First Impressions of Eco-Anxiety Scholarship & Activists in Finland
Experience Engaging with Climate Emotions Before Finland
Although I certainly had a large community of environmental thinkers—especially my fellow members of the Climate Communication Advocacy and Literacy Laboratory (CCALL), which I talked about in my last blog post—at the University of Vermont for which I am endlessly grateful, I did at times feel misunderstood in my work on climate emotions. I got many curious but skeptical responses when talking about my research. It is possible this skeptically came from a place of unfamiliarity but it made me at times doubt the importance or value of my work. One of the reasons I wanted to come to Finland to study climate emotions was because, based on my understanding, the scholarship in the field appeared to be notably well-developed and conversations were being had much more readily here than they are in the United States and overall climate emotions is more of a salient issue in Finland. For example, the Finnish Sitra Innovation Fund funded a 2019 survey entirely focused on climate emotions. Now that I’ve spent nearly three months in Finland, I can say that my suspicion about the salience of the issue is true, at least in the circles in which I have been moving.
Arriving in Finland
My first impressions of eco-anxiety scholarship and activists in Finland are intimately tied up in my first impressions of Finland as a country, or at least Helsinki. The first scholar I met upon arriving in Finland, now over two months ago was, unsurprisingly, my research affiliate Dr. Panu Pihkala. We met for lunch the day after I arrived in Helsinki on the steps of the National Library across from the Helsinki Cathedral. The skies were blue and nearly cloudless – which now, after living in Helsinki for two months with the blue-sky days being few and far between, I know was a great blessing. I was painfully jet lagged and anxious about getting myself from my apartment to the center of the city but looking forward to finally meeting in person, after many months of early morning Zoom calls across time zones.
As a related aside, one of my favorite things about discovering a new place is how your impressions of that place evolve and change as it becomes more familiar. There is something special about the way your first impressions of somewhere stand out as you move forward building experiences and memories. On that first tram ride into the city center I remember being a overwhelmed but impressed by the architecture and all the sites along the route. Even amidst my brain fog I remember thinking about how cool it was that I actually was finally abroad. Now, two months in and no longer jet lagged, the tram route from my apartment to the city center is familiar and somewhat comforting although the newness of that first ride still remains as a memory
Back to Panu. Before heading to lunch, he gave me a tour of the area around the University of Helsinki. He pointed out the Helsinki Cathedral and advised me to take advantage of sunny days by sitting on the steps (something I have done frequently since). Afterwards we went to the office building where he had kindly made room for me to work while I am here this year. This gesture in and of itself made me feel so welcomed and validated the importance of my studies. The small but significant daily reassurance that I always have a space to come work has been so appreciated.
At lunch we discussed a variety of topics, including our plans for research this year. Walking away from lunch that day I felt invigorated and inspired to move forward with my research in a way that I had not before. The opportunity to talk to someone who is so well-versed in climate emotions was like a balm to my academic soul. As the weeks have gone on and Panu and I have continued to talk and plan, I have become even more grateful for this opportunity.
Since being in Finland, I have met with a variety of scholars and activists within the realm of climate change. I have found all of these interactions to be thought-provoking and meaningful. From each interaction, whether it was having lunch with a member of Elokapina, the Finnish chapter of Extinction Rebellion or getting a coffee a researcher at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), I have gained perspective and ideas for research pathways. I have welcomed the opportunity to talk to so many people whose research somehow intersects with climate emotions whether explicitly or more tangentially. I will provide a more detailed reflection on a couple of these interactions below.
