Very Finnish Problems

Joel Willans presents Finnishness in such a funny way that even Finns take note. It WAS tHe usual story: Joel Willans was sitting in a bar in London when a blonde Finnish woman tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to buy her a drink. Then they got married. Actually, it isn’t a very typical story, but that’s how it happened anyway. For the first five years, the couple lived in London, both of Written by roope lipasti translated by Christina saarinen them working in advertising. Eventually, they felt they had at least gotten a glimpse of all there was to see around there, so they set off to travel the world for a year. “When we eventually landed back at Heathrow and everything was foggy, rainy, and dreary, I suggested we go to Finland after all,” Willans says. “That summer happened to be especially warm and sunny, so I wanted to stay here longer, though my wife of course reminded me that autumn and winter were on the way.”

S oto: Joel Will A n p H 20 Joel Willans.

The couple still had time to live in Peru for a little while before having children, which cemented their future in Finland. Around that time, Willans made a bet with himself. He would create a Facebook page that talked about Finland through the eyes of a foreigner and gain 10,000 followers.

And he did it. The satire page Very Finnish Problems now has more than a million followers – not on Facebook alone, but still.

Weather, language, food bodies and realize that few of them look like what the magazines have on offer. It’s healthy.”

Another thing to marvel at was the winter.

“The cold is so different here than in England. It gets into your bones and your core. On the other hand, it’s fascinating to go outside at 25 degrees below zero, when your eyelashes frost and your beard starts to crunch – and this goes on for three months! On the rare cases in Britain when you saw snow in the morning, it meant you wouldn’t have to go to school, or anywhere else, for that matter, for several days, because the whole country stopped.”

“More than half of my followers are Finnish,” Willans explains. “The next biggest group is from the United States, followed by Sweden, Great Britain, and Germany. Finns probably find it interesting to see their country from an outsider’s perspective. On the other hand, in the United States, there are a lot of descendants of Finns who moved there long ago and have never even been to Finland, let alone speak the language, and have some sort of romantic idea about Finnishness. Very Finnish Problems is a chance for them to get a glimpse at things over here. It’s probably the same with the Swedes – there’s also a large Finnish minority there.”

He’s been at it for more than five years now, so there seems to be no shortage of odd things about Finland.

“There are the basic strange things like the weather, language, food, and customs. The prime minister, Sanna Marin, has also been fantastic material – she has a certain kind of social media stardust. When the video came out during the summer of her dancing with her friends at the prime minister’s official residence in Kesäranta, I wrote about it for The Sunday Times and shared the video on Twitter. It was viewed over five million times. That post blew up and Marin received support from all over the world.”

Mämmi on my mind Of course, there are many other strange things in Finland besides sauna. For example, things like salted licorice or ice-hole swimming, both of which can be difficult for VERY FINNISH PROBLEMS IS HUMOR AND, ABOVE ALL, SATIRE. THE IDEA IS a foreigner to comprehend. Or mämmi, an Easter dish made of rye that looks as though it was fished out of a toilet bowl. Many people think it tastes like that too. TO HIGHLIGHT ALL KINDS “No, I haven’t gotten used to mämmi. My OF STRANGE THINGS A wife’s family always makes it for me at Easter, FOREIGNER MIGHT COME ACROSS IN FINLAND. even though they know very well that I don’t eat it. Another thing that makes no sense is the autumn ritual of eating crayfish: so much trouble and so little to eat. So my integration hasn’t been perfect. I’m also ashamed of how badly I speak Finnish.” Though Finns deserve part of the blame for that. “They speak such good English that whenever I try to speak Finnish, they immediately switch to English. At some point I had the idea that the children would help. That somehow, I would learn the language through them, but they’re actually my worst critics and say right away, ‘Dad, don’t speak Finnish. It’s so embarrassing!’”

Naked with the family

Very Finnish Problems is humor and, above all, satire. The idea is to highlight all kinds of strange things a foreigner might come across in Finland. Willans has also written two books on the subject; the subtitle of the first is descriptive: “The Foreigner’s Guide to Surviving in Finland.”

So what kinds of strange things are we talking about?

“When I first came to Finland, the sauna, for example, was a shock. I wasn’t at all prepared for being naked with the whole family. I myself come from a very liberal family, but that sort of thing would not have been heard of in Britain. I remember when my mother, who is a very open-minded woman, went to a swimming pool (and sauna) in Helsinki. She was stunned because she had never seen so many naked people before.”

But since getting over his culture shock, Willans has warmed up to the sauna. And more than that: “Saunas would be great to export to the world precisely because in saunas you see different kinds of Distance gives perspective

Having lived in Finland for twenty years now, there are of course some things a citizen of two cultures misses from his old home country.

“The bath is one example. And now, when I look at things from a bit of a distance, I’ve noticed how lovely British small towns are. My childhood village of Sudbury in southeast England is 1,300 years old. We lived in a 200-year-old house, for example, and my school was from the 18th century. They’re things I used to take for granted.”

Another is football, of course.

“I’ve been a supporter of Ipswich Town since I was seven years old, but I wasn’t able to see their matches on TV for many years – nowadays, of course, it is possible – so it was great to be able to go to a match for the first time in years last summer. Another thing I miss is sausage rolls. Whenever I go to England, I run to a bakery first thing to buy them.” s