Your impression of Finland and Finnish men as a UK woman?

[CantankerousCrab]

What is your impression of Finland and Finnish men as a UK woman (compared to UK men)? Has someone in your family/social circle either befriended or married a Finn and how did that turn out? I suppose Finnish Millenials (and largely continental European Millenials) are capable of conversing at a near-fluent level due to the prevalance and influence of Anglosphere media.

Went to Lapland and did one of those trips on a reindeer sledge. The reindeer herder was seriously hot and had I not been there with DH and the kids to meet Santa then he would have been in severe danger.

We're not all introverted heavy drinkers 😆
Go for a holiday in Helsinki and visit the countryside too...gives you a good idea!

I spent half a year in Finland as part of my nurse training. I loved the country!

I found people kind, thoughtful and welcoming. The language was very difficult. I could make myself understood but my grammar was not correct. It's a very rule abiding country (think waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to go green despite being about to see there are no cars for half a mile either way). The UK friend and I were much heavier drinkers that the Finnish students, but we also worked with a lot of adults with huge alcohol problems which seemed more prevalent than in the UK. It didn't seem like there was much of a middle ground in alcohol consumption.

But the country is so, so beautiful. So many nice things to do and the countryside was so easy to access from the town. The transport system was great.

I had a huge crush on a Finnish guy many moons ago. He was intelligent, reserved and polite and gave me a bottle of absinthe when he moved back to Finland.

He said Finland goes into a collective coma in the winter with so little daylight!

From my friend in Finland...

I imagine the Finnish as depressed alcoholics who live in a very dark place for most of the year. But I'm sure there are some jolly ones.

I'd have a problem with the food, not the weather.

I know a couple of men who have one Finnish parent (father in both cases) via my D.C. and have one coming to stay again soon for a couple of months. Nice person, very different to the first one. Apparently all need to know is the word “NonI” in Finnish according to one (there’s a YouTube video on this).

My DC spent 6 months in Helsinki and came back very depressed, couldn’t cope with the winter and struggled to learn the language. I love the sound of the summer cabins they have and am hoping Finnish person number 2 is a keeper and in time we get a summer cabin invite!

Why the question? I have several Finnish friends. They are more reserved than British guys in my experience very polite and well mannered

As a kid, my parents had students from multiple different countries staying with us. What I noticed over and over again was: Swedish students were the most friendly and had the best grasp of English (in fact, I am still friends with a swedish student we had when I was 11, she became like a big sister to me). Japanese students were the most polite and considerate. Finnish students were the most insular and kept themselves to themselves. I am not saying they were unpleasant at all, but they were the least friendly. Obviously, I am not saying that all Finnish people are like that by any means, but it was just something I noticed as a child as you pick up on a lot at that age.

My stereotype of Finnish men is that they are quite quiet and less likely to approach you than other nationalities? But that they are pretty unfazed by most things and that they are quite chill with an underlying streak of batshit crazy. This is mostly based on Scandinavia and the World comic and that YT video where a Finnish man chases a bear away from his house without a weapon or anything, just shouting perkele at it 🤣

According to my Swedish friend, the FInns are all alcoholics.

The Finns say the same about the Swedes😆

My observation is that the Swedes insult the Finns and the Finns insult the Swedes. Mainly because they love each other dearly in the way that siblings do.

The Finns like a drink, but being an alcoholic has limitations when it costs a fucking fortune. Hence a love of the Estonian ferry.

I'd love to do a summer there one year...

One of my fav countries.

My Auntie had a Finnish boyfriend once, very into sex and keen to discuss it in front of our whole family including my Grandparents

My first thought was AI. Something about the way the post is written

Even the updates sound odd.

Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are all Germanic languages. So is English. Germanic languages may still be difficult for an English speaker to get their head around, but they’re generally going to be easier than Uralic languages like Finnish and Estonian (and Hungarian, the random Central European one). I don’t think it’s impenetrable, but you’d have to go into it without expectation of it being familiar (and don’t get thrown a curveball by loan words).

