Finns are a car-crazy folk (large country, few people outside the big cities), and the country is awash with undulating dirt roads in the middle of nowhere where opportunities of practising rally driving are fantastic.
Sounds kind of like the Einensteinian definition of insanity…
The few I met seem to be people… Just like the people I met from Australia, or Ecuador or South Africa.
The Finns did speak better English that half the guys from Australia, but sine they also spoke better English than many Americans, that was not too surprising.
Invite him to a sauna with you and you will earn his respect. I hear that Fins really love saunas. In fact, the word ‘sauna’ is itself Finnish.
"Today, Finland is a nation of 5.3 million people and 3.3 million saunas, found in homes, offices, factories, sports centres, hotels, ships and deep below the ground in mines.
…99% of Finns take at least one a week, and much more when they visit their summer cottage in the countryside. Here the pattern of life tends to revolve around the sauna, and a nearby lake used for cooling off."
My late-mother’s late-husband was born in Turku, and immigrated as a youngster after WWII. He was about 6’ 4" tall and about 250 pounds. His head was rather squarish, and he had a deep voice. Whenever I think of Turk(ka), I think ‘Taciturn Finn’. He seemed to have a sense of humour, but he was reluctant to show it – or any strong emotion.
Nice guy.
Hungarian isn’t so noticeably related, but Estonian is. There is some degree of mutual intelligibility between Estonian and Finish. Hungarian is about as close to Finish as Russian is to English.
The Lord’s Prayer in Finnish:
Isä meidän, joka olet taivaissa.
Pyhitetty olkoon sinun nimesi.
Tulkoon sinun valtakuntasi.
Tapahtukoon sinun tahtosi, myös maan päällä niin kuin taivaassa.
Anna meille tänä päivänä meidän jokapäiväinen leipämme.
Ja anna meille meidän syntimme anteeksi, niin kuin mekin anteeksi annamme niille, jotka ovat meitä vastaan rikkoneet.
Äläkä saata meitä kiusaukseen, vaan päästä meidät pahasta.
Sillä sinun on valtakunta ja voima ja kunnia iankaikkisesti.
Aamen.
In Estonian:
Meie Isa, Kes oled taevas!
Pühitsetud olgu Sinu nimi;
sinu Riik tulgu; Sinu tahtmine sündigu nagu taevas, nõnda ka maa peal;
meie igapäevane leib anna meile tänapäev;
ja anna meile andeks meie võlad, nagu meiegi andeks anname oma võlglastele;
ja ära saada meid kiusatusse, vaid päästa meid kurjast;
sest Sinu on Riik ja vägi ja au igavesti!
Aamen.
In Hungarian:
Mi Atyánk, aki a mennyekben vagy,
szenteltessék meg a Te neved,
jöjjön el a Te országod,
legyen meg a Te akaratod
amint a mennyben, úgy a földön is.
Mindennapi kenyerünket add meg nekünk ma,
és bocsásd meg vétkeinket,
miképpen mi is megbocsátunk az ellenünk vétkezõknek,
és ne vígy minket kísértésbe,
de szabadíts meg a gonosztól.
Ámen
S&W is all about the stereotypes. The artist is up front about it right from the start. She mentions it often, as in when the Finland character first showed up. If you’re interested in weird bits of history and geography, read the whole thing. (some nudity once in awhile)
Another webcomic that I like, with Finnish characters, is A Redtail’s Dream, which includes bits of Finnish mythology. You can also read it in Finnish. The tail is complete, so you can read the whole story. Minna Sundberg, the writer and artist, is also producing a new comic with characters from all of the Scandinavian countries. It’s ongoing, so you have to wait for new pages to be posted. All of the links can be foundhere.
I’m a fan. It doesn’t hurt that her listing in TV Tropes includes the tag trope “scenery porn.”
I have some friends who are Finnish (mostly from Nokia) and aside from the accent they are completely indistinguishable from anybody else I know. Not long ago I helped one of my friends move and we were having trouble with getting the refrigerator out of the kitchen. I learned then that the Finnish apparently have a fondness for cursing. To them, it’s poetic - the level of offense they can squeeze into a single phrase is staggering. So much so they even have a whole Wikipedia page devoted to Finnish Profanity: Finnish profanity - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia:
Well, that get my total respect!
