Finland is a unique country by geographical standards as in we have a lot of lakes, a lot of forests, our long summer days and short winter days. I could go on for a long time about all the things that are unique in our nature and geography, but I feel like there is always another country that can relate to everyone of these in some way.
Finnish people on the other hand is something you cannot see anywhere else. Finnish people are in my opinion unique in the sense that they don’t usually get mistaken as someone else. For example, “rally English” is quite specific recognizable for a Finnish speaker when a Swedish speaker can be mixed for a Norwegian or a Danish one when speaking English. Some people might find it annoying, but I have always seen it as a proud way of showing my Finnishness rather than a something to be ashamed of when talking to a person in another country.
Finnish language is also a quite a unique feature of ours since only two other countries have languages that are in the same family. Our language has unique features where we don’t have gender in the language, and the spoken language tends to differ quite heavily from the written one.
One of the best things about Finnish people that might not be as unique as the others mentioned, but still, something I want to mention, is the way many people deal with things through humour. For example, I had a colleague who would quote kummeli at least once a day, most days it was closer to five times, but every morning those were the bits and quotes I was looking forward to get through a day of work on days when work itself sucked. Pretty much every person I know likes to reference comedy quite a lot especially my close friends and family. I feel like Finnish people get portrayed as quite cold and reserved people and it probably isn’t that wrong of a assessment, but I think Finnish love for comedy and humour is often left out of our image both due to our own way of presenting ourselves and some of the quite cold Finnish athletes and politicians on the global stage.
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