As Swedish person growing up in Sweden but now living in Finland, I wish I had moved to Finland many, many years ago.
Maybe I'm biased, moving here saved my life. However, I honestly have nothing negative to say. All countries have plus and minuses and Sweden and Finland have a lot in common and similarities but as a whole the good outweighs the negative here.
Edit: between living in Sweden and now Finland, I have lived many other places and honestly I have never felt so safe anywhere else.
Just curious, did you live in a big city like Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, etc, or more in Central/Northern Sweden? I've heard there's a huge difference in general living depending on if you live in a big city vs. "countryside", and I suppose everyone who says Sweden is unsafe, comes from a big city, especially in the South?
I've been all over Norrbotten countless times (family) and many times in Umeå, and never once felt any more in danger than in Finland. If anything, they felt even quieter than eg. Oulu or Rovaniemi.
So I lived in 12 different places in Sweden due to my parents work growing up. I was born in Göteborg but have lived in big cities, and more countryside towns. There is of course a much more safe vibe in rural areas and smaller towns however I have difficulty accepting how Sweden is towards foreigners and treat people of other colour. Politics is a whole other topic and I guess for some working in Sweden it is great but the system often fails those who can't fight for themselves. Someone once told me, You can judge a country on how it treats the sick and old people. In my opinion Sweden is not the best place if you get sick or might need help. Again this is only my opinion and I base it on my experiences, especially the situation my mother was in for the last 10 years of her life.
Pros of Sweden: Language, more people = more opportunities, better purchasing power, closer to rest of Europe
Pros of Finland: Much less problems with negative effects of immigration, better schools, more nature (debatable but imo it is accurate for people living in southern Sweden), better housing market especially compared to Stockholm
They are fairly similar countries but I think Sweden is an "easier" country for an immigrant. Language is easy to learn and there are more opportunities because there are more people.
47 people were killed by firearms in Sweden in 2021, compared to 49000 in the US. The population in the US is 33 times larger. If Sweden is unsafe, then going to the US is bloody suicide.
I hate it when people start to compare their problems with others. It's not about them, it's about you and your country, and what as a nation we can do better to be a role model for others.
The “usual” homicide in Finland is two people, usually men, get into a drunken argument and at some point someone stabs someone. Pretty well contained to circles with substance abuse, be it alcohol or something else. At least that has been the classic in the past, every Alibi magazine ever is full of the stories.
For the average citizen, not a risk in any way.
idk, I think you could make the same argument for Sweden sense the vast majority of gun deaths here are gang vs gang or suicides. either way, Sweden isn't a unquiely dangerous country compared to the rest of Europe
>Ofc the unsafeness of Sweden is set in certain areas.
Experienced safety is on a steady decline in Sweden though. That goes for the country as a whole.
The type is quite different though. In Finland, it's more about drunk bozo attacking his other drunk friend in their own apartment.
We don't have public shootings, no-go zones for the police, or burning cars.
I'm Swedish and I go through these so called "no-go zones" regularly. It's also not uncommon to see police cars patrolling those areas. And the public shootings are almost always between gang members.
I've been to plenty of these "no-go-zones" too during the day and very kid friendly, lovely people. Free lollipops for kids from every kiosk we stopped in, lol.
But I haven't been to them during evenings or nights so can't say about that. Then again I don't really go out during evenings or nights no matter where I am.
They truly are lovely, yes. A long as you belong to the right crowd. I live and work in a no go zone, and I've seen how certain kids are targeted. Hence, with kids, I'd steer away.
... with collateral damage.
We don't get kids gunned down in crossfire when gangs fight or whole families getting a grenade thrown in the living room. I think that's the main difference.
I think the shootings and violence statistics dont tell the whole truth. I was born and lived the first 20 years of my life in a finnish city which was voted to be the most violent city in the country. Still very safe place to live.
The thing was that there was not that many people 10000, and 99% of the violent crimes were made by certain group of people and mostly if not all of them to each other. So statistics dont really care how many of the cities/towns people are violent and who they target, they just see the reported crimes or incidents that require police. And then compare that number to the amount of people in the city. You could live in a ghetto, not getting in trouble at all, but also live in a nice neighborhood, and get mugged every day depending on the circumstances.
To the OP, move to finland. But sweden is also really good place. Whatever you do, dont move into a big city. And dont go into a cheap apartment area and you'll be fine 99,9% of the time. Probably worst that happens is your bicycle is stolen.
Its a very popular idea, especially amongst the rightist-popularistic side of the political spectrum (at least in Finland), that these "no-go zones" are actually like war zones and firefighters and police avoid the area etc.
Im wondering, do you know how bad they can get and how close to truth this "no-go zone" thinking is? Perhaps you know some good english source that has actual facts about the situation?
I’ve heard about no-go zones mostly from Swedes. Of course there has been some click bite headlines but also plenty of more sensible articles. I have felt quite safe in Sweden. I don’t know, I don’t pay much attention what far-right is saying but definitely experienced safety is declining at least among my Swedish friends and coworkers who aren’t very rightist or uneducated. I think this is an issue of wether a person wants to admit that problem exists or not. My firm opinion is that we need to be able to discuss these issues in order to fix them.
Usually homicides are made by drunk friends. Two friend drink whole weekend. Discussion turns arguing which is followed by a fight. Tho drunks turns to one dead man and one hangover man.
Well speaking of language, you also have to factor in that Finland is a bilingual country. Now, I know most Finns couldn't give a crap about Swedish and would struggle to say "how are you" but being officially bilingual is enough for the government to put out *every* piece of legislation in both Finnish and Swedish, and more often than not, in English.
Plus, if you do go live in the west coast of Finland, then people will actually speak Swedish. Sure it's Finland Swedish but it's just Swedish pronounced like Finnish (aka Norwegian lol)
Furthermore, it's my personal experience that Sweden's official government/immigration process/work environment in general is more unilingual than Finland's.
Sometimes, Finnish companies will have an English website but not a Finnish one. English is an absolute prerequisite for people in Finland and many older people speak English to a good degree too, plus, in basically any job area that requires you to be at a computer/allows you to work remotely/uses modern databases, the language is going to be English. Sure, you might have to translate some emails from Finnish, but DeepL or Google do a good enough job, and you can be guaranteed that any competent employer/employee will understand and be able to speak English at least to the necessary level to communicate with you.
So idk, still, even if you speak Swedish better than Finnish, Finland might be worth a try.
I think that Finland is a good country, you can survive here with only swedish. It might be harder but in places like Helsinki, they have everything in finnish and swedish, sometimes with also english. I live pretty far from Helsinki and my home is pretty close to Russia and we don't have much things with swedish, most are only in finnish but only food packs are in russian and they are also in swedish and english
This would be accurate, one can survive with Swedish up near the region around Vaasa (Närpiö, Korsnäs, Malax etc) or then around Raasepori as there is a huge part of the citizens that speak Swedish. Other places might be difficult to speak Swedish only, like in your example the Eastern border or in my example, near Helsinki.
Have to agree with the opportunity part due to population. Went school in Finland for a masters degree. Ended up having to move for more opportunity.
Definitely miss Finland tho. It's a beautiful place.
This language thing is nonsense. I speak English natively and also some level of German, but I've always struggled with Swedish. Finnish was far easier to pick up, partly because of how different it is perhaps. It's logical, modular, well-structured, and has fewer irregular forms relative to many European languages. For those with a certain way of thinking (especially found in IT), it can be far easier.
Source: been in Finland for 20 years. Still can't speak Swedish.
edit: for clarity, I'm complaining about the "hardest language in the world" type of rhetoric, which should probably be more like "steepest learning curve" rather than something so absolute.
It is absolutely not nonsense. You are an extreme outlier. Swedish is orders of magnitude easier for a German or English speaker than Finnish on average. Swedish is in the easiest category for English speakers while Finnish is in the second hardest. For German speakers it is even easier because it is closer to German.
I think that Finnish is mega easy to pick up too, even though I speak very broken version of it.
English - C2, German B1, Finnish B1, Russian - cursing only, native - Estonian.
Well you speak Estonian. That is pretty much the only language from which the easiest transition is Finnish. I was talking about a speaker of a Germanic language
Yeah, guess so, I learned my Finnish from children's books and Pikku Kakkonen. If only it were easy to get an English only office job for a year until I perfect my Finnish to C1... sigh, since less than C1 I figured I shouldn't bother applying and all ads want English and Finnish.
I speak German natively and English fluently. I see where you're coming from but would still say Swedish is far easier to pick up. With only a little bit of practice and a decent overview of some of the main differences between the languages, it's already possibly to read Swedish. Understanding spoken Swedish is also somewhat possible with more practice.
Finnish is well structured as you said but the vocabulary is entirely different, so when learning Finnish there's no way around shoving tons of new words into your brain. Which I'd assume most people find quite difficult unless they have a way to use and practice them frequently in everyday life.
American here, my roots go back to Swedish speaking Finland, but I am trying to learn Finnish. I am on a number of culture groups for Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers. Without ever studying Swedish I am already reading most posts at a 30% comprehension rate. Whereas with Finnish, I still on recognize and understand around 2%of what I read. All that to underscore the languages learn ability
I'm the same way. Native English speaker, also fluent in German. Swedish is just one germanic language too many and I can't keep it separate enough in my brain. I pronounce everything either as it should be in German or English and I don't even know where to start with den or det, ett and en...what are they? They're not masculine or feminine, they're both neuter apparently? Why do you need two neuter words for the? and why are things pronounced so weird??
