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-Good afternoon.
Welcome to Seattle University's Winter Conversations program.
Today, about societal happiness.
We are delighted, delighted,
to be speaking with Consul General of Finland,
her Excellency Minna Laajava.
Thank you so much, Consul General,
for making the trip and spending this time with us.
Our program is sponsored
by Seattle University's Department of Public Affairs
and Nonprofit Leadership
and the Department of International Studies.
Seated next to me is Seattle University senior, Naho Umitani.
She's majoring here in economics of public affairs,
and lucky for all of us, Naho will lead us off.
-Consul General,
I'm very much looking forward to this conversation.
Now Finland has been named the happiest country on Earth
for eight years in a row.
Now we don't know yet about 2026.
That comes out in March.
But the big question is why.
Why do you think Finland comes off as so happy
or content in this measurement?
-Thanks a lot, and first of all,
thank you so much for this opportunity
to talk about Finland,
to talk about Finnish society and our values.
It is very fitting.
I've been in Seattle since Sunday night.
Big weekend, by the way. Congratulations, everybody.
-We'll take it.
-And I've been discussing how Finland and Washington
can foster our close ties and cooperate more.
And in a lot of meetings, the issue of common values comes up.
We do have common values. We have common history,
and therefore, it's very fitting to touch upon this topic.
Being the happiest country in the world
for eight consecutive years is, of course,
a huge opportunity to showcase Finland, our values,
our society, and our culture.
It's an important tool for us diplomats
for the visibility of Finland.
It's country branding for us.
It's a nice brand
and it also provokes a certain kind of curiosity towards Finns,
and Finnishness, and Finland.
And I'm really happy to touch upon that.
Why we've been consistently ranked as the happiest country
in the world is the discussion of today.
But I must say,
it has been something that has been built in our society
for a long time
and it's certainly not a personality trait of Finns,
as a lot of my fellow Finns know.
But it's about the infrastructure for happiness
that we have set up throughout the years,
and I'm happy to give a little bit more detail
on the elements of that,
but that's about the bottom line.
-Consul General, what is a solid working definition
of happiness in Finland?
I admit that before I met with you,
remember, back in October,
and started reading a little more,
I thought that the definition had more exuberance,
more outright glee than you folks intend.
-I would actually define it as certain preconditions
for well-being in society.
Trust and being content in
how the society is supporting individuals,
what kind of culture we have fostered, et cetera.
So it's, you know,
Finns are not necessarily the ones that laugh the most
or smile the most.
We're pretty chilled, sometimes a little bit
not necessarily the most social ones in the room.
So it's a certain kind of happiness.
But this study is really about the society
that we live in and the trust in institutions.
-Now this leans in perfectly for my next question.
You touched on trust
and I was reading one of the comments
of one honorary consul general who explained Nordics
are so happy because, quote.
"We trust each other and share similar values,
not abstractly but practically.
As neighbors, colleagues, and friends,
reliability is assumed rather than negotiated."
End quote. It sounds quite comforting.
Consul General, your thoughts on that?
-Yeah, I must say we do have a very,
very high trust in our institutions,
in our political decision makers,
government in general, governance.
And I think it already starts in school.
We have a very, very good universal school system,
very kind of where at an early stage,
the infrastructure that children grow up with
is quite simple it's trustworthy.
So I think it starts at a very early stage.
Then regarding kind of how we trust each other,
I was reading that we rank high in the so-called wallet test.
So if you lose a wallet, you're very likely to get it back.
I don't know.
I'm a little bit skeptical on that,
but apparently we rank high on that.
So you do feel that there is more inherent trust
in people doing the right thing.
Of course, we have crime, as well.
We have people who have bad intentions,
so it's not a dreamland, super for sure,
but I think the trust builds with time.
-Thank you.
Now Finland is a democracy and a capitalist country.
But it also combines free market capitalism
with strong social welfare
and strong public services like universal healthcare,
education, and parental leave.
How does this model contribute to happiness?
-Well, I think we have very strong safety nets.
That has been a major part of our society for a long time.
Like you mentioned, there's universal healthcare,
public schools, daycare that's extremely cheap, subsidized.
So there is a lot of kind of institutions that we have.