Climate Anxiety and Environmental Hope
Webinar on Environmental Lessons
In late September, I attended a virtual webinar entitled Climate Anxiety and Environmental Hope: Webinar On Environmental Emotions with Dr. Panu Pihkala, Dr. Maria Ojala, and Dr. Maria Wolrath-Söderberg as speakers. Dr. Ojala is a Swedish scholar whose work focuses on children’s and young people’s climate feelings. Dr. Wolrath-Söderbergpanu is also a Swedish scholar whose research focuses on rhetoric and climate argumentation. Aside from the moderated discussion, the presentations were in Swedish and Finnish, so I was unable to follow much of it. That being said, in Dr. Pihkala’s presentation, he talked about a series of eco-emotions that are specific to Finnish. For example, talvisuru means “sadness due to changing winters” with talvi meaning winter and suru meaning grief so grief for winter. I was struck by the complexity of some of the language and it made me think a lot about how when it comes to climate emotions it can sometimes be hard to describe how one is feeling because the words simply do not exist in one’s native language. I hope to further explore this area of inquiry in a later blog post and future writing.
In the afternoon, there was an eco-emotion researchers’ meeting, and it was rejuvenating and motivating to meet a group of people focusing on this very topic. Aside from discussions with two wonderful colleagues at the University of Vermont who were also writing theses on eco-anxiety, one for her bachelor’s and the other for her master’s, I had not been in a room – virtual or in person – where so much interest and expertise on the topic existed. Through this meeting, I connected with several researchers with whom I have continued to form relationships with the potential for future research collaboration.
Youth Climate and Biodiversity Summit (Nuorten ilmasto- ja luontohuippari)
The next event was large and there are many possible paths for reflection but here I hope to give an overview that reflects both on the summit generally and my experience as the only American in attendance. In early October, I attended the day-long Youth Climate and Biodiversity Summit at the Helsinki Fair Center. The summit drew over 200 young people from around Finland. Despite finding out it would be held in Finnish, I thought it would be a good opportunity—language barrier or not—to learn more about the climate activism scene here in Finland and was prepared to embrace being utterly confused. However, to my surprise, but with great gratitude, one of the organizers of the event offered to find someone to provide translation for me.
I arrived at the event on Saturday morning to find one of the translators for the day holding up a piece of paper with my full name on it in a sharpie as if they were picking me up from the airport. I then met two other individuals, from Germany and Switzerland, respectively, who needed translation. Unless there was someone else in the audience who decided to attend the event without a translator and with very minimal Finnish language skill, the three of us were the only non-Finnish speakers and I was presumably the only native English speaker and the only person from the United States. That was a strange and uncomfortable position to be in and one that was completely new to me. I would describe myself as a well-spoken, confident person generally speaking, but I felt those skills were diminished to some degree when put in a space where I don’t speak the language of the majority of those around me.
After meeting the first interpreter and the fellow non-Finnish speakers, we met the second interpreter. Immediately upon finding out that I was from the United States, and more specifically New Hampshire, the second interpreter asked me if I have watched Breaking Bad—yes—and then referenced the plot line in which the main character lived for several months in exile in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This is not the first time since being in Finland that the immediate response to information that I am from the United States has been a reference to some form of popular media. For better or for worse, American culture, and by default Americans, are perceived abroad through the lens of popular media.
The summit began in a large, sleekly designed conference room with an organizer addressing the attendees to begin the day. As the translation began, I immediately felt like I was under a spotlight as several participants turned to see why there was someone whispering in the back. I might as well have had I DON'T SPEAK FINNISH written across my forehead. I felt breathless despite being seated trying to follow the interpretation, while hearing the spoken Finnish, and being aware of my outsider status.
After the opening remarks we moved to a much smaller room for our expert session. The session we non-Finnish speakers were placed in was called, translated to English, The City that Pulsates with Nature. At the beginning of the session, one of the translators informed everyone in the room that translation would be happening and to disregard the two people whispering in English in the back corner. I, once again, felt like I was under a spotlight. The session itself was interesting and not too difficult to follow with the translations. There were two presenters, the first of which was a landscape architecture student from the You Tell Me Collective which is a collective of architecture students and young architects whose goal is to promote a paradigm change in the field of construction and design a more sustainable built environment. The second presenter was a city planner who focuses on environmental considerations for the city of Tampere, Finland (for those unfamiliar with Finnish geography, Tampere is about two hours northwest of Helsinki, which is the southernmost part of Finland).