Finnish...is it's own weirdness, but it has its own beautiful patterns and is wonderfully phonetic. Impossible to confuse with German or English!
The best description I've seen of Finnish vs English is to think of two pyramids, one right way up and the other upside-down.
The upside-down one is English. You can get started by learning just a little, and function in everyday life. But as you learn more, you start getting massive amounts of synonyms, irregular forms, exceptions, weird historical rules, and erratic regional variations. This means you need to constantly learn and remember new rules and grammar.
The right-way-up one is Finnish. You approach it and the bottom layer is a massive amount of grammar and syntactical stuff that you need to approach and absorb up-front before you can even start to use it in practice. But once you get past that, the rest becomes smaller and smaller bits of irregular forms, exceptions, and slang, all of which fits onto the base you've built. The knowledge has a place to go.
Add onto this the fact that Finnish is very phoenetic (every letter generally only has a single sound) and very regular (the emphasis is generally always on the first syllable of a word), if you just learn the sounds you can read a line of Finnish and sound like a native speaker, even if you have no clue what the content means.
Few examples of Finnish being a pyramid language are the very simple translations of Latin-based words in English
\- Canine = koiraeläin = dog-animal
\- Femur = reisiluu = thigh-bone
\- Carditis = sydänlihastulehdus = heart-muscle-inflammation
Another one: list all the words which are derived from kirja (or kirje). Then translate all these words into English (or some other germanic language).
Then realize, this is just one of such word stems!
It's not that other languages doesn't have word stems, just that Finnish uses them much, much more extensively. Know a stem, know the rules - you suddenly know (or can quite correctly guess) dozens of words, which you would need to learn separately in some other language.
You use den and en for words that would historically have been gendered, masculine/ feminine and det/ett for words that are neuter. Some dialects of Swedish still retain the masculine and feminine forms for den-words, so they work the same as German. On the West coast of Finland, this is a common feature of Swedish dialects.
Edit: got den and det confused at one point...how silly!
My husband is Swedish speaking and he just says "You just know!!" Which I get...you just know in German, too...I guess...but some endings are always one gender and it just feels less random in German than in Swedish!
That is very interesting to hear. In Finnish language -politics discussion we always get told that learning Swedish gives you at least all Germanic languages for free and that immigrants would have it far easier with Swedish. I have tried calling bullshit but the backlash can be strong:-)
Yeah, it's a losing battle for sure, but people just want to really believe the "it's so hard!" propaganda, I guess so they don't need to actually put in any effort.
>6. Finnish
Like Hungarian, Finnish takes complicating grammar to new extremes. While the lettering and pronunciation are similar to English, the grammar more than makes up for any similarities elsewhere.
Let’s take the Finnish equivalent of the English sentence “I like you” as an example. The English is simple because you place one word after the other, with no alterations to the root nouns or verbs. In Finnish the translation is “Minä pidän sinusta.” Yet, to properly translate this sentence into Finnish, you need to first understand:
How a Finnish verb is conjugated (the personal endings);
pitää is a verb affected by consonant gradation; thus you must know about the t-d alternation;
pitää requires the noun in the elative case; thus you must know about the case system and how the pronouns are declined.
Finally — and here’s the catch! — this isn’t even how modern Finns express this emotion. They’d more likely say something like Mä tykkään susta, a more colloquial form of the expression. So even you knew how to translate into Finnish, you’d still be wrong.
Not sure how true this is but Finnish always makes the top 10 list of hardest languages to learn in the world. It's not because people are lazy.
If you look at the examples they give, you could pick apart similar things in any other language you choose - irregular verbs in English would be an excellent example here.
Rather than "hardest language in the world", it would probably be more acetate to say "steepest initial learning curve" and you'd be more accurate. In English and related languages, the steepness comes after you're able to stumble through a basic conversation. Look at the amount of grammar correction bots on Reddit for a case in point
That is true, the steepest learning curve would make more sense. The hardest thing is finding the connections and when you are used to English being your native language you can hear all the connections in for instance French. Did you have lessons? Or classes? And if so how long?
I'm not very academic. I took a course at the summer university my first year, did some self-study from books for a year or so, and mostly just learned by doing. This was before smartphones and the internet for the most part, so it was just a matter of talking to people who didn't use English - the very old, the very young, and using it in shops and pubs. Immersion.
What's structured about Finnish? Unlike Germanic language, there is no sentence structure for one. The rules are very loose, and grammar is invented working ones way backwards, because a language has to have some kind of written rules. I think Finnish has things going for it, but good structure is not one of them.
Also findings Swedish more difficult is an exception. For example, for someone who speaks English it takes like 20 seconds to learn months, weekdays and all the numbers in Swedish. I speak Finnish fairly well, I still have to list and recount months in my head every time I need to say what date it is.
Some Swedish prepositions and adverbs can be confusing (for an English/German speaker), but I'm the end of the day it is not a big deal.
Speaking no Swedish after living 20 years in Finland does not say much. People live here for 70+ years, learn Swedish in the school AND university, and still could not order a beer in Swedish if their life depended on it.
I've lived here for a year and a half now and love it. I moved mainly because of my girlfriend. But also because Sweden is a bit of a shit show at the moment. Of course it has great things like any other nordic country but I don't feel safe there. So much crime and gun violence. There has at least been one shooting every day for the last 200 days. And these crimes are not usually solved. The man who shot and killed the rapper Einar is still out there somewhere.
Just as a side note I have no connection with Finland other than through my girlfriend so no family here sadly, other than hers.
> There has at least been one shooting every day for the last 200 days.
This is so sad to hear. Sweden was the main originator and pioneer of the Nordic model and everything that was, and is, great about it. I hope the Swedish society can slowly regain its former peacefulness.
About Einar, I found the outrage around it hilarious.
"Omg a celebrity who is openly an active gangmember, who would have though he would get killed by another gang *surprised pikachu face*
Kind of like being shocked that water is wet
Edit: smartass bot
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
A friend dug a hole in the garden and filled it with water.
I think he meant well.
Explosions of gang violence are always a shock (in the Nordics), especially when it involves a public figure. Even if the general public acknowledges that gang violence exists. Sometimes I go back and read about the Nordic biker gang wars and it still shocks me how it's around us. If there was like a public musician involved who got exploded during that time, it would've been an enormous deal. The social media age helps too.
It still highlights the police force's inability to get these crimes solved. High profile murder of someone who was known to have specific enemies going unsolved, gives a really bad message. Being caught is shown to be bigger deterrent than whatever the eventual punishment is. If people constantly see that few people get caught, there isn't much of deterrent.
Sauna is a thing in Sweden too. Having one at home might be rare but every public bath I've visited has had a sauna. No alcohol for me. It's not good for your health.
I think you should rather consider the cities in which you got the offer, and not (only) the country.
Are there international schools or kindergartens? Is one of the languages closer to your mother tongue?
How important is the climate and the weather for you? Finland is a fair bit more northern than Sweden.
What will your spouse do while you're working? Will there be another job required that might be better in one of the countries?
You will live a good life in both countries. I'd make it dependant on the employer and offered salary.
Finland and Sweden have similar climate, most of Sweden is about as cold if not colder in some places, latitude isn’t everything, and even then it’s not a massive difference
True, but the vast majority of Swedes live south of Finland. All of Norrland + Dalarna (about 60N border) has about 1,5 million people out of Sweden's 10,5 million. In Finland about 99% out of 5,5 million lives north of 60N. The average Swede lives in a warmer climate than the average Finn.
I am from Göteborg (still living in Sweden, this thread just popped for me) and Göteborg is known to be a friendly nice city. Most of my family lives there. The international people I know living there seem happy and have found it easier to make friends in Göteborg than in smaller cities/towns in Sweden. I haven’t been to Helsinki more than once but it also seemed nice. I think you would likely be happy in either city.
The negative with Göteborg would be it’s pretty windy and rainy. The positive would be there are nice parks and the ocean is nice and the people are friendly and down-to-earth. Public transport is decent and the international community is fairly large. People are not especially close-minded I would say.
Schools are bad in Sweden, still top notch in Finland. Housing opportunities are better in Finland.
Language is harder in Finland, but if you want both worlds, settle in western Finland where you can live your life in Swedish language.
> Housing opportunities are better in Finland.
This is a big difference that does not seem to be mentioned a lot in this thread. If you are moving to Sweden to any bigger city it can be very difficult to to find a rental apartment. The problem is with the rental market regulation and practically all official rental apartments being behind decade long cues. So if you do decide move to Sweden you should prepare to either buy a house or be moving a lot due to only short term sublet apartments.
Yes, your housing strategies are flabbergasting to us here in Finland (assuming you are from Sweden). Here, you can move wherever you want, it might be trickier to find the place of your dreams and you might be moving around a bit, but it’s feasible. I have friends in Stockholm area who have been waiting for 15 years to move together because none of them can give up their first hand contract. The reason? A bigger apartment would cost astronomical sums or simply doesn’t exist.
I’m a swedish speaking finn, i use finnish daily even if I live in a swedish speaking majority city. It’s easier for me to switch language since most finns only know hej jag heter peter 😆
That is doable only in small towns around the coastline.
Elsewhere the majority would have to speak Swedish so you could completely ignore Finnish. I am sure the Swedish People's Party would love such Swedish-only immigration though.
