Finnish Culture 101

"Sisu" is the Finnish mindset. Basically, sisu means determination, bravery, guts, resilience & perseverance.
It is sisu that allows Finnish people to go through long winters without complaining, and which gave them the reputation of being at their best when the circumstances are at their worst.
According to the French Wikipedia, "The sisu is the heart of the Finnish soul. It is the patient stubbornness which allows the Finnish people to face all the situations and to complete their goals".

Saunas are EVERYWHERE in Finland! Most flats and houses have one (usually connected to their bathrooms), except for some small student flats, in which case there’s probably a common sauna in the building anyway. There’s about 3 million saunas in Finland, for 5 million inhabitants, which means that the whole population of Finland could be sitting inside a sauna at the same time!

Saunas in Finland are really hot, and can be a bit hardcore to get used to. But when you’ll go back to your country, you’ll find all the public saunas way too cold :) Finnish saunas are usually between 60°C and 80°C (140°F and 175°F), I think.
I once made the mistake of telling a Finnish person I thought his sauna was not hot enough. On the next day he heated it up so much I couldn’t even sit on the burning wood benches.

Sometimes, birch branches (named vihta) are used to whip people in the sauna, in order to make their blood circulate better. People can also jump in snow or swim in a frozen lake in the middle of winter. Whatever floats your boat, right?

Sauna is very healthy for numerous reasons: it helps remove nicotine from one’s blood if they want to stop smoking, it kills lice and bedbugs, it stimulates blood circulation and the immune system, and tons of other cool stuff!

One last thing: you have to be naked in saunas. Yup. Swimsuits are mostly forbidden, and towels around your hips can seem weird as you’re gonna be the only one wearing them. Because of this, most of public saunas are not gender neutral, although it’s quite common to have mixed saunas with friends and family.

A little comic to give you a better idea of sauna

Finns, more than most western peoples, are extremely close to nature…​ and you can see proofs of this everywhere! There’s a lot of nature in towns (trees, parks, undisturbed wild areas etc.), the Finnish design is often inspired by nature (cf. Alvar Aalto), and they are very conscious about environnement issues.

This love of nature is well represented by the national anthem, "Maamme" (Our Land), which is, unlike most national anthems, a war chant. Indeed, it only deals with hoz beautiful Finland’s nature is!
The Finnish flag also reflects this: the white represents the snow, and the blue represents the lakes.

Last but not least, jokamiehenoikeus is a Finnish word representing the rule that you can enjoy the nature, as long as you respect it, while ignoring the concepts of ownership. It means that you can go in privately owned lands, as long as you don’t bother the landlords - more precisely, as long as you don’t hear each other. This is one of the reasons why camping is authorized everywhere in Finland.

The Kalevala is the national epic of Finland, so it deals with Finnish mythology. Finland is not part of Scandinavia, hence its people never worshipped Thor, Odin, Loki & co.

The Kalevala was written in the 19th century by Elias Lönnrot, who travelled throughout Finland to acquire traditional songs from bards, before ordering them so that they form a logical(ish) story.
For instance, the creation of the world, according to Finnish mythology, went as follows: a woman (Ilmatar, the air’s daughter) is in the sea, a duck rests on her knee to lay its eggs but she accidentaly breaks them and a part of the shell becomes the earth, the other becomes the sky, the yolk becomes the sun and the white is the moon. Why not, eh?
That’s only a part of the first "song" of the Kalevala, out of 50 in total. The others are epic stories about various characters, including a**holes harassing girls so much that they kill themselves (ever heard of Väinämöinen?), sorcerers and healers, badass smiths (Ilmarinen FTW!) etc.

The Kalevala is very present in Finnish culture, even though now most people don’t believe in the old gods anymore. You can see painting of Väiämöinen’s adventures in museums, and he is also on Finnish memes - I’ll put some in my articles later.
The book also greatly inspired Tolkien when he wrote The Lord of the Ring, just as the Finnish language inspired him to create the Elvish one.

If you like to read epic adventures and fantasy, you should definitely read this book! I’m reading the French translation, which is very good, but I don’t know about the other translations. It is surprisingly easy to read, and the stories are captivating!