alt Hacker NewsI have lived in Finland for the past four years, having emigrated from the US like the other poster here, and the WHR is a common punching bag topic amongst locals here.
The odd thing however is that when I ask them whether they think the average Finn is happy, they say absolutely not, but when I ask them whether they themselves are happy, most of the time I get a "oh this place is actually pretty great for weirdos like me, I just mean like, normal people would hate it here". But that's the thing: No one normal chooses to live in Finland!
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This is a fairly common discrepancy between how people perceive the mean/median of a property is compared to the mean/median of how they themselves are.
You see it in things like business confidence going in both directions at various times, pessimism when things are going well, optimism when things are going poorly.
It is very convenient in politics, because you can choose which figure to report to make it seem like you are saying the same thing but you can switch between them to make things look good (or bad l, depending on your attention)
Friend of mine moved from Australia to Finland, and loved it there. I can't imagine dealing with all that cold after Aussie's wonderful heat, but he loved it.
Happiness is found in different places for different people, thankfully.
I have a relative who decided to move up to Baffin Island and get into long-distance arctic trekking. She'd probably fit right in.
Unrelated, but this reminds me of Americans' opinions of their congresscritters: Congresscritters as a whole are a terrible, corrupt bunch, but your own congresscritter is amazing!
Played hockey with several Finns. They always seemed grumpy about something. The Norwegians and Swedes I played soccer with always had a more cheerful disposition. They always made fun of the Northern Finns, saying, "You'd be grumpy AF too if you had to deal with Winter for 7 months every year!"
A similar thing was recently reported for Germany as well. When asked how they believe the average German is doing, most people answered something along "worse than me".
As a Finn, I can confirm this.
Finns are amazing!
I'm brazillian, moved to Finland 2 years ago to work here, and can confirm the sentiment.
If you ask a Finn, most people are actually quite harsh to the Finnish government, economy, etc - specially as of recent, since Finland now has one of the worst unemployment rate in EU. But lifestyle here is quite sober, everyone has hobbies and are quite dedicated to them. I guess the Sauna and Avanto culture are the main happiness drivers here, and tbh after experiencing it, I wouldn't change for anything else.