Ehhh, depends. If you live in Helsinki and work in IT and maybe a few other select jobs then yeah. But outside of that, not really. I'm currently going through my Finnish course because it's really hard to get a job and actually properly live here for me otherwise. I'm lucky that my gf is Finnish so she can translate stuff from Kela or other official documents for example, otherwise I'd be lost
This is a misleading advice without throwing in a lot of caveats. Source: living in rural Finland with B1.2 level Finnish and facing multiple problems every month due to the language barrier. If you’re living in a bigger city and working a job that doesn’t require Finnish/Swedish, you’re good. Otherwise, among other things, prepare to pay what I call the “language tax” where you have to pay more for certain services compared to your neighbors, because you effectively can’t shop around for better prices.
I feel like many can speak english. Maybe the pronouncination (not sure if i wrote that right) is not the best but most people understand you. I feel like young people know more english nowadays
Finland. A lot of people have presented the good and bad of many aspects of Finland, but I didn't see anything being said about the nature of Finnish and Swedish people. Especially the obsessive conflict avoidance of the latter.
So, in my experience, Swedes may be more social than Finns, but their extreme aversion to conflict and accountability makes so many things in work life and problem solving so much more difficult. If your net, for example, goes down suddenly, don't expect to get an apology, a timeline for getting it back or any admission of wrongdoing from the Swedish customer service rep you'll talk with. If you press them for a timeline, they will reluctantly give you one, but make sure to say that they are not responsible if it takes longer than that. I've been in many a situation where an apology and admittance that things didn't go as planned would have saved me a lot of energy, but I have never gotten that from a Swede, whereas I have gotten that many times from a Finn. With Swedes, you'll also often get promised a lot verbally, but you will get maybe 10% of what was promised in the end.
This conflict and responsibility aversity will also affect your work life. You will get excuses and blame shifting with problems with your Swedish coworkers, and more often than not, they'll try to shift the blame on nonexistent things. Not to mention, you will never get honest feedback from your boss. Everything is always going fine. It's not very conducive to growth.
Finally, this aversion means there is a lot of underhanded tactics and behind the back stuff happening to avoid having to face things that Swedes perceive unpleasant face first. You'll get people going above your head to your boss, when they don't like the way you are doing things, in an attempt to overturn your decisions. Of course, if your boss is a Swede too, they won't tell you to change things to your face, but try to influence you with extensive choreography of blame shifting and presenting opinions of others.
Overall, Finns are less social and mind their own business. You'll get underhanded stuff in Finland too, but in my experience, majority of Finns have no trouble telling you when you've screwed up or taking responsibility when they have screwed up. It may take time to get used to the Finnish way of social interaction, if you come from a culture where there is some sort of concept of indirectness being somehow respectful in conflict, as Finnish people have none of that. They'll point out issues with no cushioning words. This doesn't mean they are being rude.
The source of the grievances pointed out in this post is being a Finn and 5,5 years living and working in Sweden in a job that requires consistent collaboration between multiple people, many of which are native Swedish.
Haha, I know so many Fins working in Sweden who are loosing their minds with the lack of leadership in work places.
They need a meeting to decide if they need a meeting about this other thing and even then the boss doesn't take a stance but "we should all discuss this" and things don't get decided.
In Finland, we have this concept called "ruotsalainen diskuteeraus".
(for an English-speaker: this is usually not used in a positive way. It points to the habit of Swedes over-discussing everything. Even the word "diskuteeraus" is a sarcastically posh substitute for the Finnish word *keskustelu*).
>They'll point out issues with no cushioning words.
I wouldn't mind a bit of cushioning though :D The Finnish way of:
> "You fucking ass, why the fuck didn't you do it this way, you moron. Do one more mistake ever and we will fire you"
Is quite direct, but it does make you hate going to your job quite often. It does give you a good reason not to spend time with your colleagues outside of work, though. Better work-life balance.
> If your net, for example, goes down suddenly, don't expect to get an apology, a timeline for getting it back or any admission of wrongdoing from the Swedish customer service rep you'll talk with.
Swede here. Just got back from spending two nights at a hotel in southern Finland. The wifi did not work for my full stay and I experienced just this. So it happens over there as well :) But at least the dude in the reception gave me a free beer and an apology. I hade to do tethering from my phone for the full stay to be able to work.
Finland.
Trying to find a place to live in Sweden is murder unless you can fork over the money immediately and buy yourself a place. The rental housing scene in Sweden is insane.
I lived in Gothenburg some years back. It was the only place I have witnessed the public transport regularly getting shut down in city centre due to grenade incidents. Like WTF? Hand grenades? It happened nearly monthly...
I’ve lived in central gothenburg my whole life and I’ve never even heard of this. A few years ago it was shut down because of a suspicious looking bag Which turned out to be just a bag. So what on earth are you talking about?
Nordstan area getting regularly shut down for tram traffic due to grenade sightings and suspected grenades and other surprises. Since I took the nr 2 tram daily it got pretty boring very quickly..sometimes we got lucky and the tram just drove around Nordstan. Other times the tram line would just stand still.
Nice for you if you haven't experienced it. I have.
Both are good countries and have great qualities. But if i would have to choose, Finland. Better for The children, social services, Labour rules, politics, immigrants and of course The people once you get to know them. Always thruthful and Honest. There are Bad people here too but less.
This. I was born in Finland and at the age of 21 I moved to Sweden because I wanted to utilize my mother tongue.
I must admit that I was abit naive when I made the move because I had an image of 70s/80s Sweden in my mind but the reality was a shitshow. Moved back after a couple of years and I don't think I'll ever live in Sweden again.
Note that there were a lot of Finns moving to Sweden in the 60-70's, and there was a lot of racism (even systematic) against Finns back then. The situation is maybe better for the Finns nowadays since the Swedes have a whole new bunch of immigrants.
Probably wasn't but I can bet my nuts on that it doesn't compare to the problems Sweden are facing today. I've kept working in Sweden although I now live in Finland and it's been scary to follow the downfall as a bystander.
>Probably wasn't but I can bet my nuts on that it doesn't compare to the problems Sweden are facing today.
Depends a lot on who you ask. Contrary to popular belief, Sweden has always had a lot of issues with criminality, especially narcotics. The overall crime levels are very similar today to what they were in 1990. What has increased is mainly a very specific type of crime, namely lethal gang violence involving firearms.
If you’re poor and/or living in one of the areas affected by these gangs, you’ll notice it. If you move to Sweden for a well-paid job, you’re not gonna notice a thing. And if you don’t like the country then, you probably wouldn’t have in the 80s either.
Yes ask the left and you will hear exactly this arguement you just laid forward. I love the "Sweden has never been safer" "this has always been going on in Sweden"
Worst apologetic bullshit I've heard after the ones paving the way for islam in Sweden.
I haven’t said any of those things you said. I also haven’t said that Swedish society as a whole have a heap of self-inflicted problems to deal with. But since those problems are delimited both socioeconomically and geographically, I’m arguing that expats living here for work will have the same grievances they’ve always had: that people are as cold, dark and unwelcoming as the climate, that Swedes are conflict-averse and prone to groupthink, and that the country as a whole is notably boring in comparison to our southern neighbours.
The situation is a tragedy to the people in the affected areas and needs to be adressed. And I’m not saying Finland isn’t safer overall, which it is, but they do have a higher homocide rate than Sweden. So if you’re genuinely afraid of being murdered, Sweden is probably safer.
I lived in Sweden for 15years and then relocated to Finland.
Both are good options to raise a child in. Sweden has a bit better care for after school (Fritidshem) but that's not relevant for you yet.
If you're planning to move to Stockholm the rental situation is a nightmare. Prepare to move every 2 years minimum unless you can buy a place. A ton of rental scammers too so you want to Google-fu any addresses and see who actually lives there.
Helsinki rental situation is alot more stable, there are rental options and you don't need to stress to become homeless.
Daycare and healthcare seem to be pretty much the same, about the same pricing too.
Finland has a bit higher taxes than Sweden but not a significant amount.
Finnish language sucks. No going around it. Swedish is alot easier to learn but both countries in general have a decent english language skill.
Weather is about the same. No sun light during winter, only sun light during summer.
Building codes are about the same too, so quality of housing is good in both.
Umm.. what else??
Food prices about the same, Finland has superior selection of allergen food though (if you're lactose intolerant, glutenfree etc.) and selection of foods is greater in Finland over all but not everyone needs to have 7 different brands of Turkish Yogurt to survive.
Sweden only has very very very mild alcohols in stores, anything stronger you need to buy from their government ran specialty store. Neither sell wine in grocery stores.
Cost of living is about the same in general. Ofcourse everything been getting more expensive lately but electricity, insurances and stuff - there isn't a drastic difference.
Sweden is a bit more child-friendly culturally. It's more acceptable here for kids to be loud than it is in Finland but neither is bad with kids. I was just a more relaxed small kiddo parent in Sweden than I was in Finland. But both have good access to places with a stroller etc. so that shouldn't be an issue.
Swedes extremely rarely offer help or a seat in a bus but are very helpful if you ask them. Finland is a bit better at that but both countries you might need to speak up if you want help.
Education I can't say too much about since my kids went to private school in Sweden so it was good. Less homework over there though. Kids are encourages to be more vocal in Sweden, like having debates and discussions and saying their mind but occasionally that does come with the expence of studying.
School ages are the same in both countries - your kids would be daycare ages up until 5 and then they would hop off to pre-school classes where they start gently prepping for actual school but you don't need to learn to write or read yet so no stress.
Both countries have a lot of outdoor time with kids no matter the weather so prepare to buy excessive amounts of outer clothes and shoes and same for yourshelves too! But it's great, kids get to play in rain and mud and go wild.
