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On September 17, 2026, a Finnish politician by the name Henrik Wickström said the following: “According to a recent study, work-related stress and depression are the second most common in Finland of all European countries”.
Länk till source.
And according to Finnish state media Yle,the prevalence of work related stress is 50% higher in Finland compared to Sweden (Link to source).
Why is work related stress so prevalent in Finland and why is it 50% more prevalent compared to Sweden?
This alarm was not the first which had been sent by Finnish government people. Since fall of 2020, there's been a steady stream of reports about health challenges within the Finnish society.
The backstory. I'm a psychological scientist/research psychologist. I was recruited twice to Finland and the University of Helsingfors because of my expertise in executive functions, e.g. leadership, decision making, entrepreneurial thinking, and creativity for problem solving and innovation (Österberg, 2001, 2004, 2012). Because I have no research money, but TV-English, I aim to offer my expertise to private organizations and government arms in Finland or elsewhere in the world. That means I'm kind of active to reach entrainment, which is rhythmic synchronization of behavior (Borrie, 2017), with people with whom I can form beneficial cooperations with.
There are three factors at play which together explains humans: biology (nature), culture (nurture), and chance.
- Biology (nature). Humans belong to a species, and a genus, and we are mammals. We survive by sending our genes into the future. For that purpose, there are two sexes.
- Culture (nurture). Over millions of years, our ancestors have adapted to changes in the environment, including changes in the climate, and diet.
- Chance. That's all the things which just happens.
After another 159 million years, an asteroid – the Chicxulub impactor – struck Earth, causing a huge change in the climate. This started the Cenozoic era – the age of mammals. When many of the predators had been wiped out, mammals now had the chance to thrive. It's a testimony of mammals ability to withstand changes in nature.
After further changes in the climate, a new species emerged – Australopithecus afarensis, a.k.a. Lucy (3.9 – 2.9 million years before the present). ~300,000 years into their existence, they ate bone marrow, and likely meat. That started a reduction of their guts, and an expansion of the brains, from the occipetal lobe and forward (Aiello och Dunbar, 1993; Aiello och Wheeler, 1995; Mann, 2018; McPherron et al. 2010; Hublin et al. 2015; Pontzer et al 2016; Thompson et al. 2019).
Lucy was succeeded by our genus, and they had a brain which was ~50% larger compared to Lucy's (Kimbel och Villmoare, 2016; Villmoare et al. 2015; Villmoare, 2018). The implication: the expansion of the prefrontal cortex gave room to new mental capacities – the executive functions, language, social cognition, theory of mind and so on (Adornetti, 2016; Ardila, 2008; Ardila et al. 2018; Barkley, 2001; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Lezak, 1982; Liu et al. 2017).
And there's the catch. Although our ancestors were well-equipped to handle climate changes, their larger prefrontal cortexes were significantly more vulnerable compared to other species. While other species are able to fend for themselves almost immediately after birth, our species requires significant care throughout the first five years of life.
Climate changes continued; Pliocene, the epoch during which Lucy lived, was replaced by the Pleistocene, during which there were at least 20 major glacial peaks (ice maximums) as ice sheets repeatedly advanced and retreated. The most recent and well-documented ice maximum occurred between roughly 26,000 and 19,000 years before the present.
During the Pleistocene, our ancestors changed lifestyle to hunting and gathering; males hunted nutrient dense food, and females ruled the camp, gathering roots and nuts. This went on for ~75,000 generations.
After 66,000 generations, our specific species existed. Their brains were 50% larger compared to our early genus. That means, their executive functions, language, social cognitive, and theory of mind were even more fine tuned. But it also meant that they had become more vulnerable, not to changes in the environment, but demanded more nurturing during early upbringing.
~315,000 years into their existence, our species had migrated to what is now called Sweden. One migration arrived from Sardinia, and the other from Lake Baikal in Siberia (Reich, 2018; Skoglund et al. 2012).
Just 500 years later, Uralic nomadic tribes from Yakutia of north east Siberia arrived in Fennoscandia (current Finland, Norway, Russia close to Finland, and Sweden). They had dark skin (Chen et al. 2025).
In parallel, a massive migration arrived from the lower Volga area; they brougt pale skin and hair, ox and carts, and indo-european languages (Haak et al. 2015; Lamnidis et al. 2018). Some of them rested in what is now called the Baltic states. 300 years later, when they crossed the pond, they braught a new socio-cultural marker: exocamy (McColl et al. 2025).
Exogamy means marrying outside the tribe, and can be translated to entrepreneurial thinking – “knowledge structures” that people use to make judgments and decisions that involve the evaluation, creation and growth of opportunities (Cacciolatti och Lee, 2015; Mitchell et al. 2002; Österberg, 2012).
For some reason, an entrepreneurial hub emerged in what is now Mälardalen – Östergötland in Sweden; they traded, in temporal order, with Mycenae in Greece, the Etruscan's (current day Italy), the Roman's, and eventually established a trade network – Svitjod – between Särkland (areas around the Caspian sea), Gårdarike (current day Ukraine which they also founded), and the Frankish king (now France, and Germany).
During the 9th century, people living in Satakunda on the other side of what is now called the Gulf of Botnia applied to become part of this trade network (Klinge, 1985). As a consequence, trade posts (n>28) were established, starting with Åbo.
Language carries culture (Cavalli-Sforza, 1997; Pagel, 2009; Reich, 2019). That means, when the trade language was established on the eastern side of the Gulf of Bothnia, so was exogamy.
1240. Holmgård (Novgorod) declared independence from the people in Mälardalen, which also became Novgorods arch enemy. 1283 AD, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was established. Then the Mongols took control over the area.
In 1480, a bloodless confrontation led by Ivan III (Grand Prince of Moscow; 1462–1505), known as the Great Stand on the Ugra River took place, which historically marked the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke over 'Russia'.
1808. Ivan III's 25th successor, Alexander I (1877 – 1825) invaded the trade culture, and for 108 years, they occupied the land on the eastern side of the Gulf of Bothnia. In ~1863, for the purpose of suppressing their arch enemy's trade culture, they imposed a second official language. But for some reason, they didn't chose their own language. Instead they opted for one of the uralic languages which had arrived from Yakutia to northern and north-east of Fennoscandia in parallel with the indo-european languages, and which was spoken in northern and north-east of Fennoscandia.
~1925, the newly imposed second language reached break even, which co-occurred with the language strife and stagnation. Due to change in language, so did socio-culture. While entrepreneurial thinking is still a marker for the Swedish kingdom, Finland is marked by tribalism (endogami) (Gifford, Pagel, 2019). And tribalism comes with a cost. Every year, at least since January 2022, Finland has had ~10,000 excess deaths compared to Sweden. Here's a list of Finnish challenges (n=43) which has been reported by Finnish government arms, organizations, and media (Österberg, 2025).
Interestingly, no politician or public leader admits to having done anything wrong.
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More about my expertise:
Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | X
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