The next part of the conference was workshop based and we were placed in a workshop focused on the environmental movement, anti-racism, and environmental injustice, globally. In this workshop the presenter kindly translated some of the presentation in English for which I was very grateful but, again, made me feel like I stood out from the crowd. It was an interesting experience to be the only American in the room for a discussion about environmental justice, given the United States’ uniquely devastating history and present racism.
Finland, the Moment or Both?
I have now given a somewhat messy, but hopefully engaging and honest snapshot of my first impressions of eco-anxiety scholarships and activists in Finland as some reflection on my own personal struggle being a foreigner here in Finland. Again and again through these encounters and conversations, I have had stereotypes about Finnish people challenged. I was told repeatedly that Finnish people are shy and may be somewhat reluctant to engage with foreigners, but now I can say that has not been the case. As I wrote above, I have left every conversation to date inspired and saddled with more research questions and potential paths of inquiry than I had before the meeting. In addition, I have felt as though I have a new colleague to call upon to run an idea by or simply get a coffee to talk through an idea.
As I have been reflecting on this post and thinking about what it has been like to step into the Finnish climate emotions scene, I have repeatedly come back to the question: is there truly something unique about Finland and climate emotions or have I come into this work at a particularly salient time for the topic widely? I think the answer is: both. As I will explore further later on, there is something about Finland in general that is different from the spaces I have learned and researched in previously. There is a calmness and an emphasis on work-life balance that I think is unique and transfers, albeit subtly, into the way climate emotions can be discussed and understood in this context. Of course I’m also aware that I’ve been meeting a lot of people who do have a special interest in this topic, and there may be a lot of Finns who are not so eager to approach it; that remains to be seen.
However, the interest in climate emotions more broadly has exploded recently. Podcast episodes and news stories on the subject have cropped up seemingly overnight. A recent study on eco-anxiety which surveyed young people from 10 different countries found, in short, that eco-anxiety is a pervasive, international issue for young people and it worsens with government inaction. Young people feel betrayed, lied to, cheated, and abandoned by those who came before and the adults in power at various levels of government now (Hickman & Marks et. al., 2021). This betrayal plays out in real time as COP 26 unfolds in Glasgow over the next two weeks. Emotions are high and the tension of the moment is palpable as people across the world, particularly young people, are extremely skeptical about to what extent the negotiations at COP26 will result in meaningful change. That being said, I am grateful to be here in Helsinki as this moment unfolds as it is turning out to be a nurturing and inspiring place.
References
Bostwick, Maya, "The Psychological Impacts of Climate Change Education on Undergraduate Students
(2021). Environmental Studies Electronic Thesis Collection. 70.
Harvery, F. (2021, September 14). Four in ten young people fear having children due to climate crisis. The
Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/14/four-in-10-young-people fear-having
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Marks, Elizabeth and Hickman, Caroline and Pihkala, Panu and Clayton, Susan and Lewandowski, Eric
R. and Mayall, Elouise E. and Wray, Britt and Mellor, Catriona and van Susteren, Lise, Young
People's Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global
Phenomenon. Available at
McCamp, Caylin A., "Master's Project: Coping With Climate Change: Examining Emotional Effects and Searching for Solutions" (2020). Rubenstein School Leadership for Sustainability Project
Publications. 23. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/rslspp/23
Pihkala, P. (2020, April 3). Climate grief: How we mourn a changing planet. BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200402-climate-grief-mourning-loss-due-to-climate change
Vitello, C. (2021, November 15). COP26 results in climate agreement but skepticism remains.
Environmental Journal. https://environmentjournal.ca/cop26-summit-results-in-climate
agreement-but-critics-remain-skeptical/
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