To judge by all the programmers I met at SIGGRAPH from the Finnish software company Electrogig, the word would be “tall”. But maybe that is just the programmers.
Finns are a fast people.
I knew a guy from Helsinki who was down on his luck. I passed the hat and got change for a Finn.
I spent quite a bit of time in Helsinki, and have one very good Finnish friend here in the states (as in, she’s only been here about 5 years).
She’s the one who told me the latter version of that joke, and I find it to be very accurate. They are a quiet and introverted folk, in my experience, but very kind and warm, and friendly in their quiet way.
In a business setting I must admit to finding them a bit frustrating, because at that point in the meeting where someone is supposed to say “I’ll take care of that” or “I know the answer to that,” they never do (based on my experiences with colleagues at three different Finnish companies). I learned that if you want to know what they think, you really need to ask directly. I always took this to be a politeness attribute.
They adore hockey. Their own as well as the NHL, and they do in fact love metal (obviously I am generalizing, but we haven’t time to discuss each Finn individually). I was at a Helsinki Jokerit game and they played Metallica constantly.
They got all my jokes, even those based 100% on US cultural references. In the Helsinki central square there is a sports bar sort of place called the “Texas Outback.” They didn’t seem to understand why I found that one so funny. They also had a place (Chico’s?) that ran commercials with lots of quintessential American images of cowboys and the open road, and the tagline was “America, on a Plate.” Interestingly, some of the best Indian food I have eaten was in Helsinki.
I love it there, but it does get pretty rural pretty fast, once you’re outside Helsinki. The train ride to Turku is interesting, because it really looks a LOT like northern New England. Be prepared to go to a sauna, something I could never get myself to love. Also, reindeer is fantastic, even if it is tourist food.
My impression politically was that Finland is pretty typical EU progressive, but my friends there are very tired of the “wealth transfer” to the “lazy southern EU;” their words.
Finally, my Finnish friend who lives here and I argue constantly because she doesn’t like American wood frame construction. No I can’t explain it, but she has a really nasty reaction to it any time she does any work on her house.
And my favorite way to tease her is to add lots of extra "i"s and "a"s into my (English) emails, since Finnish seems to love those letters.
If you like to party, visit Helsinki during the summer solstice.
This concludes my stream of consciousness Finland Brain Dump.
Finns normally dress up as nerdy Mexican Wrestlers and drink Pepsi Next while playing Goat-based video games. Or maybe it’s just this guy, alias “Matsku84”.
His playthru’s of video games are rather long, but he has a similar sense of humor to mine and so I find his quips funny - I just play his vids as background noise while I do other stuff…
He relates info about life in Finland in dribs and drabs, but all I can remember right now is Finns learn both Finnish and Swedish in school, and also take a third language (he chose English, and in fact his diction, grammar, and usage of idioms put a number of native born American people I know to shame), that Finland doesn’t have four-way stop intersections (he questioned their usefulness in Sim City V, saying Finns would used roundabouts instead), and they get really pissed and curse a lot when rock blasting for the Länsimetro expansion construction interrupts their playthru recordings of Borderlands 2…
OBVIOUSLY, there’s no single description that can cover an entire nation.
But the single best description I’ve heard of Finns as a whole was, “Tough nerds.”
As a Finn, I find this thread quite amusing. 
Well, don’t be a tease. We’re reporting our experiences. Tell us where you think we got it right and wrong.
They’re losers in the world hockey junior tournament tonight. That’s all I know.
And that’s sow-na, not sah-na, as any Finn (or Yooper) will tell you.
No, it’s /sauna/, Finnish being a language with perfectly reasonable and logical spelling.
I’m wondering whether the reason Finnish and Basque used to be considered part of the same linguistic family has to do with stereotypes… a lot of the things said about Finns in this thread are often said about Basque (or, if you’re Basque yourself, about one of the subdivisions thereof; we don’t expect “outsiders” to be able to differentiate that much, but reserve the right to pull their leg over their inability to do so). I’m finding this thread hilarious and thinking I may need to add Suomi to my language list :p.