However, you know,
economic times are not the easiest, at the moment.
So we do have a debate on
how much can we kind of sustain all
of these wonderful institutions
and then and this social welfare net in the future.
In relation to the happiness index,
we call it the infrastructure happiness
that we have built out through the generations.
And now the question is, you know,
how long can we keep it up having this kind of
excellent quality of services. And, of course,
these kind of societal issues are not only limited to Finland.
Everybody's going through the same thing.
But it's something that the Finns value very much.
I also read that we are happy taxpayers.
Ninety percent of Finns believe that paying their tax
is an important civic duty to pay for all of this,
to pay for our good institutions.
So that's an interesting trait,
as well, that probably won't exist here.
-That brings my follow up
because I really want to know about that.
Your individual tax rates are among the highest in the world.
In some places,
high taxes make people more irritable,
less happy, more worried,
but why not in Finland?
And by the way,
I want to tell you something about the city of Seattle.
The city of Seattle is generally not trying to lower taxes.
We are almost always trying to raise them.
-Just so I give you a realistic view of things,
of course, taxes is a political issue in Finland, as well.
But I think when it comes down to questions of
are you willing to pay tax to have good healthcare.
Are you willing to pay tax to have a good school?
That's where the Finns often answer yes.
That's money well spent.
But taxation as a general topic is a political questions
and there are differing views
on how high that should be, et cetera.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
Now on the note of hard times, I'm an economics student
and so I've been trained to look into labor statistics.
And according to Reuters,
Finland's unemployment rate has soared to over 10%,
making it the highest rate in more than 15 years.
You mentioned that Finland has a great social safety net policy.
Could you explain further how could Finland be so happy
with such a high unemployment rate?
-All the questions are how are you so happy, yes.
-Yeah, good question.
And, in fact, one of the most important jobs that we,
as diplomats,
have when we represent Finland abroad
is really to work for better trade relations.
To promote Finnish business opportunities
to get investments in Finland.
This is an important task for us here,
in addition to all the other things
that we're doing as diplomats,
but yeah, the economic outlook is not great
and it's a real cause for concern.
I have a 19-year-old and a 22-year-old,
and especially the older one is really worried about,
you know, futures, and jobs, and so forth.
So it is a huge topic.
However, coming back to the happiness indicator
and the happiness report,
it's basically focused on one question
about rating your life from zero to ten.
And somehow,
we still kind of manage to rate our happiness level
at a high level
and it doesn't include kind of the amount of money you have.
We kind of see our well-being more broadly.
So that may be one factor that has contributed to that.
It's interesting to see now what happens in March,
whether we still succeed.
But it's a valid point, of course.
These are, you know, troubling statistics for us
and the government is doing a lot of policy changes
to turn that trend to another direction.
-Consul General,
Finnish happiness is closely connected to something
you folks call sisu. Did I say it right?
Resilience, determination, courage.
A recent story in "The Economist" said
that Finnish children are taught early on to walk
or bike to school alone.
American kids used to do that,
not as much these days, to be fair.
What would you say to parents in the United States
who find the practice compelling but sort of, you know,
unachievable right now?
-Yeah, I remember my American friends who moved to Finland
and they were almost shocked
to see these young kids walking around
with their backpacks going to school.
And I had never looked at that
through that lens of being shocked and thinking, you know,
why aren't the parents taking care of the kids.
For us, it was kind of a very natural thing because,
in general,
the cities and the towns have been safe and everybody does it.
It doesn't mean that, you know, of course,
the parents are taking precautions and worrying
like any parent would do,
but it's just the way that we have always kind of organized.
However, of course, the world changes, as well.
Helsinki's not as safe as it used to be when I was young.
Even in small towns, you know, things happen.
But I think this element of giving children responsibility
at an early age, controlled responsibility of,
you know, having that independence to do things,
really makes them stronger long term.
And does kind of build their personality.
As regards sisu,
that is perhaps more of a personality trait
or something that's very common for Finns,
this kind of perseverance.
I hope you're aware of our quite difficult history,
our several wars, a difficult civil war,
the Russian attacks and the war with them, et cetera.
The history has not been simple
but we've always kind of managed and the people
and the population was extremely strong.
