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MissReads
After last year’s
blog brought a host of impressions from Ireland, this year we’ll venture to
another European country. Some of you might have an inkling as to which country
it will be after reading the headline. It’s not Sweden or Norway.
So, what else is
up there in the North? – Right, Finland (which was named the best country in
the world by Newsweek
in 2010); or Suomi, as the Finns call it.
Monty Python has the right of it when singing: “Finland, Finland,
Finland, the country where I want to be […] You’re so sadly neglected / And
often ignored […].”
“But it’s always dark up there!” was the one thing
almost everybody said when I told them I was going to live and study in Finland for a
year. Next in line was probably “It’s awfully cold up there, isn’t it?” No,
it’s not always dark in Finland, and when it comes to the cold, well, there’s
cold and thenthere’s cold. I for one prefer the dry Finnish cold over the wet, sluggish Austro-German
cold. What annoys me most about winter in Austria and Germany is the fact that you
step outside and in the blink of an eye your shoes (even good winter shoes) are
soaked through. In Finland
it’s perfectly possible to wear sneakers all winter without having wet feet
before the snow begins to thaw in April. At least one of my friends did that,
and yes, all his toes are still where they belong.
Maybe this is the
time to bring up a favorite proverb of our Grandmas: there’s no such thing as
bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.
Suitable clothing is
the holy grail of anyone who is in Finland during winter. My personal rule of
thumb: as soon as the temperature drops below -10 °C (about 14 °F), wear a nylon pantyhose underneath your jeans. If it gets even colder, wear
thick cotton leggings instead. And if you feel like wearing a skirt or a dress,
you can always wear one pair of pantyhose over the other (though if the
temperature actually does drop below -20 °C, I would recommend wearing snow
pants for anything that requires being outside longer than a few minutes). Add
warm sweaters, a good winter jacket, thick gloves and a good hat, and you’re
all set.
Just like the
cold, the darkness is not as bad or complete as most people might think, at
least not where I lived. Tampere
is Finland’s
second biggest city, and very much in the South of Finland (about 2 hours by car from Helsinki).
This means that there are still 5 hours of daylight during the shortest day of
the year. This stretches to a bit over 20 hours on the longest day. (A great time-lapse video comparing one winter and one summer day in
Tampere can be found here.)
“Only 5 hours of sunshine,”
you say. “That’s still horribly short!”
Well, yes it’s
short. In fact, it means that the sun goes down at around 3 p.m. Finnish time.
(Besides being pretty great when it comes to things like education, the Finns
are also an hour ahead of most of the rest of Europe.). Still, it’s not that bad. This is true for several
things people in the more southern regions of Europe
believe about Finland.
One of these myths is that everyone in
Finland
suffers from SAD (seasonal-affective disorder or winter depression), and has to receive bright light therapy all
winter long. This is one of the stories the word “exaggeration” was made for.
(This myth is so widespread that the mother of one of my fellow exchange
students sent him a lamp suitable for bright light therapy, just in case.) Only
a very marginal portion of the population is actually affected so badly that
they need bright light therapy. About 60% suffer from minor symptoms only:
tiredness, being more hungry than usual, being a bit moody, things like that.
These usually last for a week or two and then everything is back to normal
again.
I personally
belonged to the 60%.
So, neither the
cold, nor the darkness are as difficult to cope with as you might have thought,
especially if you are surrounded by dozens of great people and don’t even have the
time to be depressed about either. And if the cold does get too severe you can just go to the sauna. You’ll never be as
warm as after a good hot sauna (from 80 °C (176 °F) and up) and a dip in the
lake, believe me.
Fun Fact about Finland:
More ice cream is eaten per capita in Finland than in any other country in
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