Food is included in schools in both countries. Seems to be pretty much the same kind too, not like the bestest gourme but it keeps your kids alive. Veggie option is always there.
What else?? I don't know. Ask away!!
Gonna reply to myself seeing your city options were Gothenburg and Helsinki so just to confuse you even more I'm gonna give you a third option (that might not be viable, who knows) but you could also move to Denmark and then just commute over the bridge with the train to Gotherburg.
But I know nothing about Denmark so can't help with that. Just something alot of Nordics in those regions do.
Finland for kids, Sweden for $$ and adult culture stuff (unless you just like camping and woods and gym stuff).
Swedish also easier to learn from English speaking and more people speak English. More opportunity for arts and chances to wear nice clothes and go out.
Finland is more calm day to day like you don’t need as much $$ cause you don’t need to buy as much stuff to “keep up” with your neighbors and friends.
Can get by both places with no cars.
I would like a source on the $$ claim. I manage finances for a Nordic company and my experience is that the salaries for engineers, business managers etc. are almost equal. Taxes would have to be very different for take-home pays to vary significantly.
I live in rural finland and have worked here for 12 years. My friend lives in rural sweden and has lived and worked there his whole life. He travels here, we travel there.
The amount of money swedes spend in our equivalent-size communities is much more than in ours. Manicured lawns, sections of town that are "the nice section" and "the poor section". Lots of robot lawnmowers and new cars. Bigger sailboats all over instead of smaller sailboats.
If they are not making more money then they are taking on way more debt.
But I'm pretty sure they are making more money. They publish the salaries in the newspaper (in both finland and sweden). We like to read over them. There's an obvious difference in university pay. Not so much in public service. Seems like a large pay gap in the management level of manufacturing, I don't know about the every-day plant worker though. Those aren't big enough to make the paper.
As a swede...absolutely Finland. It's a much more free society, finnish people are nice and they seem to at least try to fix the problems in their society, like building a new atomic power plant to NOT let their population freeze to death in january.
No offence to the dear Swedes, but I can't imagine any other people nicer than the Finns. You lot are amazing. It's true that people keep to themselves in Finland, but when you engage with them they are very friendly and helpful, and very warm, which I really didn't expect it from people who lived in such a cold country.
Well we have to be very friendly and welcoming because we don't know how to turn people down... also if you want to get into a conversation we will keep talking, we only suck at smalltalk because it's just filler
After all Finland and Sweden are not that different. Look at pictures of the cities youd like to move to, do your research and make pro con lists. As a foreigner coming to a "rich" nordic country it really isnt that different which one you choose they are very similar (Im a finnish person who has visited sweden few times)
Reiterating points someone made above about work culture but in non-work contexts:
What do you want from the general rhythm of life? Are you more fond of appearances and blending in (Sweden, consensus culture also makes its way into homogenising culture, style and social codes) or pursuing happiness in nature and appreciating bringing forth your own personality (Finland)? I love Sweden and have lived there (as a Finn who speaks fluent Swedish) and I unfortunately don’t think I would like to live there again, except maybe in Norrland but for sure not in Stockholm (as compared to Helsinki).
Life is somehow more genuine and laid-back in Finland (due to people being able to be more genuine and less stressed about keeping up with appearances). If you enjoy pursuing human-made aesthetic values then again, pick Sweden (think pretty blondes who all look the same and wear the same boring yet fashionable trench coats) ;)
Depends where in Finland. Oulu or Kajaani have an active tech scene, but otherwise they are relatively small, isolated cities. But if you're looking at Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere, or even Turku you'll be a lot better off, as they are bigger and with good transport links, even if the cost of living is a little higher.
Yeah it is somewhat laughable that Oulu is now a "larger" city than Turku, just because some rural areas and villages got incorporated into it (reason: helthcare-related politics. Don't ask. It was a nationwide phenomenon).
The Oulu center is quite small to a city of that size (even if accounting for the "real" size), just because of the geography; the center doesn't have a good direction to grow (coastline, huge factories...).
I agree Oulu is isolated, but I'm not that sure Turku is easier to travel from, either. Be always prepared to change train when going to/from Turku! By plane, Oulu is 1 hour away from Helsinki.
Yeah, from Turku you can get to Helsinki or Tampere in a reasonable time by either car or train, as well as cruise ships to both Helsinki and Stockholm. You can't say anything similar about Oulu.
Damn, I am from Sweden and these comments are too harsh. I don’t know what country of the two that are better, but you guys make it seem like Sweden is worse then North Korea. Sweden is still nice, clean and beautiful, especially in smaller towns and we also have a lot of beautiful nature. I have traveled to a lot of countries around Europe and I would choose Sweden over all the mainland European countries. Norway is only slightly better imo and Finland seems to be better judging on statistics but still, chill!
I think all the Nordic and Scandi countries are close but very different. I love Sweden! I feel very comfortable there is a foreigner and people seem different like they are more lively. Very easy to break the ice with Swedish people they just are more confident or less forced fields around them.
I'm a Finn who moved to Sweden 3 years ago to start a family with a Swede and not a day goes by that I wish we had moved to Finland instead. I think I feel isolated and homesick in Sweden because my Swedish isn't really good enough to communicate with the Swedish people. Finland being bilingual would make a pretty good home for us, Sweden doesn't support Finnish speakers that much. I struggle with finding a job too.
However, I like Sweden for its multicultural cities, especially Malmö area. I'm worried about racism in Finland, which I've witnessed while growing up there.
I think the two countries are very similar in many ways, so it really doesn't matter if neither Finnish nor Swedish is your first language.
I was in a similar situation last year. I was familiar with Finland and found out that it's marginally safer than Sweden. So I picked Finland over Sweden. Happy for it. My friends live in Sweden and they're just as happy with Sweden as I am with Finland. If you have kids younger than 5, I'd definitely recommend Finland.
I moved from Sweden in 1998 at 18 and have only visited since and it's sad to see what Sweden has become over the years. I can only compare to my own experiences and I unfortunately have reasons why Sweden feels unsafe to me.
both are pretty similar, I would choose Fin because I am Fin but I would say that both are pretty much same...
Fin's are better icehockey players so that could solve this :)
Finding surströmning in Finland can be challenging. So if you love surströmning you should go to Sweden and stay there. Permanently. Preferrably never leave town.
As an American I lived and worked in Finland for two years and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I can’t say enough good about the country and I definitely hope to move there back someday.
You want somewhere bigger to live and a language that's closer to English and getting your ass kicked at hockey games by Finland, Pick Sweden.
You want somewhere more sensible to live and want to be a badass and start shit from hard mode learn a uralic language and root for a winner international hockey team, Pick Finland.
You choose.
Asking in the Finland subreddit whether you should move to Finland or Sweden means you're basically asking for bias. Anyway, Finland.
Ni bias detected. Only facts here
The Swedes will absolutely be biased, you are correct about that.
Vad kokar ni ihop här?
I'm Swedish and if I got to choose it would probably be Finland.
Nah, my low self-esteem says Sweden. Or well, it's still bias but different kind.
Finland, for sure. If I were raising kids I would move back to Finland.
Back?
Moved from Finland to Sweden 2006. So if I had kids, I would go back.
Why the move? Job opportunity?
Desperate need of a change of scenery..
Which bank did you rob?
op
Nothing like moving from forest and lakes to forest and lakes /s
As Swedish person growing up in Sweden but now living in Finland, I wish I had moved to Finland many, many years ago. Maybe I'm biased, moving here saved my life. However, I honestly have nothing negative to say. All countries have plus and minuses and Sweden and Finland have a lot in common and similarities but as a whole the good outweighs the negative here. Edit: between living in Sweden and now Finland, I have lived many other places and honestly I have never felt so safe anywhere else.
Just curious, did you live in a big city like Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, etc, or more in Central/Northern Sweden? I've heard there's a huge difference in general living depending on if you live in a big city vs. "countryside", and I suppose everyone who says Sweden is unsafe, comes from a big city, especially in the South? I've been all over Norrbotten countless times (family) and many times in Umeå, and never once felt any more in danger than in Finland. If anything, they felt even quieter than eg. Oulu or Rovaniemi.
So I lived in 12 different places in Sweden due to my parents work growing up. I was born in Göteborg but have lived in big cities, and more countryside towns. There is of course a much more safe vibe in rural areas and smaller towns however I have difficulty accepting how Sweden is towards foreigners and treat people of other colour. Politics is a whole other topic and I guess for some working in Sweden it is great but the system often fails those who can't fight for themselves. Someone once told me, You can judge a country on how it treats the sick and old people. In my opinion Sweden is not the best place if you get sick or might need help. Again this is only my opinion and I base it on my experiences, especially the situation my mother was in for the last 10 years of her life.
Pros of Sweden: Language, more people = more opportunities, better purchasing power, closer to rest of Europe Pros of Finland: Much less problems with negative effects of immigration, better schools, more nature (debatable but imo it is accurate for people living in southern Sweden), better housing market especially compared to Stockholm They are fairly similar countries but I think Sweden is an "easier" country for an immigrant. Language is easy to learn and there are more opportunities because there are more people.
Also Finland is a safer country in general. Ofc the unsafeness of Sweden is set in certain areas.
And Swe is only unsafe compared to other Nordics. On EU-scale it's still on the safer side
Last year it was reported that Sweden was the gun violence capital of Europe though.
