Finland has a very young culture which in it’s recent years has taken a lot of influence through the internet globalizing the world in a very wide manner. The little bit over 100-year old Finland as a country did not really have a strong uniformity within its culture before World War II where the country was united to defend its land against the Soviet Union. Actually hundreds of years before our time there were more of cohesive “own” cultures in the area of Finland which were seen as paganism when finaly the christians made it to this cold and dark land, where nothing grows. For myself one of the only things that makes me feel finnish is the same thing that those so called pagans believed in and even more so live by. our cold, harsh, dark, and in its own means extremely beautiful nature.
The things in these modern times that we as finns are and apperently should be pround of, are our social welfare and schooling systems, that makes us THE HAPPIEST COUNTRY IN THE WHOLE WORLD. Both of these systems are quite outdated because they were constructed in the 60’s and the 70’s but still when compared tho many countries in the globe, we have well working systems. In a way I see that our nature and weather has a big part to play in our system, because people would quite literally die outside onthe time winter.
Now from the social side of being finnish which I have been able to view from inside aswell as from outside because one of my parents is an immigrant that has given me already the opportunity to see a different perspective from another cultural standpoint. For myself a challenge the long wintertime has is that people are forced to stay inside which often means staying at home or even not being able to leave from there . In my own experience this also takes people apart from each other and the culture often feels reserved and closed from the people we already know and don’t. This hypotesis is very visible during the summertime when people are able more intimately chill outside. Also the quite recent possibility for people to travel around the world has clearly opened finnish culture to be more open and not so Juntti, which is a very finnish term. Being reserved in a finnish way is not only a negative thing at all because it makes us as a society very polite, helpful and trustworthy people. Deep down I love being finnish and the spiritual levels it has within it are beautiful and in a strange way very universal which you can in a way feel when using our unique language.
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