And we've always kept our independence,
and our own mind, and our own way.
Sisu would be almost a topic for another debate
because it has so many dimensions to it.
-Finnish parents have a practice
that would get them arrested in other countries.
They have babies nap outside in temperatures as cold
as negative-17 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now I'm from Hawaii, so this seems unimaginable.
Is this really a common practice, and if so,
why aren't the children sicker? -Yes, it's a common practice,
and I also remember my American friend
who moved to Finland being shocked about that.
But she had a baby during those years in Finland
and she started putting them to sleep.
That doesn't mean that you leave the baby alone in the darkness
for the whole evening. -Go to work or something.
-Or the night. This means short naps outside
when the baby is very well dressed, tucked in,
and usually they get a good nap out there.
Of course, you monitor them.
You don't leave them by themselves.
But often, it gives the mothers a little bit of a rest
and the baby sleeps a little bit better.
But we've been doing that also for all of our lives
and it's never harmed or hurt anybody.
And these children grow up to be very happy Finns.
-Apparently. -And you touched on this.
The Finnish education system is often cited
as a model for the whole world.
Finnish children rank amongst the highest in literacy,
well-being, and life satisfaction.
One expert says,
"This does not come from more academic pressure,"
maybe a legitimate dig at some other countries.
"It comes from a strong desire to protect childhood."
Why does it work the way it works?
What are some of the elements
that seem to make it so successful?
-Good question
and I do have actually a personal story regarding this.
My son was about three when I lived in Paris
and he went to a French school.
By around four, five,
he was doing perfect French cursive,
and reading and speaking French, and doing all the fancy stuff.
My daughter was younger, didn't do that.
And then we moved to Finland
and then my son went to Finnish first grade.
And in Finnish first grade,
normally some kids know how to read but it's not a requirement.
You can come to first grade and kind of learn that year.
And he was bored out of his mind
because he'd done these things like years ago,
so he was basically,
you know, wanted to play sports the whole time.
And then my daughter went through the Finnish system
of actually kind of learning to read
and write in the normal Finnish pattern
and write before first grade, et cetera.
But using that first grade to actually learn those skills.
And then when I look at those two kids,
there's absolutely no difference when they were eight.
You know, they were at the same level.
One had learned to do everything super-early
and the other one in a more relaxed fashion having more
of that kind of play time during her youth.
So, you know, it's just the way
that our system has been created.
Another strength is that the Finnish schools have
a small break after each class.
So you basically have classes
that last from 45 minutes to maybe an hour
and then you have a break of ten minutes.
You go out, and play, and then you come back in.
So people have intensive study time,
then they have a break,
and then they go home pretty early in the afternoons
when they are young.
So you have that combination of having enough time to play,
be outside,
get fresh air, and still their learning results are quite good.
And I think this kind of personal experience
of seeing different kinds of systems has really proved that,
you know, there are just this system works
as well as any other.
But it just has a different kind of setup
and starts a little bit maybe later.
That doesn't mean that Finnish students are not stressed.
Trust me, I've had stressed children with a lot of schools,
and exams, and et cetera.
So it does kind of pick up.
But the early years are fairly, fairly chilled and relaxed.
-On the note of teaching,
in Finland,
teachers are required to hold a master's degree.
Teaching is considered a highly-respectable profession
and they are well-compensated.
How has Finnish government achieved this feat?
-Yes, and Finnish teachers are very well-educated.
This has been the result of --...
kind of organized university teacher training
and it's a result of many years.
Traditionally in smaller towns around Finland,
teachers were very, very respected,
and it's a challenge to keep that up nowadays, of course.
Sometimes the conditions
in which they work are not the easiest,
so we try to keep that kind of respect --...
to have enough qualified teachers in the future.
They're doing a really important job.
-Now, Consul General, I must ask.
Finnish society is fairly monochromatic.
While the country is slowly diversifying,
around 90% of the country is white.
How much of the Finns educational success
can be attributed to this homogeneity?
Would the Finnish education system be successful
in our multicultural classrooms such as in New York,
in Chicago, and even in Seattle?
-I think there's been a huge change throughout the years.
The last kind of 15 years, things have changed.
