Columnists

The national Ahtisaari Day, named after former Finnish president and Nobel Peace Laureat Martti Ahtisaari, is behing held in Finland for the 10th time and the theme of the day is "Disputes are resolved by talking." This year the event highlights…

Being a Swedish-speaking Finn means you’re just like everyone else, but at the same time not. In my language it’s known as being finlandssvensk, a person who is Finnish, but speaks Swedish as their first language. Let me try…

Watching one industrial project after another trying to enter the Sámi homeland in Finland, I’ve started wondering whether companies and authorities understand that the Sámi homeland is a scarce resource for the indigenous people Sámi. The Sámi languages, culture…

Finnish Member of Parliament and a former comedian Pirkka-Pekka Petelius (Green) apologised this week to the Sámi people for his offensive ‘drunken Sámi’ TV sketches. Petelius and fellow comedian Aake Kalliala mocked Sámi in the 1980s and 1990s in a TV…

As the party line-up of the new Finnish government and its policy program was formally announced on Monday, the fiscally conservative right, who for the last decade have been managing the country through austerity and cutbacks, were forced to…

There are two versions of autonomy within Finland: the region of the Åland Islands between Finland and Sweden is autonomous; and the indigenous people Sámi have more limited linguistic and cultural self-government in the Sámi native region in Northern…

The tiny municipality of Lestijärvi gives out a baby bonus of €10,000 to the families of babies born within the municipality. The sum is paid over ten years of installments of €1000, if the family keeps living in Lestijärvi. Therefore,…

Generally in economics, the price of factors of production is determined by their productivity. With this logic, it makes sense that more productive workers are paid more than less productive workers, and more capital is needed to buy more…

Last year Sweden implemented a flight tax, which is meant to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the airline industry. The tax is around €6 for domestic, and €41 euros for intercontinental flights. At the other end of the spectrum, Finland…

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Just a couple of days before the Sámi National Day 2019 and in the run-up to Sámi Parliament elections in the autumn, the United Nations gave us a perfect present: new hope for Sámi politics in Finland. First the facts. Last week the…