A lot of people just don’t get Finland. I do, for a lot of reasons, for one I have studied the language extensively and speak it pretty well. For two, I have met and spent time with Finns, explored the country’s ancient history, mysticism and folklore. But thirdly, because in the forests of Finland and on the streets of Helsinki I developed sisu. I do not mean to say that I am exceptionally street-wise in Finland, or in general for that matter, but I have experienced a lot of sadness in Finland, I have wandered the streets of Helsinki, I have felt like I wanted to cry and have done - under grey skies and winds icy cold, even though the sun shines bright with UV light.
This is in part what separates Finland from other countries. Finland doesn’t appear on peoples’ pathways to gently guide them to beautiful landscapes, nor does it appear to reflect widely known facets of European history. Finland appears in a person’s pathway when it is time for that person to expand their mind, find spiritual freedom and to an ultimate sense of being beyond the temporary pains of human experience. Finland teaches strength, vigilance and responsibility with power and with oneself. Finnish philosophy and language also do reflect these ideals, which contrast greatly from the ideals and spiritual traditions of the Nordic countries, like Norway and Sweden. The Norse in Sweden for example had their own spiritual traditions, but they never existed as a system of wisdom on the same level that Finnish traditions contain. Norse wisdom in many cases came from Finnish wisdom, anyway.
Whilst many across Europe feared the Vikings, their horned-headed giant, possessed berserker warriors, their ships; the Vikings themselves feared the Finns, because the Finnish knowledge of spirituality and reality was just on a different level of realisation, a different pathway. Whereas Viking spirituality taught that virtue came down to battle and individual exploitation of life - Finnish spirituality taught that virtue comes from sisu - the awakening of the divine self, from hardship, honour and freedom. The concept of sisu is not about having “grit”, nor is it about suffering for the sake of being strong and powerful. Rather, sisu is the self realisation of the divine self through purification, through saying “no”, it is what we become when the World hurts us, and when we still have the strength to stand up, and to smell the nature around us. I think also that sisu is responsibility. It is more than being responsible for one’s own actions, it is also a responsibility to the creator, a responsibility to be humble and strong - not through waging war or through “winning” but because when somebody has true sisu it becomes not about winning or losing, it is rather to become so awakened within oneself, that the game of “winning and losing” loses all power over the individual awakened self. Sisu is also a responsibility to others - to aid them in their own self realisation, yet not to let oneself become pushed around or diminished. 

Finnish tradition also teaches responsibility with magic and spirituality. If you think of the Wizards in the Lord of the Rings, the wizards do not necessarily use their “powers” very often at all. The kind of magic that they use is extremely powerful, angelic and divine. Their magic is so powerful that it makes the magic of “witches” in our modern and known history in terms of using magic for spells and manipulation relatively, well, useless, and the reason for that is that most “modern” magic traditions work through manipulation, they are having to work against the universe’s natural moral system. The wizards in the Lord of The Rings on the other hand are so powerful precisely because they use their magic in accordance with the Creator’s inherent moral system of kindness and hope over suffering and fear. Well, the exact same concept is what makes Finnish magical tradition so special and unique. Yes Finnish magical tradition can seem “dark” and include entities of disease like Iku-Turso and people coming back from the dead and what not, but these things are not inherently “evil”, and the Finns understood how to work with, embrace and reject them accordingly as they understood them to be a part of the Creator’s work and music. In other words, they did not utilise these powers for self-gain, so they had nothing to fear.
This is why I think the Vikings feared the Finns so much, because the Viking system of reality was dualistic, chaos versus order, whereas the Finnish system understood chaos and order as animations of the divine, and the divine pathway was not to balance these forces through conquering them, but to balance these forces within oneself through sisu. This is the primary key I believe which one can maintain a constant awareness of and connection to the divine self, and this constant practice, obligation and responsibility is what allowed them to move the world in divine ways, by moving and working with the divine in the world. This is what modern Finland teaches. Most of the evidence of ancient civilisation there is deliberately self-cloaked and unknown, this is deliberate, Finland is “meant” to be in our present time a place of endless forests, waters, and skies, because it is within this environment that one goes on a quest to see and know the divine within the world and within oneself. Some of the Norse even travelled to Finland for this very precise same reason of spiritual learning, yet few discuss this. It is almost as though the Finn Ancestors (who in my opinion were connected to Polygonal Masonry, the Incas, ancient seafarers etc) had the knowledge and ability to to rebuild their ancient home with grand architecture functioning like spiritual devices and keys, and yet it is as though they deliberately chose “not” to recreate their civilisation, but instead to remain a forest people, as I believe they understood that this was the right way to preserve their wisdom, to teach their spirituality, and to conceal themselves from the world until the time was right.
Finland, in other words is “meant” to look empty, flat and forested to those who are not spiritually worthy or capable of receiving its wisdom, the appearance of Finland and its “unimportance” to many peoples minds are I think deliberate protection mechanisms that help to safe guard the secrets of Finland’s nature and spirituality. In other words, you won’t look there or find anything there unless you can “feel” what is behind those skies, forests and lakes. Even to the most well-trained and well-researched expert in ancient civilisations, even the “guru” who has studied all the mystery schools and believes himself enlightened - will look at Finland and see nothing but an empty northern country with a simple pretty nature. 

Of course, many subtly feel that there is “something” about Finland. There are very strange reports of what happened when the Russians tried to invade Finland during the Winter War. Not only did the Russian invasion by and large catastrophically fail, but some reports also suggest that very strange magical forces were at work protecting the Finnish forests, producing a kind of “humming” sound in the aether, which, seemingly, turned Winter War Russian soldiers’ blood into glass. This is I think an example of one of the spiritual “protection systems” that uses a form of magic and natural materials to create a vibration that becomes a tool when it can be activated - and of course according to Finnish magical tradition, such a tool cannot be accessed or used unless it is coherent with the divine will and with the moral structure given to us by the creator. Other forms of Finnish magic involved the sea (as I have discussed elsewhere), and according to Norse tradition, this method of altering the sea and working with it also stopped a Norse invasion of Finland. My own research on Finland, Finnish, Finnish mythology and connections to other languages and cultures is also I hope an important and fascinating plethora of insights into related subjects.

I hope that this article was an interesting read. Note that I have also published an unrelated article recently on a different website in which I also discuss the streets of Helsinki but in a different context, which I published a few days ago, this other article is on a different website and is titled: F6: on the Finnish verbs kadottaa and eksyä and different senses of “being lost” in Finnish . I hope again that this article (on this page, not the aforementioned unrelated article mentioned in the previous sentence) was an interesting read.