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After the summer Olympics in Paris, Finland was left with no medals. Why did this happen? One can compare with Sweden with whom Finland since the Vendel period (540 - 750 AD) have shared biology, language, and socio-culture. Sweden brought home 11 medals, or ~1 medal per one million citizens.
The US brought home 126 medals, China 91, and Japan 45. These three countries are topping the medal-ranking. Sweden is ranked No 15 on the overall ranking.
Link to source.
By going further and using a chi-squared approach, using 1 medal per million people as a criteria, the ranking will look a bit different.
The US, which has a population of 342 000 000 people was in that perspective expected to bring home 342 medals. China, with a population of 1.3 billion people, was in that perspective expected to bring home 1300 medals, and Japan, with a population of 123 000 000 people, was in that perspective expected to bring home 123 medals. Note. Sweden was expected to bring home 10 medals, and Finland 5 medals.
Based on the expectation of 1 medal per million people, the US brought home 37% of the expected medals, China 7%, Japan, 36%, Sweden 100%, and Finland 0% of the expected amount.
Why did Finland fail to bring home 5 medals?
According to state media YLE, Finland has collected 480 medals from the Olympics since 1908, which places Finland in 17th place all time.
To compare, Sweden is ranked 7 in all winter Olympics and 8 in all Olympics (Wikipedia).
In order to find out why Finland failed this time, YLE has spoken to Karl Erik Michelsen, a former professor who left the academy in 2023 (Lut, 2023), and sport journalist at Swedish YLE Christoffer Herberts.
According to YLE, Finland dominated track and field in the Olympics between 1908 - 1950, after which a decline started. And they have an explanation.
According to Michelsen and Herberts, the explanation is that more countries started to participate - leading to more competition.
Link to Yle on TikTok
If that's true, you would expect to find the same pattern in Sweden. That's because Finland and Sweden share biology, language, and socio-culture, and between 1908 - 1940, Finland was still mainly Swedish speaking. But as the ranking revealed, Finland's overall Olympic ranking is 17, whereas Sweden's is 8.
As a psychological scientist, I look for patterns that resonate with research on things that can be framed within the field I know something about - anthropological social neuropsychology. I have also developed a model called Rational Entrepreneurial Thinking (Österberg, 2021, in Swedish), which is based on three established models:
- Epistemic vigilance - be suspicious about any message and the purpose of sending the message (Sperber et al. 2010).
- Disjunctive reasoning - take many sources into account (Stanovich, 2009).
- Numeracy - the ability to understand, reason with, and apply simple numerical concepts (Brooks and Pui, 2010). Numeracy is the foundation of rational thought - both instrumental and epistemic rational thinking.
Knowledge that should be common about Finland. Sometime during Vendel period (540 - 750 AD), the area around today's Åbo started to integrate to Svitjod, the then power-center of trade and exploration and the precursor to the Swedish kingdom (1384 - ), which today is referred to as Uppland. The implication:
- Swedish became the trading language around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic sea.
- Renaissance, science revolution, and enlightenment thinking took the Swedish kingdom onto a journey of progress. That included the eastern part of the Kingdom, that is, today's Finland.
But Finland remained mainly Swedish speaking until 1910 - 1940, that is, in parallel with the time when Finland brought home many medals. But also in parallel with language conflict. In the late 1940s, the language which was imposed by Kreml reached break even. This coincided with YLEs reporting that Finland's medal streak at the Olympic games was halted, and went into decline, a trend that was sustained with the suppression of the trading language around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic sea.
In 2023, the EU and OECD published data on mental health in the EU countries (Finland; Sweden). These are the introductions:
“The leading causes of mental health issues in Finland in 2019 were depressive, anxiety, and alcohol and drug-use disorders. As in other countries, depression is more prevalent among people in the lowest income group, especially among women. Despite the reduction in recent decades, suicide rates in Finland remain higher than the EU average”.
“About 17 % of people had a mental health issue in Sweden in 2019, which is close to the EU average. Common disorders include anxiety and depression, with higher prevalence among women and those on lower incomes: 16 % of men and 18 % of women in the lowest income quintile reported depression in 2019, compared to 8 % of men and 9 % of women in the highest income quintile”.The introduction for each country is expressed slightly differently, so you have to look for specific markers.
Language seems to play a role. Remember the researcher who in spring 2023 said that Finns who speak Swedish have better health. They also said that language explained life expectancy (see above). That is confirmed by the EU stats; On average, the lifespan for Swedes is 2 years longer compared to that of Finns.
The gender gap in Sweden is lower compared to the EU:
Whereas the gender gap in Finland is closer to EU:
Disabilities.
Sweden:
“In comparison to other EU countries, in Sweden women and men at 65 enjoy a significantly higher proportion of their additional years of life without disabilities, so the gap in healthy life years between Sweden and the EU average is even wider. Nevertheless, similar to other countries, the gender gap in healthy life years at 65 between Swedish men and women is smaller than the gap in life expectancy. This is because women tend to spend a greater portion of their remaining life years living with disabilities and limitations in daily activities” (p. 5).Finland:
“However, the gender gap in healthy life years (defined as disability-free life expectancy) was much smaller (less than a year) because women spend a greater proportion of their remaining years of life after age 65 with some activity limitations (disabilities)” (p. 5).Circulatory diseases, cancer, and Alzheimer and other dementia Sweden:
Finland:
Alzheimer's, which is twice as common among women compared to men, is also twice as Common in Finland compared to Sweden. Alzheimer's is not age related but food related (Österberg, 2022). See full article (Österberg, 2024).
The more likely scenario is that Finland's decline in the Olympics, correlates with the suppression of the language that brought progress to the country - Swedish. If true, the implication is not, as Dr Michelsen suggests, to focus on new sports, but to encourage people in general to learn the language which brought progress - Swedish.
And there's light in the tunnel: 87 % speak the language which was imposed by Kreml in 1863, but still, 47% of the Finns speak the language that brought prosperity to Finland - Swedish.
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