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My voyage of good cheer around Finland – the world’s happiest country | Finland holidays

My voyage of good cheer around Finland – the world’s happiest country | Finland holidays

According to the World Happiness Report, the cheeriest country in the world is one nature-loving Nordic nation – Finland. On paper, it’s not hard to see why. It’s one of the world’s least corrupt countries, built on a democracy and quick to give women the vote. Education, from daycare to university, is free. Crime is low, the water is clean, the air fresh and there are more saunas than cars. But is it noticeably a nice place to be? And can the Finns teach me (and the rest of the UK, which ranks 20th in the Happiness Report) anything about wellbeing in the land of forests and freedom?

I start in Helsinki. With a population of just 630,000, this is a pocket-sized, but delightful capital city, buzzing with a Nordic foodie scene, a clutch of tech startups and its own design aesthetic, all bathed in up to 19 hours a day of sunlight in the summer. Over coffee at Nolita, his zero-waste restaurant and bakery, Serbian-born chef Luca Basic tells me that he came to Helsinki aged 19 and immediately decided to stay. So, what’s happiness in the city? He doesn’t hesitate. “It’s trust in the state. It goes beyond things like buses being on time, or my staff being able to afford to live in the middle of their city.”

In summer, explored during those never-ending hours of sunshine on foot or bike, the city feels eminently liveable. But locals also know how to make the best of the depths of winter, warming up in cosy cafés over bowls of salmon soup or carving holes in the sea ice for a dip. And while 40% of the capital is given over to green spaces, beyond Helsinki’s city limits nature is abundant. The country is a patchwork of 190,000 glassy lakes and 76,000 islands, while the rest is 75% forest. To the north is snowy Lapland but you don’t have to go that far for wilderness. Wide open spaces are just minutes from the cities – you are never more than a 10-minute walk from a park or forest.

Most Finns spend their holidays at traditional summer cabins, where running water is optional, but a wood-fired sauna and a dip in the lake are obligatory. And they think nature is so good for you that you can now get it on prescription. On the tiny, car-free island of Vartiosaari, just a minute’s solar-powered ferry crossing from Helsinki, I meet Adela Pajunen. Adela spearheaded a new movement for Finnish doctors to prescribe time outside to their stressed-out patients –…

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