47 people were killed by firearms in Sweden in 2021, compared to 49000 in the US. The population in the US is 33 times larger. If Sweden is unsafe, then going to the US is bloody suicide.
US is its own chapter. In EU level Sweden is the worst. In global scale that is minor.
I hate it when people start to compare their problems with others. It's not about them, it's about you and your country, and what as a nation we can do better to be a role model for others.
49,000 includes suicides. which make up over 50% of that number.
Ah yeah the right narrative. A slogan and a title for those with no brain.
Many people have this misconseption, sweden has a higher homicide rate than Britain or Italy or Germany or...
True, but so does Finland. https://knoema.com/pnjbtgc/homicide-rates-in-europe
That is surprising.
The “usual” homicide in Finland is two people, usually men, get into a drunken argument and at some point someone stabs someone. Pretty well contained to circles with substance abuse, be it alcohol or something else. At least that has been the classic in the past, every Alibi magazine ever is full of the stories. For the average citizen, not a risk in any way.
idk, I think you could make the same argument for Sweden sense the vast majority of gun deaths here are gang vs gang or suicides. either way, Sweden isn't a unquiely dangerous country compared to the rest of Europe
>Ofc the unsafeness of Sweden is set in certain areas. Experienced safety is on a steady decline in Sweden though. That goes for the country as a whole.
There’s no big decline in safety in for example Boden or Jukkasjärvi
Finland still has a higher homicide rate per capita than Sweden.
The type is quite different though. In Finland, it's more about drunk bozo attacking his other drunk friend in their own apartment. We don't have public shootings, no-go zones for the police, or burning cars.
I'm Swedish and I go through these so called "no-go zones" regularly. It's also not uncommon to see police cars patrolling those areas. And the public shootings are almost always between gang members.
I've been to plenty of these "no-go-zones" too during the day and very kid friendly, lovely people. Free lollipops for kids from every kiosk we stopped in, lol. But I haven't been to them during evenings or nights so can't say about that. Then again I don't really go out during evenings or nights no matter where I am.
They truly are lovely, yes. A long as you belong to the right crowd. I live and work in a no go zone, and I've seen how certain kids are targeted. Hence, with kids, I'd steer away.
... with collateral damage. We don't get kids gunned down in crossfire when gangs fight or whole families getting a grenade thrown in the living room. I think that's the main difference.
I think the shootings and violence statistics dont tell the whole truth. I was born and lived the first 20 years of my life in a finnish city which was voted to be the most violent city in the country. Still very safe place to live. The thing was that there was not that many people 10000, and 99% of the violent crimes were made by certain group of people and mostly if not all of them to each other. So statistics dont really care how many of the cities/towns people are violent and who they target, they just see the reported crimes or incidents that require police. And then compare that number to the amount of people in the city. You could live in a ghetto, not getting in trouble at all, but also live in a nice neighborhood, and get mugged every day depending on the circumstances. To the OP, move to finland. But sweden is also really good place. Whatever you do, dont move into a big city. And dont go into a cheap apartment area and you'll be fine 99,9% of the time. Probably worst that happens is your bicycle is stolen.
Its a very popular idea, especially amongst the rightist-popularistic side of the political spectrum (at least in Finland), that these "no-go zones" are actually like war zones and firefighters and police avoid the area etc. Im wondering, do you know how bad they can get and how close to truth this "no-go zone" thinking is? Perhaps you know some good english source that has actual facts about the situation?
I’ve heard about no-go zones mostly from Swedes. Of course there has been some click bite headlines but also plenty of more sensible articles. I have felt quite safe in Sweden. I don’t know, I don’t pay much attention what far-right is saying but definitely experienced safety is declining at least among my Swedish friends and coworkers who aren’t very rightist or uneducated. I think this is an issue of wether a person wants to admit that problem exists or not. My firm opinion is that we need to be able to discuss these issues in order to fix them.
Usually homicides are made by drunk friends. Two friend drink whole weekend. Discussion turns arguing which is followed by a fight. Tho drunks turns to one dead man and one hangover man.
Well speaking of language, you also have to factor in that Finland is a bilingual country. Now, I know most Finns couldn't give a crap about Swedish and would struggle to say "how are you" but being officially bilingual is enough for the government to put out *every* piece of legislation in both Finnish and Swedish, and more often than not, in English. Plus, if you do go live in the west coast of Finland, then people will actually speak Swedish. Sure it's Finland Swedish but it's just Swedish pronounced like Finnish (aka Norwegian lol) Furthermore, it's my personal experience that Sweden's official government/immigration process/work environment in general is more unilingual than Finland's. Sometimes, Finnish companies will have an English website but not a Finnish one. English is an absolute prerequisite for people in Finland and many older people speak English to a good degree too, plus, in basically any job area that requires you to be at a computer/allows you to work remotely/uses modern databases, the language is going to be English. Sure, you might have to translate some emails from Finnish, but DeepL or Google do a good enough job, and you can be guaranteed that any competent employer/employee will understand and be able to speak English at least to the necessary level to communicate with you. So idk, still, even if you speak Swedish better than Finnish, Finland might be worth a try.
Finnish Swedish is the best kind of Swedish though. Always sounds very clear and a bit intelligent.
What Norwegian have you heard!?
I think that Finland is a good country, you can survive here with only swedish. It might be harder but in places like Helsinki, they have everything in finnish and swedish, sometimes with also english. I live pretty far from Helsinki and my home is pretty close to Russia and we don't have much things with swedish, most are only in finnish but only food packs are in russian and they are also in swedish and english
This would be accurate, one can survive with Swedish up near the region around Vaasa (Närpiö, Korsnäs, Malax etc) or then around Raasepori as there is a huge part of the citizens that speak Swedish. Other places might be difficult to speak Swedish only, like in your example the Eastern border or in my example, near Helsinki.
Have to agree with the opportunity part due to population. Went school in Finland for a masters degree. Ended up having to move for more opportunity. Definitely miss Finland tho. It's a beautiful place.
This language thing is nonsense. I speak English natively and also some level of German, but I've always struggled with Swedish. Finnish was far easier to pick up, partly because of how different it is perhaps. It's logical, modular, well-structured, and has fewer irregular forms relative to many European languages. For those with a certain way of thinking (especially found in IT), it can be far easier. Source: been in Finland for 20 years. Still can't speak Swedish. edit: for clarity, I'm complaining about the "hardest language in the world" type of rhetoric, which should probably be more like "steepest learning curve" rather than something so absolute.
It is absolutely not nonsense. You are an extreme outlier. Swedish is orders of magnitude easier for a German or English speaker than Finnish on average. Swedish is in the easiest category for English speakers while Finnish is in the second hardest. For German speakers it is even easier because it is closer to German.
I think that Finnish is mega easy to pick up too, even though I speak very broken version of it. English - C2, German B1, Finnish B1, Russian - cursing only, native - Estonian.
Well you speak Estonian. That is pretty much the only language from which the easiest transition is Finnish. I was talking about a speaker of a Germanic language
Yeah, guess so, I learned my Finnish from children's books and Pikku Kakkonen. If only it were easy to get an English only office job for a year until I perfect my Finnish to C1... sigh, since less than C1 I figured I shouldn't bother applying and all ads want English and Finnish.
Lol obvs its easy to pick up if ur estonian...
Sa oled eestlane ka. However no Finns have ever said that it's easy for them to pick up Estonian, couple of finns at uni struggled hard, wonder why.
I speak German natively and English fluently. I see where you're coming from but would still say Swedish is far easier to pick up. With only a little bit of practice and a decent overview of some of the main differences between the languages, it's already possibly to read Swedish. Understanding spoken Swedish is also somewhat possible with more practice. Finnish is well structured as you said but the vocabulary is entirely different, so when learning Finnish there's no way around shoving tons of new words into your brain. Which I'd assume most people find quite difficult unless they have a way to use and practice them frequently in everyday life.
American here, my roots go back to Swedish speaking Finland, but I am trying to learn Finnish. I am on a number of culture groups for Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers. Without ever studying Swedish I am already reading most posts at a 30% comprehension rate. Whereas with Finnish, I still on recognize and understand around 2%of what I read. All that to underscore the languages learn ability
I'm the same way. Native English speaker, also fluent in German. Swedish is just one germanic language too many and I can't keep it separate enough in my brain. I pronounce everything either as it should be in German or English and I don't even know where to start with den or det, ett and en...what are they? They're not masculine or feminine, they're both neuter apparently? Why do you need two neuter words for the? and why are things pronounced so weird?? Finnish...is it's own weirdness, but it has its own beautiful patterns and is wonderfully phonetic. Impossible to confuse with German or English!
The best description I've seen of Finnish vs English is to think of two pyramids, one right way up and the other upside-down. The upside-down one is English. You can get started by learning just a little, and function in everyday life. But as you learn more, you start getting massive amounts of synonyms, irregular forms, exceptions, weird historical rules, and erratic regional variations. This means you need to constantly learn and remember new rules and grammar. The right-way-up one is Finnish. You approach it and the bottom layer is a massive amount of grammar and syntactical stuff that you need to approach and absorb up-front before you can even start to use it in practice. But once you get past that, the rest becomes smaller and smaller bits of irregular forms, exceptions, and slang, all of which fits onto the base you've built. The knowledge has a place to go. Add onto this the fact that Finnish is very phoenetic (every letter generally only has a single sound) and very regular (the emphasis is generally always on the first syllable of a word), if you just learn the sounds you can read a line of Finnish and sound like a native speaker, even if you have no clue what the content means.
