Helsingin Sanomat visits the home of French-American couple Hikari Nishida and Jack Foisey, a 36-square-metre studio in one of Espoo's "taskumattitalo" (flask house) buildings.
Completed in 1961, the flask house apartments are a model of functional living — purposeful and practical as each dwelling was designed to make the most out of even the smallest space.
This studio from the 1960s, HS writes, resembles a two-room apartment more than many of the new small flats that have been shooting up across the Helsinki metropolitan area in recent years.
HS is especially taken by the number of doors — five — in what is essentially a small studio apartment, not to mention the number of windows, which all combine to create the illusion that this is a much bigger living space.
"We are lucky to live here," Nishida says.
But HS compares Nishida and Foisey's home to the apartments of similar size which have been built in Finland in recent years, and there are some telling differences.
Nowadays, small or studio apartments tend to be long and narrow tunnels, with a single window at the end. In addition, HS notes, more apartments are squeezed onto a single staircase landing than ever before — inevitably affecting the layout of each dwelling.
One of the biggest reasons behind this trend is greed, Aalto University professor of residential design Antti Lehto tells the paper. The primary objective for those investing in construction projects is to make money, he says, not to create quality living spaces.
"There were excesses during the construction boom of the 2010s," Lehto says. "I hope lessons have been learned and that housing quality will improve."
In poor health
Tabloid Iltalehti meanwhile reports that Finland's government does not intend to compensate some wellbeing services counties for possibly receiving too little funding in recent years, while others received too much.
The wellbeing services counties refer to Finland's network of regional healthcare authorities, with responsibility for providing social and health services in any given region.
The counties face a bleak financial future, with many looking to shed hundreds of jobs in order to balance the books.
The misdistribution of funds appears to have been caused by errors in diagnostic data, IL writes, but its effects are far-reaching.
Minister of Local Government and Regions, Anna-Kaisa Ikonen (NCP), has acknowledged that errors were made and has ordered an investigation.
However, the wellbeing services counties who feel they have been short-changed have sharply criticised the parameters of the investigation — as it will only cover diagnostic data submitted from the beginning of 2023 onwards. Any mistakes in funding distribution from previous years will not be investigated.
"This feels very wrong and unfair," said Chief Physician Petri Kivinen from the wellbeing services county of Central Finland, one of the most financially burdened healthcare authorities in the country.
Tourism trials and tribulations
It is common for misunderstandings and even frustrations to occur when people travel to a place they are not familiar with, Ilta-Sanomat writes, especially when extreme weather conditions are thrown in.
Finnish Lapland is one such example, with the region seeing a boom in tourism over the past decade, bringing a much-needed boost to the local economy — but also a fair amount of irritation.
In its article, IS compiles a list of the "misunderstandings, mishaps, curiosities, and questions" shared by locals and tourism workers in Finnish Lapland about their encounters with foreign tourists.
The tales range from an irate tourist, clad in dressing gown and slippers despite the subzero temperatures, demanding the snowplow drivers stop interrupting her sleep, to questions about how huskies spend their summers or if lemmings really exist.
But the worst tourists of all?
Helsinkians, according to one Ilta-Sanomat reader from Inari.
"The urbanised and rural-estranged native Finn is soon more lost than these Chinese and British tourists, some of whom at least look into things before coming here," he wrote.
