learned brooding. From the Russians, they learned drinking. The
Finns themselves are notoriously taciturn, introverted and a bit shy.
One study found that of many nationalities in the world, the Finns are
the most comfortable with long silences. They are not chatty. There’s
been much discussion of the Scandinavian paradox: countries like
Sweden, Denmark and Finland rank very high on happiness indexes,
but they also suffer high rates of suicide.
Korpela’s grandfather fought the brutal winter battles of World
War II and, like so many survivors of his generation, ended up
suffering silently. Nobody knew how to talk to these broken men
about their pain, which was immortalized in classics like Väinö
Linna’s The Unknown Soldier, Finland’s all-time best-selling novel.
Korpela, an experimental psychologist at the University of Tampere,
has spent most of the last twenty years studying how different
environments make us feel. Unusual for psychologists two decades
ago, he was most drawn to positive psychology, or what made us feel
good. From his experiences during childhood, when he and his older
brother had the run of the town while their parents worked long hours,
he knew that place mattered to his own psyche and might for others as
well.
Tampere itself is not terribly impressive geographically. A city of
about 250,000 people ninety minutes north of Helsinki by train, it was
founded by Swedish King Gustav III at the relatively late date of
- The city sits along a set of rapids—now corralled into a hydro
dam—on the Tammerkoski River. Overlooking the city is the highest
esker in the world. (I didn’t know what an esker is either—it’s
basically a glacial moraine.) This feature is more like a geological
speed bump than a mountain, rising only 85 meters. The fact that the
Finns are so proud of it tells you what you need to know about the
country’s topography. You won’t find majestic peaks or canyons.
Marshes are so predominant here that the country gets 9 percent of its
electricity from peat gas. Finland is the Saudi Arabia of peat. Still, the