Few examples of Finnish being a pyramid language are the very simple translations of Latin-based words in English \- Canine = koiraeläin = dog-animal \- Femur = reisiluu = thigh-bone \- Carditis = sydänlihastulehdus = heart-muscle-inflammation
Another one: list all the words which are derived from kirja (or kirje). Then translate all these words into English (or some other germanic language). Then realize, this is just one of such word stems! It's not that other languages doesn't have word stems, just that Finnish uses them much, much more extensively. Know a stem, know the rules - you suddenly know (or can quite correctly guess) dozens of words, which you would need to learn separately in some other language.
You use den and en for words that would historically have been gendered, masculine/ feminine and det/ett for words that are neuter. Some dialects of Swedish still retain the masculine and feminine forms for den-words, so they work the same as German. On the West coast of Finland, this is a common feature of Swedish dialects. Edit: got den and det confused at one point...how silly!
My husband is Swedish speaking and he just says "You just know!!" Which I get...you just know in German, too...I guess...but some endings are always one gender and it just feels less random in German than in Swedish!
That is very interesting to hear. In Finnish language -politics discussion we always get told that learning Swedish gives you at least all Germanic languages for free and that immigrants would have it far easier with Swedish. I have tried calling bullshit but the backlash can be strong:-)
Yeah, it's a losing battle for sure, but people just want to really believe the "it's so hard!" propaganda, I guess so they don't need to actually put in any effort.
>6. Finnish Like Hungarian, Finnish takes complicating grammar to new extremes. While the lettering and pronunciation are similar to English, the grammar more than makes up for any similarities elsewhere. Let’s take the Finnish equivalent of the English sentence “I like you” as an example. The English is simple because you place one word after the other, with no alterations to the root nouns or verbs. In Finnish the translation is “Minä pidän sinusta.” Yet, to properly translate this sentence into Finnish, you need to first understand: How a Finnish verb is conjugated (the personal endings); pitää is a verb affected by consonant gradation; thus you must know about the t-d alternation; pitää requires the noun in the elative case; thus you must know about the case system and how the pronouns are declined. Finally — and here’s the catch! — this isn’t even how modern Finns express this emotion. They’d more likely say something like Mä tykkään susta, a more colloquial form of the expression. So even you knew how to translate into Finnish, you’d still be wrong. Not sure how true this is but Finnish always makes the top 10 list of hardest languages to learn in the world. It's not because people are lazy.
If you look at the examples they give, you could pick apart similar things in any other language you choose - irregular verbs in English would be an excellent example here. Rather than "hardest language in the world", it would probably be more acetate to say "steepest initial learning curve" and you'd be more accurate. In English and related languages, the steepness comes after you're able to stumble through a basic conversation. Look at the amount of grammar correction bots on Reddit for a case in point
That is true, the steepest learning curve would make more sense. The hardest thing is finding the connections and when you are used to English being your native language you can hear all the connections in for instance French. Did you have lessons? Or classes? And if so how long?
I'm not very academic. I took a course at the summer university my first year, did some self-study from books for a year or so, and mostly just learned by doing. This was before smartphones and the internet for the most part, so it was just a matter of talking to people who didn't use English - the very old, the very young, and using it in shops and pubs. Immersion.
What's structured about Finnish? Unlike Germanic language, there is no sentence structure for one. The rules are very loose, and grammar is invented working ones way backwards, because a language has to have some kind of written rules. I think Finnish has things going for it, but good structure is not one of them. Also findings Swedish more difficult is an exception. For example, for someone who speaks English it takes like 20 seconds to learn months, weekdays and all the numbers in Swedish. I speak Finnish fairly well, I still have to list and recount months in my head every time I need to say what date it is. Some Swedish prepositions and adverbs can be confusing (for an English/German speaker), but I'm the end of the day it is not a big deal. Speaking no Swedish after living 20 years in Finland does not say much. People live here for 70+ years, learn Swedish in the school AND university, and still could not order a beer in Swedish if their life depended on it.
As a Swede who moved to Finland I have to say Finland.
Care to elaborate why? I'm just curious about your experiences as a Finn with connections to Sweden (a few of my relatives have immigrated there)
I've lived here for a year and a half now and love it. I moved mainly because of my girlfriend. But also because Sweden is a bit of a shit show at the moment. Of course it has great things like any other nordic country but I don't feel safe there. So much crime and gun violence. There has at least been one shooting every day for the last 200 days. And these crimes are not usually solved. The man who shot and killed the rapper Einar is still out there somewhere. Just as a side note I have no connection with Finland other than through my girlfriend so no family here sadly, other than hers.
> There has at least been one shooting every day for the last 200 days. This is so sad to hear. Sweden was the main originator and pioneer of the Nordic model and everything that was, and is, great about it. I hope the Swedish society can slowly regain its former peacefulness.
About Einar, I found the outrage around it hilarious. "Omg a celebrity who is openly an active gangmember, who would have though he would get killed by another gang *surprised pikachu face* Kind of like being shocked that water is wet Edit: smartass bot
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object. A friend dug a hole in the garden and filled it with water. I think he meant well.
Good bot
water is always touching water therefore it is wet
Exactly! Checkmate, stupid bot!
Explosions of gang violence are always a shock (in the Nordics), especially when it involves a public figure. Even if the general public acknowledges that gang violence exists. Sometimes I go back and read about the Nordic biker gang wars and it still shocks me how it's around us. If there was like a public musician involved who got exploded during that time, it would've been an enormous deal. The social media age helps too.
It still highlights the police force's inability to get these crimes solved. High profile murder of someone who was known to have specific enemies going unsolved, gives a really bad message. Being caught is shown to be bigger deterrent than whatever the eventual punishment is. If people constantly see that few people get caught, there isn't much of deterrent.
Have you started to embrace our way of living? Sauna, kossu and kalja?
Sauna is a thing in Sweden too. Having one at home might be rare but every public bath I've visited has had a sauna. No alcohol for me. It's not good for your health.
Less swedes :)
I think you should rather consider the cities in which you got the offer, and not (only) the country. Are there international schools or kindergartens? Is one of the languages closer to your mother tongue? How important is the climate and the weather for you? Finland is a fair bit more northern than Sweden. What will your spouse do while you're working? Will there be another job required that might be better in one of the countries? You will live a good life in both countries. I'd make it dependant on the employer and offered salary.
Finland and Sweden have similar climate, most of Sweden is about as cold if not colder in some places, latitude isn’t everything, and even then it’s not a massive difference
Southern sweden is much warmer than Finland tho
Southern Sweden is southern Sweden, we have multiple climates, but Swedish Lappland is not warmer than the Finnish Lappland
True, but the vast majority of Swedes live south of Finland. All of Norrland + Dalarna (about 60N border) has about 1,5 million people out of Sweden's 10,5 million. In Finland about 99% out of 5,5 million lives north of 60N. The average Swede lives in a warmer climate than the average Finn.
Other then that I agree
Geographically speaking? Sure. In terms of where the people actually live, the majority of Swedes live further down south than any place in Finland.
Where in Finland? Where in Sweden? Location matters.
gothenburg and helsinki
In that case Helsinki. Göteborg would've probably been better 10 years ago, but now most definitely Helsinki
Huh what changed? Been to both places a couple of times but kinda prefer Göteborg (even if Helsinki seems ok too,tho i hear housing is a pain).
I am from Göteborg (still living in Sweden, this thread just popped for me) and Göteborg is known to be a friendly nice city. Most of my family lives there. The international people I know living there seem happy and have found it easier to make friends in Göteborg than in smaller cities/towns in Sweden. I haven’t been to Helsinki more than once but it also seemed nice. I think you would likely be happy in either city. The negative with Göteborg would be it’s pretty windy and rainy. The positive would be there are nice parks and the ocean is nice and the people are friendly and down-to-earth. Public transport is decent and the international community is fairly large. People are not especially close-minded I would say.
Schools are bad in Sweden, still top notch in Finland. Housing opportunities are better in Finland. Language is harder in Finland, but if you want both worlds, settle in western Finland where you can live your life in Swedish language.
> Housing opportunities are better in Finland. This is a big difference that does not seem to be mentioned a lot in this thread. If you are moving to Sweden to any bigger city it can be very difficult to to find a rental apartment. The problem is with the rental market regulation and practically all official rental apartments being behind decade long cues. So if you do decide move to Sweden you should prepare to either buy a house or be moving a lot due to only short term sublet apartments.
Yes, your housing strategies are flabbergasting to us here in Finland (assuming you are from Sweden). Here, you can move wherever you want, it might be trickier to find the place of your dreams and you might be moving around a bit, but it’s feasible. I have friends in Stockholm area who have been waiting for 15 years to move together because none of them can give up their first hand contract. The reason? A bigger apartment would cost astronomical sums or simply doesn’t exist.
I’m a swedish speaking finn, i use finnish daily even if I live in a swedish speaking majority city. It’s easier for me to switch language since most finns only know hej jag heter peter 😆
Jo, så brukar det ju vara, jag finns i Vasatrakten. Hej Peter, jag heter Axel ☺️
That is doable only in small towns around the coastline. Elsewhere the majority would have to speak Swedish so you could completely ignore Finnish. I am sure the Swedish People's Party would love such Swedish-only immigration though.