Generalizing massively, but I’ve found Finnish men to be reserved, hard working, and reflective of the Finnish climate tbh. They’re built tough, and the epitome of ‘still waters run deep’. Very kind though once you’ve been assessed and judged to be reliable and trustworthy. Not overly effusive or keen on grand gestures, affection is expressed via small everyday gestures, support offered, and though what they provide rather than through verbal expression.

Don’t automatically assume they’re not interested because they don’t talk a lot or their body language is closed off. They wouldn’t spend time with you at all if they weren’t.

I met Hairy Biker Dave Myers and his wife Lil - a quick chat - they were on a canal boat holiday - they were both absolutely lovely. I had just watched their program about Finland and passed on my American friends comment that the food is terrible - to be fair the US is hardly synonymous with haute cuisine but Dave, characteristically as you might expect was totally respectful and diplomatic in his answer saying that "there is good food in every country" however he did quip that the Finns are "a very strange people indeed." My friend in Finland jokes that Nokia invented text messaging so that they don't have to speak to each other in person.

When I visited Finland, I was relieved that Swedish was an official language and you could select that option on train ticket machines. I could understand enough written Swedish (in context) to buy a train ticket. But I couldn’t make head nor tail of Finnish.

Even buying fruit in the supermarket was a challenge, as you need to know their names in Finnish to use the scales. Luckily, the Finns I met were kind and helpful.

Kaarija actually brought a mobile sauna on a truck with him for Eurovision. It was parked up in the Albert Dock for two weeks

I can’t decide if you’re trying to be gratuitously offensive, or are just very thick.

OP, assuming your slightly off mode of expression is not just you being a bot, the only Finns I’ve known fairly well are women who had already spent considerable amounts of time outside Finland, one of them my doctoral student, one, later, a colleague — also various people I met through them. I knew them in two different countries.

Two very different characters, unsurprisingly, but what they both had in common (and which might be to an extent down to a common culture?) was a kind of good-humoured self-containment and calm. I don’t think I would describe either as ‘introverted’, but I think the term is often misused on here — they were self-contained, didn’t feel the need to talk if talk were not required, independent-minded, well aware of their own needs. Unobtrusive physically but quietly good at outdoor things — skiing, climbing, hiking.

One married a very sociable, outgoing Irish man, and was clearly very charmed by his musicality and gregariousness. The other was contentedly single in her 40s and seemed very immune to social pressures about coupling. She had friends, but I used to see her often early on weekend mornings heading off solo to climb or walk, or to a festival. The idea of it being somehow ‘lesser’ to do something without friends (which you see so often on Mn) would have struck her as weird.

I thought they were both admirable. I’d adore to spend some time in Finland, which sounds v interesting.

Please don't move to Finland if you've no intention of learning either of the languages. That's so bloody rude. I'm not Finnish, but I have lived in Finland more than once (and did learn the language). Winters are long and dark, yes (and the south of Finland is around 100km north of Stockholm), but the summers are bright. You really need to be there a whole year to "get it". People are reserved, and small talk isn't a thing, but it is a wonderful country.

The only reason they didn't win Eurovision IMO is because Finland doesn't exist so they wouldn't be able to host next year.

Yep, Ive found a lot of people think it’s a Scandinavian language closely related to Nowegian and Swedish, and get thrown when they realize it isn’t. Same with Hungarian with people who think it’s a Slavic or Germanic language, or indeed Estonian when it’s assumed to be Baltic.

By far the hardest part of learning a new language, I’ve found anyway, is forgetting all the rules of your own language, and starting as a blank. It is doable though. Easier for a child, but still very much possible for an adult.

Finnish have a word for “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear — with no intention of going out,”it is Kalsarikannit :) I like Finnish and have couple of uni friends, but I am from the Baltic state so mentally (and food wise) quite close. Not the underwear drinking part but things like being introverted/no small talk/not being all smiley-happy-go-lucky all the time. Language is hard to learn, climate is very challenging - winters are dark and cold and summer mosquitoes are size of a horse. But social securities and education systems are unmatched, very good!