British Man Living In Helsinki Shares “Very Finnish Problems” And They’re Hilariously Accurate

We managed to get in touch with Joel Willans and he told us that everything began while he was dancing in The Dogstar, a nightclub in south London.

“I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turned round to see a beautiful blonde Finnish girl in a shimmering silver dress, smiling,” Willans explained to Bored Panda.

“‘Can you buy me a beer?’ she asked. Needless to say, I said yes. A year later, Anna and I moved in together. We lived in London for a few years, with both of us working in advertising.”

However, the couple eventually got disillusioned with their careers and went backpacking around the world for a year.

“Following the sunshine from Southeast Asia to Australia and South America, I’d purposely got return flights to the UK in July for a British summer, but the weather when we landed in Heathrow was battleship grey and drizzling,” Willans recalled.

“So, I suggested we go to Finland. When we arrived, it was the hottest summer in 200 years. ‘Yay! Let’s stay for a while,’ I thought, expecting to remain just for the summer. That was over twenty years ago and I’m still here.”

Avid Bored Panda readers might remember one of our earlier pieces on ‘Very Finnish Problems,’ in which Joel, who works as a creative director at a digital marketing agency called Ink Tank Media, revealed that the social media project is a result of a wager.

“I bet one of my clients that I could create a Facebook page with 10K fans in a month without spending a penny,” he then told us. “The bet was made during the Finnish winter, which was typically dark and very, very cold. The pavements were super slippery, and it was taking me ages to walk to work. I remember thinking how winter is trying to kill me and what a very Finnish problem that is.”

The Englishman in the far north then realized that he faced many more Finnish problems and launched the page, gaining nearly 20K fans in a month and winning the bet.