American REACTS to Finnish Lifestyle | Finland Is Amazing 

Nobody is speaking english and everybody acts like it's completely normal, well, that's just because it is completely normal in non english speaking countries.

Finland isn't baltic. It's Nordic.

Wow, this guy knows a lot about Finland. All of it wasn't 100% accurate but still.

Finnish history and mythology is actually very, very rich..

So the nicest part of finland is turku because it's old and *swedish*. Thanks

Finnish people speak english very well, and almost everyone here does speak it.

There's something that amused me when you mentioned that there isn't much history or religiousness in Finland. As it happens, Finland had its own pagan religion where the shrines and churches were the rocks, trees, and lakes in nature. This is the main reason why some huge boulders and lakes are considered holy to even this day. This also leads to the reason why Finnish religious practice is so very solitary and private. You're supposed to go out into the nature to have your own spiritual journey. The old Finnish paganism also had plenty of spirits, deities andother entities that either brought fortune, were benign, or was more or less evil. All Finnish forest homes have their own gnome/elf that would help protect and bring good fortune to their habitats. Another sacred place is the sauna. In history, saunas were used not only as places to cleanse oneself, but the majority of people would be birthed in saunas or would receive their baptism in saunas. Like the rest of nature, saunas also hold a very strong spiritual bond in Finnish culture as for many it too is the shrine for spiritual moments rather than churches. Especially during the Finnish civil war, it wasn't uncommon to hold executions behind the sauna. So if you're traveling in a Finnish forest and happen upon a large boulder, or a large pond, or other unusual natural sightings, it would be adviceable to keep nature's peace and not disturb the spirits and deities as Tapio, Mielikki, or even and Kivutar are likely listening in while Ajattara might bring her own revenge on those that disturb the peace by making you lose your way. Tapio, king of the forest. Mielikki, Goddess of the forest. Ajattara, an evil female spirit that misguides travelers. Kivutar, a female Goddess of pain and disease. Aides and guides those that have come down with something unpleasant.

"You walk down the street and nobody is speaking english but people are just carrying on like it's completely normal, and it's like really really weird." LOL. Yeah, it's really really weird that people act like everything's normal when everyone is speaking Finnish in Finland.

"Winning" against the Soviets is debatable. We had to accept the peace terms and lost some land area and islands in the Gulf of Finland. But still Finland remains the only country in the world that has been invaded by the Red Army and not get occupied. And we did it twice. So I would call it a defensive victory.

Nobody says "I love you" because it sounds ugly in Finnish 😅

What? Who doesn't like christmas food?? The dinner is literally the highlight of the whole evening?

0:41 and when you go to America almost nobody speaks Finnish....😂😂🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮

I feel so bad to comment this, but Ä and Ö are Finnish but the Swedish one is Å. Great video all way!!:)

I'm from Finland and I don't know a single person who doesn't like christmas food.

heittäisin "kuusi palaa" - läpän mut en jaksa kirjottaa.

Btw, the hymn starts with the words "Oi Suomi" but it's actually called "Finlandia hymni" = The Finlandia hymn. The lyrics were fitted into a peace called _Finlandia, op. 26_ which was composed by Jean Sibelius, a Finnish composer.

I adore Finns so much that I married one 30 years ago. 😂❤

Finland is called a land of thousands of lakes, and according to Wikipedia we have about 180 000 lakes here. 😃💙

I forgive u for bashing our delicious christmas food, because you seem like a nice dude.

While we might laugh at some weird pronunciations, we're not trying to be mean. We might find it a bit funny, but we always appreciate the effort :)

The ä, ö, y: -Finnish ä vowel looks tricky but it's the vowel sound in 'man' - We'd spell it 'mään'. -The ö vwel is close what Americans hae in thE, A, An, bUrn, lEArn, bIrd, hEr, OccUr, neArEr etc. It's technically not the same, but we Finns hear it to that of our vowels. -The y has no American English equivalent, but French and Germans have that sound. The funny thing is, so does Scottish English (mostly), when they say yOU. That ruotsalainen Å, 'Swedish O' means the same as O (in spOrt) - that's why the small cicle over the A; but it appears in Finland only in Swedish names, not in the Finnish language per se. Double letters mean the sound is long, about double long: vowels or consonants. Just imagine you put too simple sounds together. English does it across the word boundary - like lamP Post. Just this same can happen inside a word in Finnish.