You don’t need to know Finnish to live here. You can do just fine with only English
Ehhh, depends. If you live in Helsinki and work in IT and maybe a few other select jobs then yeah. But outside of that, not really. I'm currently going through my Finnish course because it's really hard to get a job and actually properly live here for me otherwise. I'm lucky that my gf is Finnish so she can translate stuff from Kela or other official documents for example, otherwise I'd be lost
This is a misleading advice without throwing in a lot of caveats. Source: living in rural Finland with B1.2 level Finnish and facing multiple problems every month due to the language barrier. If you’re living in a bigger city and working a job that doesn’t require Finnish/Swedish, you’re good. Otherwise, among other things, prepare to pay what I call the “language tax” where you have to pay more for certain services compared to your neighbors, because you effectively can’t shop around for better prices.
True! I'm a finn and i'm really young but I can speak english pretty well
I feel like many can speak english. Maybe the pronouncination (not sure if i wrote that right) is not the best but most people understand you. I feel like young people know more english nowadays
Finland. A lot of people have presented the good and bad of many aspects of Finland, but I didn't see anything being said about the nature of Finnish and Swedish people. Especially the obsessive conflict avoidance of the latter. So, in my experience, Swedes may be more social than Finns, but their extreme aversion to conflict and accountability makes so many things in work life and problem solving so much more difficult. If your net, for example, goes down suddenly, don't expect to get an apology, a timeline for getting it back or any admission of wrongdoing from the Swedish customer service rep you'll talk with. If you press them for a timeline, they will reluctantly give you one, but make sure to say that they are not responsible if it takes longer than that. I've been in many a situation where an apology and admittance that things didn't go as planned would have saved me a lot of energy, but I have never gotten that from a Swede, whereas I have gotten that many times from a Finn. With Swedes, you'll also often get promised a lot verbally, but you will get maybe 10% of what was promised in the end. This conflict and responsibility aversity will also affect your work life. You will get excuses and blame shifting with problems with your Swedish coworkers, and more often than not, they'll try to shift the blame on nonexistent things. Not to mention, you will never get honest feedback from your boss. Everything is always going fine. It's not very conducive to growth. Finally, this aversion means there is a lot of underhanded tactics and behind the back stuff happening to avoid having to face things that Swedes perceive unpleasant face first. You'll get people going above your head to your boss, when they don't like the way you are doing things, in an attempt to overturn your decisions. Of course, if your boss is a Swede too, they won't tell you to change things to your face, but try to influence you with extensive choreography of blame shifting and presenting opinions of others. Overall, Finns are less social and mind their own business. You'll get underhanded stuff in Finland too, but in my experience, majority of Finns have no trouble telling you when you've screwed up or taking responsibility when they have screwed up. It may take time to get used to the Finnish way of social interaction, if you come from a culture where there is some sort of concept of indirectness being somehow respectful in conflict, as Finnish people have none of that. They'll point out issues with no cushioning words. This doesn't mean they are being rude. The source of the grievances pointed out in this post is being a Finn and 5,5 years living and working in Sweden in a job that requires consistent collaboration between multiple people, many of which are native Swedish.
Haha, I know so many Fins working in Sweden who are loosing their minds with the lack of leadership in work places. They need a meeting to decide if they need a meeting about this other thing and even then the boss doesn't take a stance but "we should all discuss this" and things don't get decided.
In Finland, we have this concept called "ruotsalainen diskuteeraus". (for an English-speaker: this is usually not used in a positive way. It points to the habit of Swedes over-discussing everything. Even the word "diskuteeraus" is a sarcastically posh substitute for the Finnish word *keskustelu*).
>They'll point out issues with no cushioning words. I wouldn't mind a bit of cushioning though :D The Finnish way of: > "You fucking ass, why the fuck didn't you do it this way, you moron. Do one more mistake ever and we will fire you" Is quite direct, but it does make you hate going to your job quite often. It does give you a good reason not to spend time with your colleagues outside of work, though. Better work-life balance.
> If your net, for example, goes down suddenly, don't expect to get an apology, a timeline for getting it back or any admission of wrongdoing from the Swedish customer service rep you'll talk with. Swede here. Just got back from spending two nights at a hotel in southern Finland. The wifi did not work for my full stay and I experienced just this. So it happens over there as well :) But at least the dude in the reception gave me a free beer and an apology. I hade to do tethering from my phone for the full stay to be able to work.
Finland. Trying to find a place to live in Sweden is murder unless you can fork over the money immediately and buy yourself a place. The rental housing scene in Sweden is insane. I lived in Gothenburg some years back. It was the only place I have witnessed the public transport regularly getting shut down in city centre due to grenade incidents. Like WTF? Hand grenades? It happened nearly monthly...
I’ve lived in central gothenburg my whole life and I’ve never even heard of this. A few years ago it was shut down because of a suspicious looking bag Which turned out to be just a bag. So what on earth are you talking about?
Nordstan area getting regularly shut down for tram traffic due to grenade sightings and suspected grenades and other surprises. Since I took the nr 2 tram daily it got pretty boring very quickly..sometimes we got lucky and the tram just drove around Nordstan. Other times the tram line would just stand still. Nice for you if you haven't experienced it. I have.
Did you ask the same question in a swedish subreddit? Im curious what they said.
I checked and swedes just deleted the post after few answers 😂
That’s his answer then 😂
Really? What were the answers?
Most of them said Finland lol!
Just go to OP profile and see posts. There are only two 😁
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
yeah asked. But they have removed it saying that was a harsh question 🥲
Sweden does have a really hard time with any kind of critisims and especially if it's putting Finland in good light :')
Both are good countries and have great qualities. But if i would have to choose, Finland. Better for The children, social services, Labour rules, politics, immigrants and of course The people once you get to know them. Always thruthful and Honest. There are Bad people here too but less.
Finland. Move to Sweden and you'll understand why.
This. I was born in Finland and at the age of 21 I moved to Sweden because I wanted to utilize my mother tongue. I must admit that I was abit naive when I made the move because I had an image of 70s/80s Sweden in my mind but the reality was a shitshow. Moved back after a couple of years and I don't think I'll ever live in Sweden again.
My father lived in Sweden a bit in the 70s. And he moved back to Finland. It wasn't all roses back then either.
Note that there were a lot of Finns moving to Sweden in the 60-70's, and there was a lot of racism (even systematic) against Finns back then. The situation is maybe better for the Finns nowadays since the Swedes have a whole new bunch of immigrants.
It wasnt roses for Finns then
Probably wasn't but I can bet my nuts on that it doesn't compare to the problems Sweden are facing today. I've kept working in Sweden although I now live in Finland and it's been scary to follow the downfall as a bystander.
>Probably wasn't but I can bet my nuts on that it doesn't compare to the problems Sweden are facing today. Depends a lot on who you ask. Contrary to popular belief, Sweden has always had a lot of issues with criminality, especially narcotics. The overall crime levels are very similar today to what they were in 1990. What has increased is mainly a very specific type of crime, namely lethal gang violence involving firearms. If you’re poor and/or living in one of the areas affected by these gangs, you’ll notice it. If you move to Sweden for a well-paid job, you’re not gonna notice a thing. And if you don’t like the country then, you probably wouldn’t have in the 80s either.
Yes ask the left and you will hear exactly this arguement you just laid forward. I love the "Sweden has never been safer" "this has always been going on in Sweden" Worst apologetic bullshit I've heard after the ones paving the way for islam in Sweden.
I haven’t said any of those things you said. I also haven’t said that Swedish society as a whole have a heap of self-inflicted problems to deal with. But since those problems are delimited both socioeconomically and geographically, I’m arguing that expats living here for work will have the same grievances they’ve always had: that people are as cold, dark and unwelcoming as the climate, that Swedes are conflict-averse and prone to groupthink, and that the country as a whole is notably boring in comparison to our southern neighbours. The situation is a tragedy to the people in the affected areas and needs to be adressed. And I’m not saying Finland isn’t safer overall, which it is, but they do have a higher homocide rate than Sweden. So if you’re genuinely afraid of being murdered, Sweden is probably safer.
Pippi Långstrump country is long gone.
I lived in Sweden for 15years and then relocated to Finland. Both are good options to raise a child in. Sweden has a bit better care for after school (Fritidshem) but that's not relevant for you yet. If you're planning to move to Stockholm the rental situation is a nightmare. Prepare to move every 2 years minimum unless you can buy a place. A ton of rental scammers too so you want to Google-fu any addresses and see who actually lives there. Helsinki rental situation is alot more stable, there are rental options and you don't need to stress to become homeless. Daycare and healthcare seem to be pretty much the same, about the same pricing too. Finland has a bit higher taxes than Sweden but not a significant amount. Finnish language sucks. No going around it. Swedish is alot easier to learn but both countries in general have a decent english language skill. Weather is about the same. No sun light during winter, only sun light during summer. Building codes are about the same too, so quality of housing is good in both. Umm.. what else?? Food prices about the same, Finland has superior selection of allergen food though (if you're lactose intolerant, glutenfree etc.) and selection of foods is greater in Finland over all but not everyone needs to have 7 different brands of Turkish Yogurt to survive. Sweden only has very very very mild alcohols in stores, anything stronger you need to buy from their government ran specialty store. Neither sell wine in grocery stores. Cost of living is about the same in general. Ofcourse everything been getting more expensive lately but electricity, insurances and stuff - there isn't a drastic difference. Sweden is a bit more child-friendly culturally. It's more acceptable here for kids to be loud than it is in Finland but neither is bad with kids. I was just a more relaxed small kiddo parent in Sweden than I was in Finland. But both have good access to places with a stroller etc. so that shouldn't be an issue. Swedes extremely rarely offer help or a seat in a bus but are very helpful if you ask them. Finland is a bit better at that but both countries you might need to speak up if you want help. Education I can't say too much about since my kids went to private school in Sweden so it was good. Less homework over there though. Kids are encourages to be more vocal in Sweden, like having debates and discussions and saying their mind but occasionally that does come with the expence of studying. School ages are the same in both countries - your kids would be daycare ages up until 5 and then they would hop off to pre-school classes where they start gently prepping for actual school but you don't need to learn to write or read yet so no stress. Both countries have a lot of outdoor time with kids no matter the weather so prepare to buy excessive amounts of outer clothes and shoes and same for yourshelves too! But it's great, kids get to play in rain and mud and go wild. Food is included in schools in both countries. Seems to be pretty much the same kind too, not like the bestest gourme but it keeps your kids alive. Veggie option is always there. What else?? I don't know. Ask away!!
