1. Let's ditch Santa Claus.
2. Pay more taxes.
3. Get cuter wildlife.
Huskies, reindeer and elks are basically the best animals.
They have so much to teach us.
Huskies, reindeer and elks are basically the best animals.
Hi there, Alexander Skarsgård, MY FUTURE HUSBAND.
And start enjoying saunas.
All pregnant women in Finland get a state-provided starter kit, regardless of their socio-economic background, which means their infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world.
To make sure kids get equal attention from both mum and dad, fathers are encouraged to take two months paternity leave in Sweden. It's the most generous paternity law in the world, and they're currently looking to extend it.
There are 650 people living in every square mile in Britain. In Finland, there are 44. Imagine not hearing your neighbour have sex every night. That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Forget queuing up for three hours to eat another overpriced burger in London. If we want to do the whole exclusive thing, let's go all out. Sweden's Faviken, one of the world's top 50 restaurants, has only 12 seats and is based on a remote farm 600km from Stockholm.
And Denmark's Noma, the best restaurant in the world, has a daily 1,000-person waiting list.
Offices rarely stay open after 5 p.m. in Denmark, and working at weekends is unheard of. The idea is that families can then always eat together. Oh yeah, and Copenhagen is the world's happiest city.
Finnish schools have no uniforms, no entrance exams, no fees, no league tables and no Ofsted inspections. No one starts school until they're 7 years old, and dividing children into sets based on ability is illegal. Kids address teachers by their first names, and no one ever gets more than 30 minutes of homework a night. And yet, since 2000, Finland has topped pretty much ever educational league table ever.
Call a doctor in Norway or Sweden and you'll get an appointment that day. Have a baby, and you'll get a three-day retreat in a patient hotel with 24-hour midwives at your beck and call. For free.
IT'S SO GOOD.
And stop stuffing food into greasy pastries. These Karelian piirakkaa are traditional pies from eastern Finland, eaten with munavoi, a mixture of butter and boiled eggs. Sounds gross, but it's actually really good. And healthier than a Cornish pasty.
These Finnish cinnamon pastries are called korvapuusti and they're like little bites of heaven.
We kind of do this in bits of the U.K., but in Sweden it involves loads of herb-picking, maypole dancing, and heavy drinking. And there's talk of it becoming an official holiday.
Pippi Longstocking lives on her own and can lift up a horse with one hand, despite being just 9 YEARS OLD. That's cool.
So this, eukonkanto, is a genuine sport in Scandinavia. Men carry their wives through obstacle courses and get beer-based prizes according to how heavy their wives are.
How is ski jumping (literally skiing down a massive ramp and seeing how far you can go) not a million times more exciting than Premiership football?
Hate to be controversial, but Kate Middleton hasn't really done anything that exciting, has she? Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden, on the other hand, studied at Yale, and worked as a diplomat at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She's just quite a lot better.
Strawberry and raspberry jam? YAWN. Lingonberry and cloudberry jam? Now we're talking.
There's the real stuff. In March, the north of Finland is covered in 90cms of snow. That's three long rulers of snow.
Swedish politician Lars Ohly tweeted a picture of his balls by mistake this week. And then when he noticed, he LOL'd. "Ha ha," he tweeted, "I accidentally posted a picture on Instagram that showed more than intend. Now corrected." What an excellent, v. Scandi, reaction.