the pursuit of happiness

1. the bike guide

It’s hard to imagine that Riku Nurminen ever feels glum, or even just slightly mediocre. For the last half hour we’ve been cycling through Helsinki, and he hasn’t stopped smiling, or talking. ‘I love this,’ he shouts over his shoulder, ‘meeting people, riding my bike, enjoying the short summer and seeing my city.’

Riku founded Helsinki Bike Tours in 2014 and – when not working as a hotel concierge, opera performer or sports massage therapist – shows his hometown to guests that have included Bill Gates, former Finnish presidents and the Chinese Olympic snowboarding team, circling through topics as diverse as Russian history, the music of Sibelius and the invention of Angry Birds as he goes. 

On single-speed Helsinki-made Jopo bikes (‘the most sold and stolen bikes in Finland’), we pedal along quiet cycle lanes, swerving only to circumnavigate a stray goose as we skirt Töölö Bay. Having taken
in the underground art gallery Amos Rex – the lumps and bumps of its roof drawing skateboarders and selfie-takers in equal measure – we head out to Riku’s favourite bit of Helsinki: Keskuspuisto. ‘We don’t make a lot of noise about this place,’ says Riku as we enter the park, swooping beneath a canopy of spruce. ‘But it’s pretty unique to have a forest right inside the city. You cannot believe we’re still in Helsinki.’ 

We glide along shaded paths lined with bracken and silver birch trees, enjoying the pine-scented air with joggers, dog-walkers and power-walkers. ‘It’s extreme here so you enjoy the contrasts,’ Riku explains as we pass a cluster of tiny unaccompanied children taking a rabbit for a walk on a lead. ‘You really appreciate the summer if you’ve spent six months indoors watching Netflix. No-one leaves Finland now,’ he says. ‘It’s daylight all the time and there’s too much to enjoy.’

Before heading back into town, we stop for blueberry cake and cartons of birch water in a clearing given over to allotments. Around us, people diligently tend to their redcurrants, gooseberries and runner beans in the sunshine. ‘As you can see, nature is important to everyone in Finland, and it’s available to everyone,’ says Riku. ‘If you are rich or you are poor, you enjoy it just the same.’

2. the restaurateurs

‘Helsinki is at the start of becoming something very big,’ says Romany Ekegren, sitting down with a cup of coffee. ‘People here are open-minded and not afraid to try new things. Stores, bars and restaurants
are opening all the time, and the city is very supportive – it’s pretty epic!’

Romany and husband Juho should know. Three years ago, at the ripe old age of 24, they opened their first restaurant together. ‘We’re crazy young,’ says Romany with a laugh, ‘but I think you should embrace being young and having so many ideas in your head, you can’t contain them.’

Chapter restaurant occupies one of Helsinki’s oldest stone buildings. The windows on the saffron-coloured façade point straight to the city’s wedding-cake Lutheran cathedral, while those at the back look onto a festoon-lit courtyard. Each of the rooms has a different mood – some light-filled and plant-strewn, others dark and cocooning. Romany and Juho designed the interior themselves, filling the space with photographic prints from friends, crockery and glassware from grandparents, and books and magazines from flea markets. It is a place to while away whole evenings, and many diners do, coming early for a cocktail at the bar and staying until closing time. ‘If you’re comfortable and happy, you don’t want to move,’ says Romany. ‘We want people to enjoy dinner at their own pace.’

The reason to stay is the frequently changing five-course menu that contains ingredients I’ve not ever heard of in combinations I hadn’t imagined: sourdough made with fermented beetroot, served with meadowsweet and tomato tea; Arctic char with grilled gooseberries; lamb sweetbread with black garlic and pak choy. A lot of the produce comes from a small biodynamic farm that the couple have shares in, or from their own garden. ‘We’re not 100 per cent Finnish, or local, or organic,’ says chef Juho, ‘but that’s the direction we’re heading in.’

The dishes are served by the cooks straight from the kitchen, each spending time chatting with the diners and answering any questions about the food on the plate. ‘Most ideas for a dish startwith a single ingredient,’ says Juho, tweezering delicate flowers onto a plate of tightly swirled leeks. ‘Every time I go to the countryside I come back so inspired by my time in the forest or just by a mushroom I found. I can have it on the menu straight away – it’s exciting that we can change things like that.’

It’s an approach that’s struck a chord in Helsinki: Chapter won best new restaurant in Finland in 2018 and its tables are fully booked every night. ‘Some people don’t understand what we do here,’ says Romany, getting ready to shut up shop for the day. ‘They just want potatoes and meatballs, and that’s fine. But the culture is changing – and it’s changing for good.’

3. THE SAUNA OWNER

It’s a hot day in Helsinki. On the roof terrace of Löyly, young Finns sit on beanbags, beer in hand, sunglasses on, chatting with their friends and watching the sailing and cargo ships out at sea. Beneath them, the pine- and glass-clad restaurant hums, families and friends sitting down to bowls of salmon soup and glasses of wine. Jasper Pääkkönen weaves amongst them, and all eyes in the room swivel his way. Most well known outside of Finland for his parts in the TV series Vikings and the Spike Lee film BlacKkKlansman, Jasper has many more strings to his bow in his native city, not least among them his role in bringing the public sauna bang into the 21st century.

