, sometimes with raisins thrown in for good measure. Yes, liver, molasses and raisins. Together. In a casserole.

But the Finns make up for all of this with cinnamon buns. Wonderful Finnish cinnamon buns, or korvapuusti, seemed to be everywhere we went, usually sitting on someone’s plate alongside a cup of coffee. They are something of a national obsession.

And so, it turns out, is the coffee.

Finns are among the world’s most enthusiastic coffee drinkers and consume more coffee per person than any other country in Europe. Coffee is woven into daily life, often several cups throughout the day, and preferably accompanied by something sweet.

After a week in Helsinki, the coffee-and-cinnamon-bun combination started to seem less like an afternoon snack and more like a constitutionally protected Finnish right.

Some of their food sounds strange.

Most of it is delicious.

And the cinnamon buns make up for almost anything.

Religion, Finnish Style

Finland’s largest religious denomination is the Evangelical Lutheran Church, but membership comes with a decidedly Finnish wrinkle: a tax.

Members pay church tax along with their other income taxes, generally somewhere between one and two percent depending upon the parish. The church’s right to levy taxes goes back to the 19th century.

Not surprisingly, Finns who don’t wish to belong can leave the church and stop paying the tax. Church membership has consequently declined over time, although a majority of Finns still belong to the Lutheran Church.

During our September visit, the university held its opening ceremonies and we were told that students attending the religious service gathered in Helsinki’s magnificent cathedral on Senate Square while a secular ceremony was held separately.

There is apparently little drama about any of this.

But then again, these are Finns. Drama would require making a scene.

Follow the Unicorn

Walking around central Helsinki, we began noticing wonderful little blue signs attached to buildings showing lions, rabbits, giraffes, elephants and other animals. And, inexplicably, a unicorn.

They are remnants of an old system of naming Helsinki’s city blocks. When the city center was being rebuilt in the early 19th century, blocks were given numbers and names, many after animals. The system eventually disappeared from everyday use, but some of the charming signs were later revived.

Thus you can wander from the Lion Block to the Rhinoceros Block to the Dromedary Block. And yes, there really is a Unicorn Block.

For a country celebrated internationally for rationality, efficiency and sober Nordic design, I find this immensely reassuring.

The Happiest People in the World

Finland has now been named the world’s happiest country for an astonishing nine consecutive years.

Our delightful Helsinki guide, Matti, told us that when the first ranking came out, many Finns supposedly woke up confused, wondering whether they personally were the only depressed person in Finland. That self-deprecating reaction feels very Finnish.

The World Happiness Report isn’t really measuring whether people walk around grinning all day. It asks people to evaluate the quality of their lives. Researchers then examine factors such as social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and trust.

And Finland does extraordinarily well.

There is excellent public education, healthcare, extensive support for families and children, and a social welfare system designed to provide a meaningful safety net.

Perhaps happiness isn’t about being cheerful all the time.

Perhaps it is simply knowing that if life goes wrong, your society isn’t going to abandon you.

That seems a rather more useful definition.

An Entire City Beneath the City

And then there is the Helsinki you don’t see.

Beneath the streets is an astonishing underground world carved into the city’s solid granite bedrock. There are pedestrian passages and tunnels connecting buildings and shopping areas, particularly useful when winter arrives and walking outside becomes considerably less appealing.

But it goes much deeper than that. Living next door to Russia has understandably made the Finns think seriously about civil defense. Helsinki has an enormous network of underground shelters, many blasted deep into the rock, with enough shelter capacity for the entire population of the city and then some.

The very Finnish part is what they do with all that space when nobody is bombing them.

Rather than leave these vast underground caverns sitting empty, many are used every day for completely ordinary activities. There are basketball courts, gyms, school and recreational spaces, parking garages and even a public lap-swimming pool underground. Some of the facilities are designed so that, if necessary, they can be converted back into emergency shelters remarkably quickly.

It is simultaneously slightly unnerving and enormously impressive. Above ground, Helsinkians are drinking coffee, eating cinnamon buns and quietly going about their lives. Below them is essentially another city, carved into granite and ready to shelter everyone if their enormous neighbor to the east ever becomes more than just a worry.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the Finnish personality: hope for the best, prepare extraordinarily well for the worst, and in the meantime put in a basketball court and go swimming.

And Then There Are the Saunas

But you cannot understand Finland without understanding the sauna.

The Finns did not technically invent sweating in hot rooms, which existed in various cultures long before modern Finland. But they certainly perfected the art and turned it into something approaching a national religion.

There are approximately 3.3 million saunas in a country of only 5.6 million people.

They are in homes, apartment buildings, offices, hotels, government institutions and summer cottages. The president has an official sauna. So does the prime minister.

And, according to our guide, there is even a sauna inside a Burger King in Helsinki.

Naturally, we assumed he was joking. He pulled out a photograph. He was not. There really has been a sauna inside the Burger King on Mannerheimintie, available for private groups. Because apparently in Finland even eating a Whopper need not interfere with one’s sauna schedule.

Finns go to sauna with friends, coworkers and family. Traditionally, nudity is completely normal. Some public saunas have separate men’s and women’s sessions where bathing suits are unnecessary; others are mixed and require them. And this is where the reserved Finn seems to undergo a personality transformation. During my visit to a public sauna, I was astonished to see people who might barely make eye contact with you on the street sitting around completely naked, laughing and chatting away like old friends.

Some wore strange cone-shaped felt sauna hats.

And then there is the vihta or vasta, depending upon where in Finland you come from: a bundle of fresh birch branches used to gently whack yourself, or apparently someone you love, while sitting in the sauna. It is supposed to stimulate the skin and circulation and releases the wonderful smell of birch into the hot air.

For centuries, the sauna was also the cleanest and warmest room in a Finnish household. People washed there. Women even gave birth there. Today it remains so deeply embedded in Finnish life that UNESCO placed Finnish sauna culture on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Finns sauna when they are happy.

They sauna when they are stressed.

They sauna with family.

They sauna with business associates.

They sauna in winter and summer and then, when the mood strikes, run outside and plunge themselves into water cold enough to stop the heart of any sensible Californian.

And perhaps that is the best explanation of Finland we encountered during our week here.

Quiet but wonderfully eccentric.

Reserved but surprisingly communal.

Deeply practical but perfectly willing to drink alone in their underwear, carry their wives through an obstacle course for beer, knit while listening to heavy metal, put a sauna in a Burger King and sit naked in a 190-degree room beating one another with birch branches.

It is hard not to love these people.