In my youth, I must say, when you looked at the class picture,
most kids were blond, and blue-eyed,
and maybe a couple of brunettes, and that was that.
But now it's much, much more multicultural, much, much more.
So I think, you know, there is a huge change in culture.
And this has been now, of course,
a challenge to incorporate this kind of thinking
and taking different cultures into account
as our population changes, which is, of course,
a completely natural development.
But we still have the same school system.
We still get the same good results
and a lot of families who immigrate
are super-happy with the Finnish school system that we have.
So, yeah, I think we're still getting very good results,
but, of course, things have evolved with time.
-Consul General, as a journalist,
I am fascinated by the fact that Finns teach
media literacy to young children early, like preschool.
Children learn, as I understand it,
how to recognize bad information from good, fact from fiction.
How do you teach that, especially to youngsters?
-Yeah, this is a fascinating topic
and it's something that we're very proud of.
In my own children, I did see it at kind of an early age.
There's a lot of different elements to that.
Traditionally, Finns have watched a lot of news.
This was something that was always done at a certain hour,
8:30, everybody sat around the TV and watched news.
There were two big news events, 8:30 and 10:00,
and most families had those TVs on,
so I think we all
grew up with this kind of watching the news culture
which probably contributed to that.
Of course, now we have streaming and people
are not watching the news as regularly, anymore,
but they're streaming them.
This was probably part of the culture.
There's also been a high emphasis on reading.
We have a really good public library network.
The schools are doing a lot.
So those are perhaps the foundations of it.
Then kind of from a recent,
you know, there is a lot of misinformation
out there in social media.
But also in kind of hybrid attacks
or all kinds of misinformation
often coming from related to different issues
and perhaps this is the most challenging factor.
For instance,
nowadays, the Finnish broadcaster circulates news
in various different languages, which is really good.
There's news in Russian, and English, and so forth,
so there's always an option to kind of make sure
that what you're getting is the real thing.
But I think this is an ongoing challenge for all of us.
We have to evolve our media literacy skills all the time.
-Consul General, Finland
shares 830 miles of border with Russia.
Why aren't you all just plain nervous instead so darn happy?
-In addition to being happy, we are also extremely resilient.
And the resilience is based on a concept
of comprehensive security
and we're actually very, very defense-oriented.
And being happy doesn't mean that we, you know,
lack awareness
and we're actually very security conscious.
The comprehensive security model is also based
on the same factors that pertain to the happiness indicator.
And this is trust in institutions
and working together.
The comprehensive security model means
that being secure doesn't only mean
that we have good defense forces.
We are part of the NATO alliance.
We have good internal security.
We have competent police, et cetera, and border protection.
It's about a network of ordinary citizens,
institutions, businesses, et cetera,
all playing into the security of our country.
So we have a whole system of using everybody
in potential times of crisis.
And one example of this is our national defense courses,
which are organized four to five times a year.
And they involve people
who work in the private sector, public sector.
There's government officials. There's politicians.
There are people who work in the media.
There are all kinds of people coming from different businesses
that are important for national security
and national security of supply.
And these courses are a fabulous way to highlight this network,
and teach the foundations of security,
and the defense, and certainly our defense forces
on what Finnish defense is all about.
I just recently did one.
We spent three weeks of intensive time together
and this was just a really fabulous experience
for the whole group.
There was 50 of us and this is one element that we have
and we've been doing these courses for I think 30,
40 years, already.
-Now I understand your background is in security.
Now Finland joined NATO in 2023,
requesting membership shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Why was it so important
and how does security of being a NATO member
play into this Finnish confidence?
-It is the choice that we made.
Being an ally is really,
really an important factor to our security.
We provide security also to NATO
by securing this huge border with Russia.
We have extremely credible defense forces
with a conscription system.
We make significant --...
resource and spending in defense, et cetera.
So this was really an important decision that we made.
And I personally was very happy
that we took this step after so many years
of just being a close partner to NATO.
It was just at the right time.
-Can I just jump in here for one second?
Did either of your children serve in the military,
and if they did,
how does that connect young people to the country,
and the contentment, and all of that?
-Yeah, my son will do it starting next January.