Finns don't hate Russia that much. But they will take them as a serious threat. That's why the border is so strictly watched

I think most of the "sniper towers" you have seen is being used to hunt moose for the most part.

I do consider the effort Finns had after the war a really strong statement about what it is to be a Finn. If I ever get to be even half of that I think that would be super. The thing is that Finland was not a rich country after WWII. Yet Finland paid all their war preparations which more hundreds of millions US dollars (calculated to the amount before the war). And not only that. Finland had a very unique position between east and west. So when US offered their help to the countries that were effected in WWII Finland denied. And Finland also denied the help from Soviet Union as they didn't want to favor any country (and the political environment was very difficult for Finland at the time). So in my books Finland did really well. Much better than many other countries that did get help from either from USA or from Soviet Union. And (also in my books) that is how Finland did earn its reputation as a neutral country which is not really useful when negotiating for peace all over the World.

One thing we do different in Finland, when we enter a home, we take off our shoes and leave them in the hallway. In Finland it's disrespectful to walk around the house with your shoes on. Great clip, and you speak finnish really well btw! :)

And don't bother about the "we're devils" sentence 😁 paholainen is not really that bad word in finnish. It is not considered as a curse word, it's the correct term for devil. Satan or in finnish saatana and sometimes perkele, are curse words that refer to devil and they're like bad words.

I got chills when you talked about our independence. Younger generations do say I love you a lot more, it’s the really old people who almost never say it. But yes in Finland I love you really means love, it’s not just casual words.

I just have to quickly correct you! "Paholainen" is just a basic word for a devil. "Saatana" is the curse word. And yes, they both mean "the devil". Also you have to understand that "pahoillamme" and "paholainen" is for us like we mixed words "sheer" and "smear" for you. Hope you understand my point! And also sorry for any possible grammatical mistakes...

My mom was a first generation Finnish American. She said after the sauna in the winter, they would roll in the snow. Is that common in Finland?

I live in Finland, and I can say that i love this place and always will, bc this country is amazing and every view is beautiful. Finnish people likes to make fun of Sweden with jokes, for example: what Sweden has, but Finland doesn't. A good neighbor country 😂

To me that Finns don't tell others they love them is a big misconseption. The thing is that they usually do (at some point). And everyone knows that unless they tell them otherwise they still do. So why bother to repeat that from time to time?

"they drink Non-alcoholic beer at Christmas" 😁all fellow Finn's and other ppl know that we have had major alcoholism within our people and included in our culture for years .

3:25 Correction: Finland didn't win the wars but it survived them.

Finnish christmas food is the best ever!!!! it is not bad if you have born into that culture. I'm starting to dream for christmas dinner about in late summer 😂

Being a finn (swedish being my mothertounge) myself I found this so fun to listen to. And our icecream being that good was surprising 👍🤗🇫🇮 Props to you for learning finnish!!

This guy has more to say about Finland than most of us finns do :)

Well, Finland did not really "win" in the typical sense of the word in war. On paper and through negotiation the ussr actually "won". However what the Finns did was to save their independence by making it so costly for Stalin to annex Finland that he realized it was too expensive of a price to take all of Finland. the Finnish army never surrendered to the red army and showed they had plenty of fight left in them in the summer of 1944 when Stalin amassed an offensive as large or larger against Finland than the whole of the D-Day invasion the allies set up against the German army. And in the end the Finnish army had major defensive victories against Stalin's best troops. After the major defensive victories of Tali-Ihantla and Vuosalmi, Stalin decided to cut bait for a second time(and the final time) and send his troops onto easier land grabs and the race to Berlin. As Molotov later stated, "it was better we(the ussr) did not annex all of Finland as it would have been an open wound for the soviet union as the people there are a stubborn people, very stubborn, even the minority would have been dangerous. "

09:35 nope. the border is guarded, but it is long. no-one will be shot. once in a while people try to cross the border but ..... there is over 1300km border where most of it is just wilderness. unless you know how to live there for 2 weeks and build your shelters for the night you can try to cross the border

Ajaja means driver but we prefer to use the proper word kuski

I absolutely love christmas food and everyone in my family loves it too. It's pretty simple but the feeling and traditionality of it all makes it so good.