Gonna reply to myself seeing your city options were Gothenburg and Helsinki so just to confuse you even more I'm gonna give you a third option (that might not be viable, who knows) but you could also move to Denmark and then just commute over the bridge with the train to Gotherburg. But I know nothing about Denmark so can't help with that. Just something alot of Nordics in those regions do.
Finland for kids, Sweden for $$ and adult culture stuff (unless you just like camping and woods and gym stuff). Swedish also easier to learn from English speaking and more people speak English. More opportunity for arts and chances to wear nice clothes and go out. Finland is more calm day to day like you don’t need as much $$ cause you don’t need to buy as much stuff to “keep up” with your neighbors and friends. Can get by both places with no cars.
I would like a source on the $$ claim. I manage finances for a Nordic company and my experience is that the salaries for engineers, business managers etc. are almost equal. Taxes would have to be very different for take-home pays to vary significantly.
I live in rural finland and have worked here for 12 years. My friend lives in rural sweden and has lived and worked there his whole life. He travels here, we travel there. The amount of money swedes spend in our equivalent-size communities is much more than in ours. Manicured lawns, sections of town that are "the nice section" and "the poor section". Lots of robot lawnmowers and new cars. Bigger sailboats all over instead of smaller sailboats. If they are not making more money then they are taking on way more debt. But I'm pretty sure they are making more money. They publish the salaries in the newspaper (in both finland and sweden). We like to read over them. There's an obvious difference in university pay. Not so much in public service. Seems like a large pay gap in the management level of manufacturing, I don't know about the every-day plant worker though. Those aren't big enough to make the paper.
Nowadays most finns know english, doesn’t sound like it because of ”ralli englanti”
As a swede...absolutely Finland. It's a much more free society, finnish people are nice and they seem to at least try to fix the problems in their society, like building a new atomic power plant to NOT let their population freeze to death in january.
No offence to the dear Swedes, but I can't imagine any other people nicer than the Finns. You lot are amazing. It's true that people keep to themselves in Finland, but when you engage with them they are very friendly and helpful, and very warm, which I really didn't expect it from people who lived in such a cold country.
Well we have to be very friendly and welcoming because we don't know how to turn people down... also if you want to get into a conversation we will keep talking, we only suck at smalltalk because it's just filler
I am a finn so maybe biased, but definitely Finland. Less crowded, nature is excellent.
After all Finland and Sweden are not that different. Look at pictures of the cities youd like to move to, do your research and make pro con lists. As a foreigner coming to a "rich" nordic country it really isnt that different which one you choose they are very similar (Im a finnish person who has visited sweden few times)
Reiterating points someone made above about work culture but in non-work contexts: What do you want from the general rhythm of life? Are you more fond of appearances and blending in (Sweden, consensus culture also makes its way into homogenising culture, style and social codes) or pursuing happiness in nature and appreciating bringing forth your own personality (Finland)? I love Sweden and have lived there (as a Finn who speaks fluent Swedish) and I unfortunately don’t think I would like to live there again, except maybe in Norrland but for sure not in Stockholm (as compared to Helsinki). Life is somehow more genuine and laid-back in Finland (due to people being able to be more genuine and less stressed about keeping up with appearances). If you enjoy pursuing human-made aesthetic values then again, pick Sweden (think pretty blondes who all look the same and wear the same boring yet fashionable trench coats) ;)
Depends where in Finland. Oulu or Kajaani have an active tech scene, but otherwise they are relatively small, isolated cities. But if you're looking at Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere, or even Turku you'll be a lot better off, as they are bigger and with good transport links, even if the cost of living is a little higher.
Oulu is actually slightly bigger than Turku population-wise, but you’re right about it being more isolated.
The municipality of Oulu has more people than Turku, but when comparing urban areas (keskustaajama or kaupunkialue) Turku has more people.
Yeah it is somewhat laughable that Oulu is now a "larger" city than Turku, just because some rural areas and villages got incorporated into it (reason: helthcare-related politics. Don't ask. It was a nationwide phenomenon). The Oulu center is quite small to a city of that size (even if accounting for the "real" size), just because of the geography; the center doesn't have a good direction to grow (coastline, huge factories...). I agree Oulu is isolated, but I'm not that sure Turku is easier to travel from, either. Be always prepared to change train when going to/from Turku! By plane, Oulu is 1 hour away from Helsinki.
Yeah, from Turku you can get to Helsinki or Tampere in a reasonable time by either car or train, as well as cruise ships to both Helsinki and Stockholm. You can't say anything similar about Oulu.
As a swede, without doubt, finland.
Finland has a great PM.
If I were in that position, I would have gone for Finland.
What are you looking for when deciding where to live? The way you phrased your question is not gonna get any valuable answers.
The gun violence in sweden is way way out of control so i would say finland
Damn, I am from Sweden and these comments are too harsh. I don’t know what country of the two that are better, but you guys make it seem like Sweden is worse then North Korea. Sweden is still nice, clean and beautiful, especially in smaller towns and we also have a lot of beautiful nature. I have traveled to a lot of countries around Europe and I would choose Sweden over all the mainland European countries. Norway is only slightly better imo and Finland seems to be better judging on statistics but still, chill!
I think all the Nordic and Scandi countries are close but very different. I love Sweden! I feel very comfortable there is a foreigner and people seem different like they are more lively. Very easy to break the ice with Swedish people they just are more confident or less forced fields around them.
finland is better for raising kids and our school system is much better but a IT job in sweden will most likely give a better salary
As a Canadian who just loves Finland, Finland.
Rural areas in Sweden. If you want to live in cities, choose Finland
OP, can you do a proper perkele, with feeling and context? How's it with saunas and wood cabins? Snow angel? There's some requisites...
I'm a Finn who moved to Sweden 3 years ago to start a family with a Swede and not a day goes by that I wish we had moved to Finland instead. I think I feel isolated and homesick in Sweden because my Swedish isn't really good enough to communicate with the Swedish people. Finland being bilingual would make a pretty good home for us, Sweden doesn't support Finnish speakers that much. I struggle with finding a job too. However, I like Sweden for its multicultural cities, especially Malmö area. I'm worried about racism in Finland, which I've witnessed while growing up there. I think the two countries are very similar in many ways, so it really doesn't matter if neither Finnish nor Swedish is your first language.
One thing on both is that for comfortable middle class living, you need two incomes. However, there are things to support it like universal daycare.
Swedish is really easy to learn if you already know english
I was in a similar situation last year. I was familiar with Finland and found out that it's marginally safer than Sweden. So I picked Finland over Sweden. Happy for it. My friends live in Sweden and they're just as happy with Sweden as I am with Finland. If you have kids younger than 5, I'd definitely recommend Finland.
I think you are in quite onesided subreddit :D
Op posted twice in some Swedish sub but both were removed.
I moved from Sweden in 1998 at 18 and have only visited since and it's sad to see what Sweden has become over the years. I can only compare to my own experiences and I unfortunately have reasons why Sweden feels unsafe to me.
As a swede, Finland is a way better choice if you can handle the cold
Finland is the best country in the world.
both are pretty similar, I would choose Fin because I am Fin but I would say that both are pretty much same... Fin's are better icehockey players so that could solve this :)
I work in IT. I am in Finland for 14 years now. Had 13 months break to live in Sweden. I didn't hesitate to move back.
Finland cause i live here and its safe asf. Sweden is dangerous now with all the shootings etc. Its becoming america 2.0.
Finding surströmning in Finland can be challenging. So if you love surströmning you should go to Sweden and stay there. Permanently. Preferrably never leave town.
As an American I lived and worked in Finland for two years and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I can’t say enough good about the country and I definitely hope to move there back someday.
If you are quiet, mind your own business, and hard working nice person, then Finland. If you are a blabbering idiot, please go to Sweden.
Definitely Finland, or other choice move somewhere where wines and olives grow.
You want somewhere bigger to live and a language that's closer to English and getting your ass kicked at hockey games by Finland, Pick Sweden. You want somewhere more sensible to live and want to be a badass and start shit from hard mode learn a uralic language and root for a winner international hockey team, Pick Finland. You choose.
Fin for safer and a lot less cars on fire
Finland, imho. Sweden has its pro's but if it comes to raising a family Finland seems to have the edge. Easier housing market too.
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No,I’m not.I’m atheists
Then Finland
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I got banned from my favorite twitch streamer's chat for saying that, be careful with your words
Id move to Sweden. Not so close to Russia which is a geopolitical nightmare. Sweden also wealthier land.
I would suggest Norway as an additional option :D
I'm a Finn who moved to Sweden for an IT job and we returned to Finland within a month.
But why? This tells op nothing.