He's put it off because he's been studying
for a few years now.
This is an important moment in any Finn's life.
It's a very, very positive experience.
It does perhaps give a little bit of a reality check
what defending your country is all about.
And by the way,
the willingness to defend Finland by Finns is at a very,
very high percentage.
It's almost 90, consistently.
So there is a culture that is very strong
and we really feel that it's important.
Going to do the military is also open to women,
so we do have women doing it on a voluntary basis,
as well, and they're very happy with the experience.
It's perhaps always not the easiest time
for our youth to do it.
You know, it's tough to be away.
You can do it either for six months or a year.
Tough training, but it's usually once they have done it,
people are very, very happy about it.
-Thank you.
Now to touch a little bit more about the Finnish preparation,
I read in a "New York Times" article that Finland
is often referred to as the prepper nations of the Nordic.
Now I read that Finns never stopped stockpiling
various resources after the Cold War
and this proved very useful during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Could you tell us a little bit more about this
and how this attitude of preparing for the worst
contributes to contentment? -Yeah, we have a very,
very strong culture of security of supply and this is a part
of the comprehensive security model that we have.
This was extremely useful
and I think raised awareness within our population
also during the COVID times.
One of the most visited kind of tourist attraction,
it's not a tourist attraction
but a lot of our foreign guests and politicians visit.
We have a really,
really big network of shelters around the big cities
and also the smaller cities.
So it's almost become a must part of any dignitary's visit
to film and they always want to go see the underground shelters
that we have built which are immense.
That are created for those situations
where there would be a crisis
and we would have to have most of the population safe
and secure in these shelters.
So they're quite a elaborate construction.
-Switching topics a little bit,
Finland has more saunas than cars
and your amazing person here in Seattle, Christina,
said sauna, corrected me, sauna, okay.
One groundbreaking study of 2,300 men,
I bet you've heard about this a lot
because I've seen it cited in a couple places.
The study showed that those
who use a sauna four to seven times a week
slash the risk of cardiovascular death by 40%.
That's astonishing. How do they do this?
Do they have gym access, saunas in their homes,
and how do they fit it into a busy schedule
unless they're in there kind of briefly, right?
-I think this is a, you know, personal choice,
whether you like to be there for 20 minutes,
or five, or how often you do a sauna.
But a sauna is something that is kind of a normal thing
to have in the house, or your flat,
or we don't regard it as a super-luxury
but we regard it as the most relaxing place.
And people really feel that it gives them a place to relax and,
yeah, this kind of statistics,
I haven't heard that and that's amazing, if that is valid.
-Rather impressive, I'll say.
-On the note of urban design,
Nordic and Scandinavian countries are known
for smart urban design.
How does Finland, in particular,
use design to create spaces that make people happy?
-I think perhaps the connection with nature
would be an element.
Some of the architecture and the architects
that we have nicely combine nature, and wood,
and kind of calm colors.
Maybe this is part of the secret
of kind of creating that calm atmosphere.
Finns are, of course, nature-oriented.
In Finland, nature is not a luxury.
It's kind of something that we have everywhere.
And a lot of Finns really it's, for some people,
it's the sound, and for others,
it's having a nice walk in the evening in the forest
or green spaces around where you live.
It's a part of our kind of everyday thing that we do.
-It's like an Italian passeggiata
or something out there. -Thank you.
Now homelessness is a crisis in our American cities.
Helsinki's easily one of the coldest cities in the world.
How has Finland tackled this issue?
-We don't really have kind of homelessness
of people living on the streets.
Of course, we do have people
who don't have necessarily permanent housing
and need help and support in that.
But we don't have anybody sleeping around.
-Well, how is that possible? How?
They have so much government support
that you're able to provide those services?
-Yeah, I think we have that
and we make sure that kind of there are shelters
and there's programs
to get people into having some kind of roof on their head.
So and, of course,
the temperatures are extremely severe.
I just came back from Finland, be there for ten days,
and, you know, it was minus-15 Centigrade for most of the time,
so you cannot imagine anybody not, you know,
you cannot be outside for the night.
-An American filmmaker spent five years traveling
across the US asking people if they were happy.
This filmmaker didn't define happiness for the people
that he spoke with.
