I come from the country of the midnight sun, from a land of crystal-blue lakes and endless forests, where the air feels so clean it seems to wash over not only the skin, but the soul. I come from a place where wild berries and mushrooms grow freely, where reindeer move quietly through the landscape, where bears belong to the forests, and where the northern lights sway across the sky like something whispered from another world.

I come from Finland.

Even writing those words stirs something tender in me.

It is the country of my beginnings, the landscape that lives somewhere deep in my bones no matter how many years I have lived elsewhere. It is the place that shaped my first understanding of beauty, of silence, of seasons, of home. When I think of Finland, I do not only think of a country. I think of a feeling.

It is a nation that loves tango and coffee, ice hockey and rye bread, woollen hand-knitted socks and heavy metal music, salted licorice and sauna. It is a people who do not waste words, who have little patience for small talk, and who are entirely at ease with silence. There is something almost sacred in that silence, something steady and unforced. We do not always fill the air just because emptiness makes others uncomfortable.

Finns are known for needing personal space, for being direct, punctual, and honest. We speak a language many find strange and difficult, yet to me it is the language of memory, of childhood, of something deeply familiar and precious. It is the language that first held me. The language that still reaches into me in places no other language quite can.

We are a peculiar people in the most endearing of ways. We drink buttermilk with our meals. We sleep under two single doonas in a double bed. We put babies outside to sleep in freezing temperatures, trusting in fresh air and common sense. We have handheld showers in our toilets for intimate wash, dish-drying cupboards above the kitchen sink, wooden butter knives on the table, floor heating under our feet, and a firm no-shoes rule indoors that feels less like a rule and more like civilisation.

We eat pea soup and pancakes on Thursdays. We celebrate Name Days. We fish through holes cut into frozen lakes. We have wife-carrying competitions, boot throwing competitions, National Sleepy Head Day, and even a National Day of Failure. We heat up the sauna at the end of business meetings, as though even the most formal of days should end in warmth, steam, and the quiet shedding of layers.

And somehow, all of this, the quirky and the practical, the amusing and the deeply rooted, makes perfect sense to me.

This small northern nation has given the world so much: sauna, Nokia, Angry Birds, Sibelius, Nordic walking, Marimekko, Moomins, air guitar championships, rally drivers, Formula One champions, the kantele, the Kalevala, Santa Claus, and of course sisu, that quiet inner grit that is so Finnish it almost defies translation. It is the land of world-renowned education, of thousands upon thousands of lakes, of untouched forests, and of people said to be the happiest in the world.

But I think Finnish happiness is often misunderstood. It is not loud. It is not showy. It does not need to announce itself. It lives in smaller places. In a warm home when the snow is falling outside. In hot coffee poured into familiar cups. In the hush of a forest. In candlelight. In sauna steam. In rye bread, woollen socks, and the deep comfort of things being simple, honest, and enough.

It is a country that celebrates Christmas with sauna, cemetery visits, glowing candles in the winter dark, and swede casseroles. A country where people swim in ice-cold water by choice, ride snowmobiles across white landscapes, race reindeer on frozen lakes, and think very little of what others might consider unusual. There is something about Finland that has always felt both deeply beautiful and delightfully bizarre. It has never tried to be like anywhere else. It has always simply been itself.

Maybe that is part of why I love it so much.

The older I get, the more deeply I feel the pull of where I come from. Not only toward its landscapes or traditions, but toward the soul of the place itself. Toward its quietness. Its strength. Its honesty. Its tenderness hidden beneath reserve. Finland is not loud in the way it loves you back. It does not rush toward you. It simply stays, waiting, steady and familiar, like something that has known you from the beginning.

And perhaps that is why it still moves me so deeply.

Because Finland is not only the country I come from. It is part of the way I see the world. Part of the rhythm of my heart. Part of the longing I carry. Part of the story I am still telling, even from far away.

And no matter how many years pass, no matter how far life has taken me from that northern land, there is something in me that still turns toward it with tenderness.

As though some part of me is always listening for its silence.
As though some part of me is always reaching for its light.
As though, in ways both beautiful and impossible to explain, I never really left at all.