Quotes About Finns

Here's a card I'm holding. Finland. There's where you first got interested in Kang, isn't it? He must have been using it as some sort of base. Quiet, out-of-the-way place, where people mind their own business. I'll bet you can go for long walks with no one else around. What did he do to catch your attention? Or did the Finns alert you?

People in Sweden talk a lot about the weather - how much we hate it. But Finns get more depressed.

Sometimes, the lascars would gather between the bows to listen to the stories of the greybeards. There was the steward, Cornelius Pinto: a grey-haired Catholic, from Goa, he claimed to have been around the world twice, sailing in every kind of ship, with every kind of sailor - including Finns, who were known to be the warlocks and wizards of the sea, capable of conjuring up winds with a whistle.

You'll find Swedes - maybe not as much as the Finns - thriving in melancholy.

So far as regards their moral character, the Finns have as little cause for reproach as any other people.

It is madness to come to country houses without one's bottle of Mickey Finns.

Brits, Scandinavians, Finns, Estonians consider themselves rational, logical, unencumbered by emotional arguments; we are businesslike, stubborn, and hard-working.

Though the Russians technically won, the world watched as the Red Army suffered losses in the snowy woods at the hands of a few proud Finns on skis, their artillery pulled by reindeer.

Now is probably a good time to make my confession about Finland, our next destination in this Nordic odyssey: I think the Finns are fantastic. I can't get enough of them. I would be perfectly happy for the Finns to rule the world. They get my vote, they've won my heart. If you ask me, they should just change the word 'fantastic' to 'Finntastic.' Helsinki? Heavensinki, more like.

Though the Finns' taciturnity may work among themselves, problems arise when they travel or have to work with foreigners. The men, in particular, can be simply too frank, too direct, sometimes to the point of rudeness. They find it especially challenging to engage in the social lubricant of small talk, something even Norwegians can manage if they put their minds to it.