He let them explain.
He came to the conclusion that happiness is like a muscle,
more of a decision,
and we've all sort of touched on this a little bit here today,
but more of a decision to be grateful
for what we already have. What about that?
Like is that part of this sort of Finnish take on happiness?
That you be grateful,
that you're not reaching for so much,
you're not trying to be the richest person,
that you accept what you have and have contentment about that?
-It could be.
I think the happiness is also about kind of being,
yeah, being grateful for those simple things that work.
Like I outlined kind of having that trust,
having an equal society,
having those green spaces, having good healthcare,
having good schools, having a culture of well-being.
Being able to have, in most cases,
a pretty balanced work-life balance
where you work hard
but then you have opportunities during your life
to take time off and be with your children as needed.
I think these kind of elements are something
that you appreciate.
And, of course, the safety, the calmness,
all of those are things that you learn to appreciate.
And often, when you live abroad,
you realize how important those things are
that you have in Finland.
I remember when I was living in London,
I'd been there for three months,
and I went back to Finland on my own
and opened my house's house door.
And then I just sat there for probably a half an hour
and I was just listening to the silence.
And I felt like I hadn't been listening to the silence
for months because I had been in wonderful
and exciting London listening to a lot of noise.
-Now Finland has a low birthrate,
around 1.3 children per woman.
This is well below the replacement level.
But does low birthrate help with contentment or is this an issue?
-Oh, we love the kids.
-This is actually a huge question for us
that causes quite a lot of worry
and there's been all kinds of ideas of
how we can reverse this statistic.
So it is not related to happiness.
-So Finns are funny in an understated way.
I'm talking about how they invent
or come up with some pretty wild,
unusual sports like wife carrying contests.
You can explain that. Rubber boot throwing contests.
Phone, I guess it's all about Nokia.
They throw those phones.
What's up with this approach to sport?
-Yeah, I think Finns are pretty quirky.
-Oh, that's it.
-Yeah, we talk a lot about, in my profession,
about country branding.
And often these kind of funny things about Finland come up
and we're encouraged as diplomats just to say
that Finns can be a little bit quirky.
These are the things that make us special.
-I mean, this does sound comforting to me,
anyway, that Finns have an attitude
that it doesn't matter that much if everybody sort of agrees with
or likes what you're doing.
But maybe it makes you more at ease.
What do you think of that?
-Probably. I don't know. -Yes?
No? Well, just something to consider then, right?
-I grew up watching Moomin as a child, a very quirky show.
Now my next question is about Sanna Marin,
the former prime minister of Finland.
She was 34 years old when she began serving
and my question is do Finnish women feel
connected to government because of this?
-I think like more of the idea
is also about women in government and Finland
has a lot of women in government.
Washington State, for many years
when I was writing about politics
for the "Seattle Times."
The state of Washington always had
either the highest percentage of women in the legislature
or the second highest.
And we would trade off with Maine and New Hampshire.
And so I think how does that connect, and I think even more
like we'd love to know if you think women govern differently,
or better, or any of that.
I will tell you, our US Senator Patty Murray told me yes.
She did. She did, she did. -Right.
It's a multifaceted question, the question of leadership,
and what are female leaders like, et cetera.
No, we are very proud of the fact
that we do have females in leadership positions,
and in fact, at the foreign ministry,
at the moment, there are more females than males.
We have a lot of ambassadors at top levels that are female,
so we've come a long way.
But as regards to politicians,
I think it's a really welcome trend and,
hopefully, encourages young women to enter into politics,
as well to have these kind of leadership figures
that are doing these jobs.
Of course, this has not always been like that.
Politics was a male sport in Finland
for a long time, as well.
So but it just proves that we have a society
that values equality and there's lots of opportunities
that have grown because of that.
-You mentioned a few minutes ago
how delighted you were to come back to your home
and how you loved the silent.
So you can tell we've been reading a lot about Finland here
and one thing we picked up is that silence is kind of popular
or part of the etiquette on public transport.
And I don't think Seattle's the noisiest metropolitan area
but we're not the quietest, either.
So my question is tell us more about like this preference
for personal space, for quiet,
and how does that contribute to the topic
that we're discussing today like contentment?
