Forget hygge, the once fashionable Danish term for feeling cosy: today sisu, meaning guts, grit, bravery and resilience in Finnish, is the new Nordic buzzword.
Finland’s preparedness, a culture of social mobilisation and will to fight, has made it a model for Nato. It stands in stark contrast to Britain, and most others in the western alliance, where there is an unwillingness for national sacrifice or military service.
Standing more than 25 metres underground in a tunnel carved through Helsinki’s granite bedrock, next to a busy subterranean sports centre, Pasi Raatikainen, a senior civil defence planner for the city’s rescue department, explained why.
“We believe sisu is our superpower,” he said. “We live in a hostile climate in Finland. We are next to Russia. You need guts.”
There are 280,000 soldiers in Finland’s rapid mobilisation reserve army, largely made up of people aged 20 to 25. All males are conscripted and trained. Only a core of some 8,400 are professionals.
“We have a reserve army. We have not outsourced to professionals. We have a civilian army. We are a democracy. It is us,” said Raatikainen.
Sisu is a unique culture from a formerly neutral country that only joined Nato in April 2023. “It is difficult to understand sisu if you are not a Finn. We see it brings a particular strength,” said one Finnish defence official.
Conscription, far from being a resented obligation, is popular and is supported by more than 80 per cent of the public, according to government polling.
All Finns have military training, the total reserve is 900,000 soldiers in a population of 5.6 million people and the idea of fighting to defend their county is deeply entrenched.
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There is a gulf between young Finns and young Britons. A YouGov survey for The Times in February found that only 11 per cent of Britons aged 18-27 were prepared to fight for their country, while 41 per cent would refuse in any circumstance.
In Finland, 71 per cent of Finns aged 18 to 25 — up from 61 per cent in 2023 — are prepared to fight in “all situations, even if the outcome appears uncertain”. The figure rises to 78 per cent for all Finns.
Finnish military and defence officials understand the problem as historical, cultural and rooted in Britain’s imperial, expeditionary past.
“In one sense why on earth would young Brits say ‘yes I would fight for my country’ without any military training? Everyone here has that. It changes the way you look at it,” said an official. “You have had the luck of fighting your wars somewhere else, outside your beautiful island, all over the planet. We have had to fight for our existence here. If that history doesn’t appeal to your will to fight what would? Unlike Britain we have the luxury of focusing on one thing — our defence, not a global role.”
The roots of sisu lie in Finland’s inhospitable environment and climate, which have given rise to a tough people — the emergency services stopped warning people about bears because locals flocked to see them instead of steering clear.
It was severely tested in the 1939 “winter war” of 105 days when the Soviet Union invaded. It was a bloody stalemate but the Finns endured, with 26,000 killed compared with 126,000 Soviets soldiers. After the Second World War, which Finland ended fighting against Germany with the allies, the Nordic nation stayed neutral but kept its culture of grit intact.
“We have our history and geography. Every time our neighbour Putin says something we are reminded,” added the official. “We Finns are not very good at being nervous. It is not natural to us.”
Training focuses on agility and speed. Reservists are not paid. “There is a will to come. It is very popular,” said one serving officer.
In a tour around Helsinki’s Merihaka civil defence shelter, Raatikainen shows off blastproof tunnels, designed to counter a nuclear strike, complete with an underground playground, several indoor football courts and gyms.
“They are in everyday use. It is a sports hall , a playground as well as a shelter,” said Raatikainen. “If they are used to going underground, it helps. People know where they are . They are a place like any other.”
Merihaka, opened in 2003, can house 6,000 people. The complex, which was visited by President Zelensky of Ukraine in March, is one of 50,500 civil defence shelters which can house 4.8 million people. Helsinki can shelter 900,000 people in shelters — more than enough for the city’s residents — to protect them from bomb blasts, the collapse of buildings and radiation.
“We are talking about war. We talk about the military threat from Russia,” he said.
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The shelters enable Helsinki’s residents to continue living and working in the city, sheltered from the stress of war even if it is hit by barrages of missiles or drones. Finland has observed that Russia is using sleep deprivation and fear as a weapon, to engender war weariness and to create refugees and defeatism.
“If Russia was to test our resolve. It would not be for days or weeks but for months,” he said. “Sisu is saying we go all the way.”
