The Finns are the happiest people on the planet. Here’s why they’re not smiling

Finland might be rated the happiest country on earth, according to the annual World Happiness Report, but it’s not recommended that you smile at a Finn on the street.

“They’ll think you’re a freak,” says Finland’s ambassador to Australia Arto Haapea. “It’s a big move,” confirms one of his staff. “It’s confronting.”

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.Credit:

Indeed, the ambassador says he’ll need to retrain himself for a forthcoming trip to his homeland; he’s developed the habit of greeting people on the street in his new home, Canberra. “I would say that’s probably one of the biggest differences when you come to a country like Australia, which is very happy, very positive. People are generally extremely happy and welcoming.”

The same report, which is based on a self-assessed measure from 1 to 10 points in a survey of people in some 140 countries, this year puts Australia at No.10.

If Finns don’t seem very happy, then why the high rating? It might be the methodology of the index. For example, Australia outranks Finland in yardsticks that use objective measures of wellbeing, like the UN’s Human Development Index and the OECD’s Better Lives Index.

Still, Finland must be doing something right. It’s topped the Happiness Index seven years running. And it’s in the top dozen of every international wellbeing comparison, as are most of the Nordic nations.

“We call it an infrastructure of happiness, of wellbeing,” Haapea tells me. “It starts with trust – trust in the society, trust in one another. Trust in institutions is strong, still.”

He nominates shared values of human dignity, mutual respect, equality, and gender equality, imbued through family and school. Another contributor, he says, is the nation’s social security systems and an emphasis on work-life balance.

Yet, a dreadful danger has risen on Finland’s border in the past couple of years, which is no smiling matter, the biggest shock to the country in decades. Finland’s traditional enemy, Russia, launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, the 1300-kilometre border between Finland and Russia looked very vulnerable.

“Of course, we never wanted to believe this,” Haapea explains. When Russia did strike Kyiv, Finland was jolted. “The mask has now come off, and only the cold face of war is visible,” said then-Finnish president Sauli Niinistö. The country had stood aloof from NATO membership. Sentiment reversed overnight.

Former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö.Credit: Bloomberg

The ambassador cites his mother as a barometer of national opinion: “She always irritated me over lunch discussions when she said, ‘How foolish is it to talk about NATO membership, which would so antagonise Russia?’ And almost overnight it was my mother who said, like, ‘Why are we not in NATO?’”

And now they are. The situation in Ukraine is “deeply worrying”, Haapea confides. And if Russian President Vladimir Putin should prevail, he “would be very emboldened”.

“All of the bordering nations of Europe would need to be, probably, fearful at that stage.”

In retrospect, the smartest thing Finland did was never to stand down its defence systems. After Russia’s million-man assault against Finland’s much smaller army in the Winter War of 1939, “suspicion stayed in our DNA through throughout the generations”, says Haapea.

Finland’s ambassador to Australia, Arto Haapea (third from the left). Credit: X

“So we kept a very strong position in national defence ... General conscription was kept through decades, despite many sceptics; it was a wise use of defence money. And we have built one of the strongest militaries. We have civil defence shelters across the country that many expert missions are being sent these days to study.”

The other brand-new NATO member is Finland’s Nordic neighbour, Sweden. It had taken a very different stance from Finland; the Swedes allowed their defence systems to run down and cancelled national military service.

Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson says his country was guilty of “at least complacency” before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “No one can say that there weren’t any warning bells coming out of Russia.” He recalls Putin’s 2007 speech warning of a new Cold War; Putin attacked Georgia the next year and has continued with serial hostilities ever since.

“You see the first invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014,” Jonson points out, “and I think there should be some soul-searching that not enough strong measures were taken against Russia’s illegal behaviour, and not investing enough into the armed forces in Europe.”

Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson. Credit: AP

During a visit to Canberra for the annual Australian Strategic Policy Institute conference, Jonson tells me that “like many other European allies, we come from decades of under-investment, we have had to double our defence spending between 2020 and 2024 and take quite drastic measures in a short time”.

Haapea and Jonson concur on one core concept, which Jonson put this way: “Some people say that Russia is provoked by strength, but my understanding and thinking is that Russia is provoked by weaknesses.”

The two officials share a new wariness, too, of the so-called “unlimited partnership” between Russia and China. “We must be very alert and worried as to how far that co-operation extends,” says Haapea. And both the new Nordic NATO members agree that a new indivisibility of security has arrived – European security is now interlinked with Indo-Pacific security, they say.

Finland, for the first time, has named Australia as a country with which it wants closer relations as a like-minded geopolitical partner, together with Japan, South Korea and Canada, says Haapea.

And Jonson canvasses possible areas of military co-operation with Australia as he cites a notable quote from Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida: “Ukraine today could be the Indo-Pacific tomorrow.” Both officials thank Australia for its contribution to the defence of Ukraine.

Strikingly, Finland has retained its top happiness ranking throughout, in spite of the Russia threat, and Sweden, at No.6, doesn’t seem to have plunged into despair either. Putin has failed to panic them. If anything, he’s united them. They’re not smiling about it, but it does seem that they are confronting grave danger not fearfully but resolutely.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

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