Behind the house where the German pickup artist lives with his teenage daughter, wife and dog is a small path that gives you access to several buildings, including mine. It is a path gladly taken in the summer, for it is easier to handle the wildlife than it is to tackle the elements, especially the snow and the ice. It is not a friendly path, but it is not hidden either, as it is also beside an apartment building and can easily be seen from at least a dozen balconies. In this neighborhood these numbers matter. It’s the kind of neighborhood where midsummer makes no difference, for it is always quiet, so even with all (or at least most) of its inhabitants gone, the noise level remains the same.

To get to the path, you get off at the first bus stop of the neighborhood, walk past a busy street (by Finnish standards, and especially by the standards of this neighborhood) and then onto the path. I see someone impatiently pacing around in a small circle on the busy street, and by the time I get to the bench on this path, this same person is already there, sitting next to the thirty-something male I’d seen standing next to his bicycle as I get on the path. Finns have all kinds of stereotypes about the people they meet (and prefer not to meet), which are built on compartmentalizing and placing people in boxes from which they will never escape. And this man standing there by his bike does not tick any of the boxes of a Finn buying drugs.

For one thing, he looks like he belongs in this neighborhood. Or at least fits the cliche associated with this neighborhood. Clean cut, athletic (hence the bike), good clothes with nothing too flashy fully aware of how he is perceived, as someone who belongs here, whose word will never be questioned. A creative perhaps, but someone who left his youthful ideas behind when he cut his hair to be more in line with what is expected of him now that he is in his thirties. Finns don’t really have a dress code when it comes to work, and seeing bank tellers with visible tattoos and long hair is no odd sight, but there is still a social stigma in many that deems this a youthful indiscretion, and upon closer inspection it transpires that it is true, those bank tellers are not one day over thirty (or thirty-five in some rare cases). This man is well aware of his status and how he will always be perceived, a white upper middle class male with a Finnish (or possibly Swedish name) whose word will always be taken over anyone who looks like the person sitting next to him. He knows he’s ok, because this is what society has told him. Names like his do not get mentioned when there is a crime, unlike the person sitting next to him, whose name, status and nationality will be mentioned and pounced on with undisguised glee in the comment section. If you want to have an idea of what a society is really like, run a few comment sections through a translation engine and spend some time contemplating what you find. 
But this is not an accusatory tale. It is merely a glimpse behind the curtain that is frequently held up in a place that proclaims its happiness because it does not allow those who feel otherwise to speak for themselves by quashing their stories and voices, redirecting them elsewhere or telling them outright that their perception is false. Until they tell on themselves, like in this scenario.

It’s obvious what is going down, not because of some prejudicial perception on the writer’s part, but because the way they are sitting and interacting is unnatural. Even taking away the often cited cliche behind which Finns like to hide claiming that “we are just socially awkward and shy,” the attempted argument doesn’t fly. That social awkwardness, which while true is something that can easily be unlearned, is more likely to make people stay away from a meeting, pretending to hide behind a wall of silence and then even more preferably in a cave. There is also no evidence of that all time favored social lubricant, alcohol. The awkwardness of the men, their eyes on the one person passing by at this hour (though it is of course still light) – an hour too early for an adult to go to bed but late enough for a toddler to be asleep – and the absence of alcohol, which would be a must have in such an interactive situation all speak to a different stoy than the one they are trying to sell.