FINLAND VS. SCOTLAND

Let’s start with the most obvious one:

Social life

This is definitely one of the things I’ve struggled with the most since moving to UK, but also continue to struggle with whenever I’m back in Finland too. Let me explain.

Small talk is just not a thing in Finland. Overall, people just avoid any unnecessary social interaction and physical contact with others as much as they can. However, in the UK, you’re very quickly judged for not greeting someone, saying “have a good day” or asking “how are you” from absolutely every person you see/meet.

This can be extremely uncomfortable for someone slightly socially awkward, as it is for many Finnish people. Especially, when they ask you “how are you” while walking past you and neither one of you actually has any intention of stopping to continue that conversation. So if you’re Finnish, you end up awkwardly walking away while answering the question. It would go something like this: “yeah I’m good, woke up a bit tired today and there is a huge work pressure but nothing I can’t manage. How are you…” and by that time you’re already way too far for either one you you to even hear each other. That is because a British person would not really expect an answer to the initial question, other than “good, how are you?”. Whereas a Finnish person, wants to tell you exactly how they’re feeling and genuinely hear how you are. 

Finnish people are by nature very honest and straight forward, so “casual” conversations like that with people that we don’t really know that well is just a very foreign concept to us. You can then understand how finding an appropriate way to react and deal with those casual social situations has been one of the most difficult things to adjust to for sure, but I do think I’m finally learning!

Together with this level of small talk goes what many would call “good manners”. It might sound odd, but it really is all part of the small talk culture and a level of politeness that us Finns just don’t always have or it just won’t come naturally to us. We do say “thank you”, but words like “excuse me” and “please” are not part of our vocabulary. Those words are simply interchangeable with words “sorry” (sori/anteeksi) and “thank you” (kiitos). And when I say we don’t use the word “please”, I mean that word does not exist in our language. And adding that extra “thank you” at the end of a sentence is when you want to be extremely polite and friendly. That does not by all means mean that we are being rude. Most of the time Finnish people want to be respectful and the last thing they want to do is upset anyone, but in order to do that we tend to mind our own business.

Although the lack of social pressure is often very comforting,  I do sometimes dislike how simply being polite and talkative in Finland can be considered to be a bit “odd”. That might just be a small town/northern thing (please do let me know if it is), but in my experience you have to be quite careful in Finland with who you approach and how because you can make it very weird and very awkward very quickly. Every social interaction simply is either a risk or an opportunity. They either go really well and you meet some lovely people, or you will feel very awkward and end up wanting to hide 100m underground. The other side of all this is how exhausting, especially for many introverts like myself, the constant social expectations and small talk in the UK can sometimes be. 

Overall the social etiquette and expectations in both countries have their own pros and cons for sure. So it definitely is nice to go back and forth to keep a nice balance between the two.