‘Helsinki used to have a very lively public sauna culture before private plumbing was common,’ he says as we wander outside to the deck. ‘There were over 100 in the city, but ten years ago there were only a couple left.’ When the opportunity arose to buy a derelict bit of land on a rocky bay and build a public sauna, he and his former business partner didn’t hesitate. ‘The idea was crazy but we were naïve and ambitious enough to try it!’ he says with a laugh. ‘Fifteen of the construction companies we contacted said it couldn’t be done. The 16th said yes.’

The result is a striking, angular building that sits like a pale wooden iceberg on the waterfront. It has quickly become a landmark in the city, and that derelict patch of land is fast becoming home to new bars and restaurants. ‘Our aim was to build this stand-out architecture and to combine it with part of the culture that’s heart-and-soul Finnish,’ says Jasper as we watch a couple gingerly climb down metal steps and into the cold water of the Baltic Sea. ‘Finnish people in general are quite quiet and reserved but when you go into a sauna, everything changes. Everyone starts talking to each other. It’s a very deep connection here. We’re at our most comfortable in the sauna.’

His earliest and fondest memories are the rituals of the sauna: lighting the wood with his father; listening to the hiss of steam as water hit the rocks; breathing in the warm smoke. ‘I compare it to church. For the average churchgoer, the silence and the purity is important. Finland is very secular so we get that from the sauna. It’s mental cleansing.’ Scientific research has also revealed the medical benefits, with a daily sauna and cold-water plunge shown to reduce blood pressure and the risk of heart attacks and dementia in some studies. ‘We’ve always instinctively known it’s very good for you,’ says Jasper. ‘In these days of wellness, we have something ancient that is proven to be healthy.’

I don’t need more convincing to try it myself. My eyes take a while to grow accustomed to the dark of the smoke sauna and to spy an empty place on the benches ringing the room. When a fellow occupant pours water on to the hot rocks, the heat that rushes towards me is tangible. It’s difficult to breathe. When I’m quite certain my eyeballs and lungs are melting, I waddle outside to the water and plunge in. The temperature is wince-inducingly icy at first but quickly warms up to merely cold. In that moment, I am hooked – there’s nothing for it but to join the Finns and do it all over again. 

4. the designer

In Kaapelitehdas, the elegant Art Nouveau buildings and broad streets that are a mark of so much of the city centre are replaced by imposing warehouses set around courtyards. Hidden within the complex are galleries and kung-fu workshops, bookshops and dance studios, a radio station and a cinema. And on the fifth floor of Waterhouse B is Helena Mattila, and Helena Mattila’s laugh. 

It soon becomes apparent that Helena does not stop laughing. She laughs when she shows me around her design studio, and when she talks about her childhood. She laughs when she shows me sketches of products she’s creating, and when she reminisces about her previous life as a lawyer. ‘When you’re happy, you laugh a lot,’ she says, laughing. ‘Maybe as a child, I was dropped in a happy pool!’ 

She has run Everyday Design from the complex for the last eleven years, working on prototypes at a desk stacked with tubs of paintbrushes, pencils and scissors. Large metal windows at the back of the studio look out over the courtyard and, if you lean out slightly, the sea. The room is filled with shelves, and the shelves are filled with suitcases and folders, sample materials and finished products. ‘Marketing says “buy this and you will be happy”, but when I was a child, we made these toys, just pinecones with little legs, and we were happy,’ says Helena. ‘We didn’t need branding, we just had good products or bad products. Now I want to make good products that last a long time and help people with their lives.’

The designs range from the highly practical (metal wall-hooks, plywood mirrors, storage trolleys) to the whimsical (house-shaped candle-holders, and an artificial snowball that crunches in the hand like snow). All are made locally, using recycled materials wherever possible. Her most popular design is one of beautiful simplicity – a recycled metal bag-holder, used to stow laundry, recycling, toys and groceries. ‘I don’t do products that are only beautiful or only functional. If they are not beautiful, people don’t use them.’

The approach clearly resonates far beyond Helsinki, with international design awards flying Helena’s way and her products being displayed in London’s Design Museum and MoMA in New York. ‘If you want to be creative, you have to be kind of a child and get excited by small things,’ she says, pulling a suitcase off a shelf and opening it to reveal a felt Christmas decoration, a wicker ball and an antique dish-washing brush. ‘Everything I own brings me joy.’

As the final subject in my investigation into happiness in the capital of the world’s happiest country, Helena seems well placed to definitively answer the question:  what is the secret to a happy life? After a short pause to reflect, she says, ‘People think that money, reputation and fancy houses make you happy, but then you compare to others and you always want more. In Finland, we live a good, simple life influenced by nature. That is enough.’ 

Wisdom absorbed, I descend back to the courtyard and stop for a moment to enjoy the warm sun on my face and the vague tang of salt carried on the air. If I listen very carefully, I’m fairly sure I can still hear laughter.