Finns not having firewood.the whole country is full of trees.

I literally gasped out loud when you said younger people don't like christmas casseroles - WE DO! xD And turnip is my absolute favourite one! It's so under rated! I'm sorry you felt sick tho!

As a food enthusiast and a pretty decent cook. I have to say Our food is not bland. We dont use many spices true, but we use tasty ones. Lovage(lipstikka) one of the oldest herbs we have it creates a salty and rich flavour without any salt. There are many more spices too.

What a very observant person, he learns a lot from a visit, and shares it well.

Until the part about christmas food i thought that this is the most accurate explanation about finnish traditions and culture. About the christmas food - the cassarolis are not food that only old people like. Yes, they're traditional and like always, everybody has their opinion, but i think in general the potato, liver and rutabaga casseroles are quite appreciated food. Of course nowadays theres also more common food at christmas, like meatballs and mashed potatoes and salmon. Great video though 😊

The only time people cry in finland is when we win in icehockey

its like listening to a story. I really enjoyed it alongside with my dinner. Thanks.

Can we just appreciate that he put on finland colored shirt for this video.

"They're really into what they call makkara, it is just like sausage" Makkara literally translates as sausage. You had sausage.

Now I've seen the combination of Eliah Wood and Bam Margera.

I Love turnip casserole :) salmon and turnip casserole and carrot casserole, wild mushroom salad with lingonberry jam are the best part of Finnish Christmas meal but I HATE the ham. I know tens of young people in Finland who enjoy Christmas casseroles very much, so you must have met only very picky young people in Finland,

From finland🙋🏻 the land of introverts xd or something, we do cry maybe too much 😅 there's lot of songs that say's "we live in land that is made of tears"

Finnish verbs indeed have thousands of inflection forms. However, Finnish is very logical language compared to e.g. English and you don't need to remember verb specific inflection forms, just the generic rules and then just become familiar enough with those rules to be able to create needed inflection forms on the fly. The really hard part of Finnish is the compound words where the only way to correctly read the word requires understanding the word as a whole. There's Finnish comic called "Fingerpori" which uses puns based on multiple meanings of the same written word or an expression said out loud. One example would be "lastenneurologi" (pediatric neurologist) which could be misunderstood as "lastenne urologi" (your child's urologist) when pronounced with an incorrect syllable break. Surprisingly Google translate can figure out this difference, too. And some words require you to understand both parts of the compound word to be able to figure out the correct syllable break.

Im from Finland Moi kaikki=hello everyone

Most people I know, including myself, love the traditional Christmas foods! Except for ham in my case, as I don't eat meat. The home-made foods at least are very good! 😃

Ok i just have to say that the finnish christmas food is amazing. The casarolls and ham are the best.

You have such a lovely and insightful way of telling about these countries. Warm and sincere thanks to you!

What a thoughtful and respectful recounting of your time in Finland. I'm inspired to visit!

This was a really nice interview. I am glad you liked your Finnish experience :-)

I love Finnish Christmas food, except for carrot casserole :D It's always nice to hear someone complimenting the Finnish lifestyle etc because we're quite unable to do it ourselves :P

thank you for your nice words about my country, really enjoyed listening to you talking about my contry. i hope to visit yur country also sometime.

Very well put - Thank You. This is the best thing I've seen on RU-vid for a long time.👏👏👏👏👏 Melts my heart, hearing you describe my home country with so much love🇫🇮.🙏❤️ It makes me even more proud of my heritage. All the best.🌞 Thank You so much.❤️

Thank you for the video. I enjoyed watching it. Nice to get an outside perspective of our country and our ways and felt it was actually a pretty good and honest summary of Finland and finnish in good and bad. Impressed of the amount of knowledge you have.

There is a church in western Finland, Ulvila which is medieval church... You should go to check that.

Excellent video! You have made so interesting and accurate observations.

"Go to Turku, it's the nicest. It's very Swedish." Hahahahahahahah

This is very thorough. I haven't heard many foreigners know Finland this well.

