# INTRO
Spring came a little early this year, and it makes me a little sentimental to see winter go. Then I thought of Finland, a country that’s covered in snow until April. The only country in the eurozone to receive an AAA rating from a very selective credit rating agency. The country with the least corruption in the world. The country whose people are often considered the politest in Northern Europe. The country whose education system is praised by education experts all around the world. Not to mention, the country whose people love saunas so much that they enjoyed them even during the war against Russia. The country where per capita ice cream consumption is the highest in Europe, and where there are more fantastic Tango dancers than in Argentina! To say Finland is an interesting country would be an understatement. The country is the home of Santa Claus, and much more.

An education haven?

A while back, there was a Finnish education craze in Korea. All books and documentaries on Finland applauded the country’s tuition-free, exam-free, failure-free education. I was one of those admirers. This popular belief about Finnish education is half true and half false though. To begin with, Finnish schools also have exams like we do. Students take a college entrance exam after finishing high school, and colleges have midterms and finals as well. The classroom interaction isn’t always completely two-way either; teachers spend a good amount of time delivering their knowledge to the students in a one-sided manner. So, what makes it different? The biggest difference is that Finns put greater emphasis on making sure the students enjoy the process of making the knowledge their own. Finnish classrooms may look like a mess to Koreans, mostly because they are designed in a way to encourage kids to communicate freely with each other and with the teachers. This helps the kids learn critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which then leads to creativity. Professor Pasi Sahlberg of the Finnish National Agency for Education writes the following in his book “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?”

“Companies don’t mind hiring employees who don’t have the mathematical knowledge
required to work; that can be taught. But not knowing how to work in a team is a different
story — that can’t be taught, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

All of us are well aware of the importance of creative talent in our society. Creativity is a value all countries around the world have endorsed for a long time and will continue to do so.

What has made Finnish education so special though? Experts say that the elements of Finnish education that make it so unique comprise the system that hires and supports qualified teachers and the trust people put in them. Trust? You might say Koreans also trust teachers with their kids, but the Finnish idea of trust is a little different. It refers to mutual trust across the entire society, not just for the teachers. So, what is the Finnish trust?

Trust is survival

There was once a social experiment that was conducted in Finland to see how long it would take people to grab an unattended wallet in a crowded train station. Finland was one of the countries, along with other Northern European countries, whose people took the most time to pick up and take the unattended wallet. In Finland, visitors on corporate visits are encouraged to take photographs inside the company and ask for any information they wish to know, despite a ‘photography prohibited’ sign being posted on the wall. Where is this deep Finnish mutual trust rooted?

The cold in Finland is harsh, to the extent that the freezing floors make your feet sore. With most cities located near lakes, the level of humidity is almost always around 80%; the country is nicknamed winter wonderland for a reason. Being stuck between powerful nations, Finland historically suffered lengthy years of hardship, just as Korea did, and during those years, what kept the Finns going strong was the ‘SISU’ spirit, referring to the unique quality of determination and perseverance innate in Finns. With a small population of 5,500,000 spread out across an area 1.5 times the size of the Korean peninsula, cooperation was key to survival, and such cooperation had to be built on trust. So for the Finns, trust was directly connected to survival and prosperity.

“If a Finn tells you that he will bring firewood on Friday,
then there will be firewood on the spot he promised exactly on Friday, without a doubt;
no firewood meant death as recently as fifty years ago.“

The British journalist Michael Booth talks about this relationship between Finnish trust and climate in his book on Northern Europe, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People.” Finns often trust one another to act in a certain way, even if they don’t know each other. This expectation is rooted in Finland’s high-context culture1, which puts greater emphasis on context and background when it comes to communication or personal relations. Let me explain what a high-context culture is.

Trust each other, and only each other

Finland is known for its substantially low ethnic diversity. Immigrants make up only 2.5% of the population, compared to more than 33% of Sweden, its neighboring country. Because of this ethnic makeup, Finns share similar expectations, experiences, backgrounds, and even genes, with each other. Linguistic communication becomes less important in such a high-context society because you share so many similarities and unspoken assumptions. It becomes easier to expect who you are going to interact with, and how that person will think and react. However, Finns do not readily extend this benefit to outsiders, probably because they are used to holding their guard up against invasions by outsiders, as is the case in many polar region countries. In the same context, Finland didn’t accept refugees for a long time, unlike other European countries. Studies have shown that the Finns are the happiest people in the world; does this happiness also come from this unique idea of trust, or is it just make-believe?

Happy? Really?

According to a column written by Doctor Frank Martella, who studies ‘the meaning of wellbeing and life’ at Aalto University in Finland, the Finns aren’t actually that happy. When the UN measures the level of happiness of each nation, it uses a variety of criteria, among which are trust and tolerance for the government and fellow citizens. For the Finns, the values for these two criteria are strangely high, which resulted in a somewhat skewed interpretation of happiness. The concept of happiness is very complicated and individual. A high average score among a population does not necessarily mean I am happy. Rather, the word that describes Finland better than happiness is equality, according to Anna Aminof, an employee at the Finnish Embassy to the Republic of Korea.

“Everyone lives in more or less similar houses.
All students use the same supplies at school. I guess experiencing similar things and living similar lives make us less conscious about other people’s lives; everyone is equal,
although I do get jealous over a luxury sedan that my neighbor drives. Haha.”

Shopping for clothes at flea markets and getting out of work at 3 to spend time with their kids, who also have equal access to education, as shown in many documentaries, may not be the case for every Finn. Otherwise, how do you explain Nokia, a mobile phone giant that once boasted a 40% market share, being a Finnish company?

The Birth of Nokia

The Death of Nokia and the Birth of Supercell

Nokia’s prime days ended when its mobile phone division was acquired by Microsoft in March, 2014. Two years after Nokia’s official decline, some unexpected news surprised the world in June, 2016, when Chinese giant Tencent spent nearly 10 trillion won to acquire the Finnish game company Supercell, whose 200+ employees achieved this astonishing milestone in just 6 years after being founded. Kang Choong-gyeong, a technology adviser at Lab Master in Finland and Professor at Hoseo University highlights how Finland’s ingenious entrepreneurs, who are beneficiaries of Finland’s creativity-oriented education, are pioneering a new era, in his book “Our Future in Finland.” Finnish universities are still evolving. A case in point is Aalto University, established in 2010 when the Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki were merged. This University is known for its multi-professor classes, where more than one professor co-teach in a single classroom. This innovative approach to education may just be the secret to unicorn companies like Supercell.

Did you enjoy this first episode on Finland? Personally, learning about Finland gave me a new perspective on the country’s strong sense of mutual social trust, creative education system, emphasis on equality as a value that’s more important than happiness, and the spirit of perseverance that turns any crisis into an opportunity. It’s definitely on my must-visit list of countries, and I can’t wait to enjoy Finnish saunas and visit the Santa Claus village. Next episode will be on Sweden, so stay tuned!

¹ This concept pays attention to how messages are explicit and how context is important in communication within a single culture. People in high-context cultures tend to focus more on non-linguistic components in communication, including facial expressions, gestures, and changes in tone.