Finland’s Sanna Marin on why her country is always the ‘happiest’

Finland’s former Prime Minister Sanna Marin acknowledged that Finns weren’t “the most cheerful,” despite the country being named the world’s “happiest” for the seventh year in a row.

However, Marin told Semafor in an interview that Gallup’s World Happiness Report 2024, released Tuesday, measures a “deeper kind of happiness than cheerfulness.”

“We are not perhaps the most cheerful people in the globe,” she said. “But of course, we have a good nation and we have a good society.” Marin said Nordic countries always rank higher in the report because of their welfare society model, which “enables everyone to have a good life.”

“It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do things by yourself,” Marin added. “Of course, you have to work by yourself, but still we have that network that helps you if life gets tough. And I think that creates that kind of trust that societies need to really bloom.”

Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen echoed that sentiment, telling Semafor that Nordic countries are happier because they “combine material wealth with a social consciousness.”

Finland was overall the happiest country, but ranked eighth for people under 30. Marin, once the world’s youngest prime minister who led her country through the COVID-19 crisis before stepping down late last year, said that the pandemic and its aftermath might explain why younger people feel less optimistic.

Marin, who was widely seen as a “symbol of a new generation of progressive millennial politicians,” faced backlash when a leaked video showed her dancing at a party in 2022. The commentary on Marin’s actions during her leadership was often criticized as sexist and ageist, and she has said that she feels her gender and age get too much attention.

Marin told Semafor that Finland still has work to do to ensure that children and young adults feel “well taken care of and that they have that social life and also all the support for the education that they need,” she said. Climate change and other existential threats are also top of mind for the younger generation, she said.