This guy knows more about Finland than i do and i'm finnish

I really like this guy. I could listen to him talk about Finland all day. :)

This guy is actually very accurate on the traditions, history and culture. But the only Swedish letter we pronounce "Swedish letter" is Å which we call "Swedish O" because it isn't used in Finnish language. Also "paholainen" isn't a bad word, it is just weird as in any other language to call yourself the devil. There can also be more weight over saying that you are (a/the) devil in Finnish since we don't have the "the" word to describe specific things. You calling yourself (a/the) devil in Finnish would more likely to specify yourself as *the* devil not just *a* devil, since people are required to think more logically when reading/hearing speech. And since it is not normal person to call himself a devil they consider you saying "the devil" which has more weight over it and calling yourself "the devil" in English sounds kinda mental also.

05:19 true. but it also got the industry ongoing and kickstarted the economy

Wow. Thanks for telling your take on Finland. It was really insightful and you know a lot about Finland. 😘

This was a nice review of someones time in Finland. Cheers from a Finn! :)

I'm a 19-year-old Finn and I LOVE christmas food, all the casseroles. People say that I'm not a true Finn 😂

10:26 This is 100% true. When i wake up at 6am for work, it is dark outside. 1pm is the brightest hour of the day, after that it starts getting darker again. At 5pm when i leave from work, its already dark outside. Basically i spent the whole bright time at work. Needless to say, it makes the people little depressed and moody.

Quite accurate but it's Swedish O, written Å. Ä and Ö are normal finnish letters, we don't refer to them as Swedish

Smoked reindeer on pizza is AWESOME. Vaasa represent

They also fought the Germans - something you never see in any kind of international tv history program on WW2. My grandfather-in-law talked about it, he fought in winter wars, but no one ever mentions that. Thanks!

loved this video could listen to you talk about finland all day

Wow, you know incredibly much about Finland! This video was spot on and very informative. Even learned a few things even if i’m a Finn myself. And glad you loved Turku haha!

We finns LOVE our christmas food. Young and old. Why else would we make it for the celebration? 😅 Anyway it might be a little exotic for the foreigners but nothing that would avtually make you throw up. The vegetable cassaroles are tasty and there is plenty of other foods as well. Salmon, stew, cheese plate, potatosalad , mushroomsalad, breads, reindeer, caviar etc.

One part of the country you should also visit is Lapland. If you can drive or take a bus to Kilpisjärvi the environment looks very different from other parts of the country. I think best times are March or early April if you want to ski or drive snowmobile. Or during summer or autumn when there is no snow.

we appreciate the you trying to speak Finnish.... nearly 90% of Finns do speak English too! 🙂

yeah we are machine people, we dont have souls nor emotions :)

Thank you sir, i hope you enjoyed your stay in Finland

This is such a nice guy. It is really interesting to hear the history of these strong good people. la post

This guy is the greatest! 10 points from the Finnish jury!

🇫🇮 Greetings from Tampere, Suomi Finland. Perkele!

Good stuff ! Thank you for the video. Your Finnish accent is natural !

Thanks for your interest for our little country. I really enjoyed this video. If you ever end up to Uusikaupunki (google the history since you are interested in that), hit me up!

Your appreciation of us Finns made me cry, thank you

I think you're right that it's wierd coming to Finland and you can't understand a lick of what people are saying, but I think it's more wierd that so many Finnish people speak such decent English.

Had to like this video when i heard your, "tuo ajaja on lämpimämpi kuin tuo ajaja" sentence. Made my day

Such charming enthusiasm - best ambassador for Finland ever!

I love this video!❤ (I'm from Finland🤘🏻)

Finally quite accurate experience from Finland :D most of the videos i have seen here in the youtube has been too rosy, can definitely tell you spend quite some time here in Finland. ps. that last part was hilarious you devil :'D

Your knowledge is impressive!

I'm Finnish and this guy knows more about my country than I do. I'm impressed!

This video makes me so proud to be a Finn that I started crying halfway through the video. :')

Turku the surroundings are really nice though. Nice festivals in the summer and real pretty too. Used to go clubbing there pretty often when the rave scene was one of the most active in the country.