Finnish Nightmares is a comic by Karoliina Korhonen and it exaggerates the finnish social behaviour, but it is funny because it is quite true.
Foreigners might find finnish social habits confusing. Since we are quite blunt when it comes to speaking our mind. We are not familiar with smalltalk culture because we easily think smalltalk is pretentious. Same goes with bragging, we tend not to exaggerate our achievements. Finns are rather quite modest and appreciate honesty.
When Finns have summer vacation, they like to spend time in nature either camping or going to a cabin. Finns find beauty and calmness of the nature appealing. Very traditional activities in summer time include swimming, fishing and hunting. There are over half million cabins in Finland, which is means that there is one cabin for every 10 finns. All in all Finns have great respect for nature and green values.
Finns have a great need for personal space. This is because Finland is a vast country and we are not used to having lots of people surrounding us. Many Finns need space and silence to calm down and feel safe. In addition to physical space Finns are used to quite high level of independency. Equality and individuality have very long roots in Finnish culture.
We Finns are quite bad handling feedback and criticism concerning to anything that relates to us. One of our worst fears is that something smears our country’s image, even though it does not affect us personally in any way.
Even though things I just described might make finns seem a bit socially clumsy, thats not the case for many of us. Instead we want to leave our comfort zone and expand our worldview. We just need a small push.
Once you get to know a Finn, you will discover a hearty and loyal person. Finnish smile and other gestures of friendship are always genuine.
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