Mette Helve exchanged a high profile career in Denmark for a down to earth lifestyle in Finland

What do you do here in Finland?

I’m self-employed as a pottery maker and café owner

When and how did you end up here?

I fell in love with a Finnish gardener during a Christmas holiday in the Canaries in 2000. I moved from Copenhagen to live with him outside Turku the following summer.

Long-form journalism offers more than respite from information gluttony and expands the traditional concept of journalism.

Many Finns were, paradoxically, introduced to slow journalism rather abruptly recently, through a minute feature by the journalism collective Long Play on the now-controversial study by philosopher Pekka Himanen. The “e-single”, as the jargon insists, examined the dubious process of commissioning the 700,000 euro study on sustainable growth models, ultimately dragging Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen into the epicentre of the controversy.

In this new series 6D gets to know what it’s like to be a regular immigrant in Finland.

Originally all the way from South Korea, Oogie Bae shares her thoughts about living in Finland…

What do you do here in Finland?

I am taking Finnish language classes full time and looking after my four-year-old son when he is not at day care.

How and when did you end up in Finland?

WHAT do the Dutch, Japanese, Latvian and Sudanese nationalities have in common? According to the figures of Statistics Finland, there’s about the same amount of their representatives – 1,150 – living in Finland.

For them to keep in touch with one another, one of the primary ways is through the Dutch Association in Finland (“Nederlandse Vereniging in Finland”). The group has 100 individuals and 100 families as members, and it estimates that it represents about 300–400 people in total. In addition to Dutch people, its membership is open to all who are interested in the Netherlands and other countries that belong to the Dutch language union (Belgium, Suriname and Netherlands Antilles). The Dutch Association cooperates with FINBEL, the Belgian association in Finland.

A multitude of social groups exist to help guide, inform and entertain come-from-aways in Finland.

IT could be that a foreigner’s best resource in Finland is other foreigners.

“I’m just so glad that people have stopped whining and complaining that there’s nothing to do, and no one to meet, and started to do something about it,” states Richard Berman, head of the volunteer-run International English Speakers Association of Finland (IESAF). “Because it’s true, it is difficult do to this stuff without help, foreigners coming over here trying to make friends with Finnish people – unless your wife, or your boyfriend knows them already. It’s hard to branch out beyond that circle.”