“Four times in a row is too much,” said Jukka Lindstrom, a writer and standup comedian.
The report this year received little attention in the Finnish news media. “Finland is still the happiest country in the world,” began a short article that ran on Page 19 in Ilta-Sanomat, a daily newspaper.
[literally laughed out loud when read that.]
"Really?, other Finn's reaction.
When governments around the world introduced coronavirus restrictions requiring people to stand two meters apart, jokes in Finland started circulating: “Why can’t we stick to the usual four meters?”
Finns embrace depictions of themselves as melancholic and reserved — a people who mastered social distancing long before the pandemic.
David Pfister, an architect from Austria who lives in Oulunkyla, a suburb of Helsinki, said that he would describe Finns as content, but that it was hard to say if they were happy.
People in Finland also tend to have realistic expectations for their lives. But when something in life does exceed expectations, people will often act with humility, preferring a self-deprecating joke over bragging, said Sari Poyhonen, a linguistics professor at the University of Jyvaskyla. Finns, she said, are pros at keeping their happiness a secret.
...people trust each other, he said. Each morning, it is common in Helsinki to see children as young as 7 walking by themselves with their backpacks to school, feeling completely secure.
“That epitomizes the Finnish happiness,” Mr. Aittokoski said. “There’s something we’ve done right.”
Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown. But Joy is a positive thing; in Joy one does not only feel secure but something goes out from oneself to the universe, a warm, possessive effluence of love. There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness. Pilgrim's Way, John Buchan (117)
The human species at its best and most distinctive plays, jokes, is happy.