-Yeah, often if you take the bus around rush hour,
all the Finns kind of take the seat
that has an empty seat next to it,
and only by force do you start filling those extra seats
where you have to seat next to.
-Oh, wow. What do they do on airplanes?
-The same phenomenon. -Same thing, yeah.
-Yeah, this is kind of something
that we always joke about,
the kind of Finnish space, and personal space,
and our tendency to be quiet,
and kind of how everybody understands that.
Often when we start meetings,
it may start with this weird little silence,
two minutes where nobody starts and then, I don't know.
It's a very cultural thing.
But we're very aware of these things.
-No,
but I mean do they contribute, do you think,
to what we're addressing here today,
those few moments of silence on a bus, a train?
-Could be.
I think this is a personality matter, yeah.
-But the way you describe,
you know, the silence before anybody speaks
kind of reminds me the old days in Seattle, not now,
but Seattleites at a four-way stop.
"You go." "No, no, you go."
And they just stay there and it's
like people do need to get somewhere at some point here,
right, so they have to go, at that point.
You touched on something a couple of minutes ago
about money
and I spoke to the previous honorary consul general here
in Seattle, Matti Suokko. Correct me if I got it wrong.
And you touched on this but I want to hear a little bit more.
He said something that stayed with me,
that Finns don't try to get ultra-rich.
They're happy if work-life balance is going well.
You know, stressing and,
you know, Americans really do need to stop
and think about this for a second,
that happiness comes from other things than money.
-It's very hard to generalize on that matter.
I think,
like I explained, there are like simple factors
that pertain to this kind of happiness index
that are not related perhaps to personal wealth.
But, I mean, there are, of course,
like anywhere,
there are Finns that want to succeed, and be successful.
And have the money that's related to their success.
I wouldn't generalize that.
-I saw that Finland's trying to hire, you know,
folks who are getting laid off in the United States
in some tech jobs, too.
Is that a big deal right now in Finland,
trying to recruit talent in that field?
Because all of industry's changing before our eyes, right?
-Of course, and this is, I think,
it's not limited to Finland.
I think there is this search for having that talent,
and finding people who know their stuff,
and getting that attraction of talent,
and making those incentives
to attract foreign talent to Finland.
Yeah, of course, it's important for us, as well.
-Now I'd like to touch on social democracy
and back to social safety net policy.
American cities are moving in
very wildly different directions.
San Francisco, long associated with progressive policy,
is moving more towards the middle.
New York City and Seattle,
on the other hand, are moving pretty left.
And so I'm curious what you think about
these different approaches
and how they compare to social policy in Finland.
-Huge topic, really difficult to answer.
Yeah, it almost requires a different conversation.
Enormous question.
-So I want to ask if there are any,
I'm sure there are because everybody disagrees
about a lot of stuff.
But there must be some Finnish people who on a dark, cold,
winter night hear about this happiness stuff and say,
"I'm not buying it.
I'm a skeptic and I don't have to believe."
Is there a percentage of the population
or do you have a name for the people who don't buy it?
And just wondering about just different voices
and thoughts about that.
-Yeah, there must be some happiness skeptics around.
-Around or near?
-I don't know, but eight years in a row,
we're kind of used to it now.
I think the first year that it came out, we were like, "What?
Where did this come from?"
But now I think, you know, it depends what happens next month.
If we're not the happiest, will we be in a crisis?
Who knows?
-Well, that's actually an interesting point.
Do you folks at all, I don't know, lobby for this
or it just comes down?
But I've read the questionnaire.
You know, it's almost like going to the doctor.
"How's your pain level, zero to ten?"
And this is the questionnaire
that gets folks to the conclusion that one country
or another is happier than the other.
And so I'm just wondering about that.
-Yeah, we don't lobby because we're too good to lobby,
but I must say that there's always a little bit
of competition between the Nordic states, you know.
Denmark has there hygge. They have branded it well.
You know what hygge is? It's about the candles,
and drinking some hot tea, and having a very nice home.
Well, I mean, Finns do the same thing.
We do the candles. We drink the tea.
We get cozy. We get the woolen socks.
But we didn't brand it enough.
-Oh, so that's what I mean.
