I’m loth to share this, because I want to win myself, but Visit Finland is running a competition to take part in a “happiness masterclass”. It’s not as good as last year’s Icelandic tourist board initiative where you could get their shaggy little horses to write you an out-of-office email by walking on a giant keyboard, but having recently described myself as having “no talent for happiness”, I’m keen.
Confirmed this month as the happiest place in the world for the sixth year running, Finland, the country with a word for getting drunk alone in your underwear (päntsdrunk, or kalsarikännit), is offering the rest of us a chance to learn the secrets of highly contented Finns.
What will the winners get, exactly? Well-funded healthcare and functional public services thanks to progressive taxation? A relatively equal society with low rates of deprivation and crime? Unspoiled natural beauty accessible to all? A chance to turn back time and not start school until age seven, leading to excellent educational outcomes?
Sadly not. You get an introduction to Finnish culture (food, nature and design), which sounds fine, but more importantly, four nights at a luxury forest resort (the blurb includes the phrase: “The villas introduce you to an entirely new standard of sleep.”) If anything would make me happy, it is indeed an entirely new standard of sleep.
All I have to do is create a social media post. The brief is “What makes you secretly believe you may be a Finn”, so I’ve been brainstorming. To stand out from the crowd of sauna-takers and pants-drunkards, I’m considering crafting a homage to Aki Kaurismäki’s wonderfully deadpan film, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, about an extravagantly quiffed, winklepicker-wearing, awful rock band.
Alternatively, according to a Finnish sociology professor bemused by his country’s reputation for relentless positivity, Finns are all about low expectations: “A cultural orientation that sets realistic limits to one’s expectations for a good life.” Low expectations are definitely in my wheelhouse, but I have no idea how to make enticingly Instagrammable content about them. I bet Kaurismäki would know.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
