Making Friends with a Finn

Finnish People Are Weird and Keep to Themselves.

Foreigners have a saying about us Finns: "When you make a friend of a Finn, you make a friend for a life time - the problem is, it takes a life time to make a friend of a Finn." I totally cracked up when I first heard that, it happens to be very accurate - in a way. There is another saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In this case it should be "When in Finland, consider the Finnish way".

The Finns take friendship very seriously, as well as everything else, it seems. In Finnish, there are several words for "a friend" each meaning a different type of friendship. When foreigners describe food, they have a zillion different ways to describe it, while Finns go: "It's good, very good or bad" that's enough. But with friends, we do get more specific.

We've got:

Hyvänpäivän tuttu - A person who you say "good morning" to in the mornings, but never ask about how he's doing.

Tuttava - Someone who you know, a bit like acquaintance, but who is maybe a bit friendlier. Anyway, someone you know something of, have something in common and can carry out a light conversation with, but you never get too personal.

Kaveri - Someone you hang around with without actual need to do so, just for the fun of it. You have fun together, but you wouldn't share your most intimate thoughts with. Of course then there's

"hyvä kaveri" a good kaveri in addition to this category, someone that you actually might call on the phone to get together.

Ystävä - Someone you trust completely, you would give your life in his hands with no worries that he'd intentionally harm you or would make a decision you wouldn't be happy with.

Sieluntoveri - Soul mate, someone you share thoughts so seamlessly, you're not really sure if you two are separate from each other at all.

And last, but not least,

Sydänystävä - The person you are married to, as long as the marriage is very good and satisfying!