That's kind of what I mean.
I also wanted to ask you about empathy classes.
So, you know, people tend to say, well,
all the Scandinavian countries and Nordic,
which includes Finland, you know,
things are going well there.
And they all are good at design,
and their education systems,
and you sort of see them compete on different matters.
I am wondering, Denmark teaches empathy in their schools,
and do you folks have that and sort of brag about that, too?
Because it's an interesting thing for us in America
to hear that you teach.
We do have some different but civics classes
but those are under pretty big pressure to continue
in many cities, in many schools. I see people shaking their head.
They know that we don't even have that,
but empathy classes.
That's also part of your curriculum?
-I'm not aware of having like empathy classes
but I think this is a part of what we generally are taught
in lower schools.
But I'm not aware of significant, you know,
distinct classes that are focusing on this.
-I did this, remember, when we first met.
I did this.
I think I called you Scandinavian
and you rightly corrected me, just different backgrounds.
Is that correct?
And tell us the Nordic versus the Scandinavian,
what might be different about that.
-Do you mean culturally?
-Yeah, I do.
-Yeah, within the Nordics,
there's a lot of similarities between all of us but,
yeah, it's kind of like a family
and we feel like we understand each other,
but there are very difference.
You put a Finn and a Swede
and there's like 1,000 jokes about how different we are.
And then there are the Danes and the Danes
and the Swedes have their jokes.
And the Norwegians and the Danes have their jokes.
I mean, we are different but our societies are very similar.
And that's why there's always a little bit
of this kind of who's the happiest, and who has hugan,
who has Ikea, and who does better marketing,
and who has Santa Claus, and who has meatballs, and all of that.
-You might not love this question.
I'm going to try for it, anyway.
So a lot of people in the United States
are feeling sad these days.
And so I think one of the delightful ideas
about this program was to look around the world
and see what other countries are doing.
So keeping it apolitical here
and you've touched on so many different things
for me to think about and for many people here to think about.
What advice do you have to Seattleites, Americans,
for how we can just feel better these days?
-I think, in general, Americans are quite happy.
I always say that I've been in California
since the beginning of September
and everybody's always asking me like,
"How do you like it there?"
And I say what is there not to like?
It's impossible to be in a bad mood.
You have a great country, I think.
-Okay, what about an LA freeway?
-LA freeway, okay, that's another level of misery,
but yeah, no, I think you have a great country.
You have a wonderful culture.
You have a lot of good things here to enjoy
and you're, you know,
I think just appreciating what you have is the key to success.
-So instead of you're happy and you know it,
you're happy and you don't know it, something like that.
-I was fortunate enough to get to visit Finland
and I went to Turku and Helsinki.
And I'm an architect,
so I wanted to see all the great design,
and what struck me about the tours I took was the first thing
they wanted to take me to in both cities was the library.
And Oodi is jaw-dropping and I loved
that the top terrace puts everybody on the level
with the legislature across.
But the role of literacy
and the obvious role of the library as the center of life,
do you think that's key to your lifestyle, your happiness,
your sense of community?
-I think this is a really important factor
and it's something that we are making huge efforts to ensure
that we have good funding for these libraries,
we retain this culture of reading.
Because in these times, with the phones and the social media,
of course, it's not so easy to keep this kind of culture alive.
But we're putting a lot of effort into it
and I think it's part of having this access to all the books,
and information, and news
that's really contributed to an educated population.
That can kind of spot the fake news from the real news
or the real news from the fake news.
-Hi.
A fellow Finn, here, also a Seattle University student.
I've lived in Seattle since September
when I started my graduate studies here.
We've been talking what makes Finnish people happy
but is there something
that Finnish people could learn from America or Americans, too?
-I think there's lots of things
that we can learn from Americans.
One thing is being friendly, in general,
which is really great and often an American way.
-That is a good one.
-And this is something that Finns always take some time
to warm up and they keep their distance.
Americans always say, "Hi. How are you?
How can I help you?"
That's a really good thing here and part of its culture.
-Thank you very much.
Add a person for the US, that's great.
That's great.
Thank you, again, folks, for coming out, and participating,
and just a wonderful presentation.
Thank you so much.
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