The Happiest Country In The World. Finland With Helena Halme

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In today’s episode, we’re heading north for cross-country skiing under the aurora borealis, sailing amongst the Baltic islands, and silence amongst the Finnish forests.

I worked in Helsinki one summer in my twenties. The nights were bright and we drank vodka in the sauna and then jumped in the Baltic to cool off. I remember how musical the Finnish language sounded in the dusk of the midnight sun and I always intended to go back. But that was the late 90s, and I haven’t returned to Finland, so it was wonderful to talk to Helena Halme about her native country.

We talk about the introvert nature of Finns, why the landscape might be the key to happiness, the unusual Aland Islands, and how Finland’s history of occupation still shapes the country today. Plus, Helena’s view of the English as an ex-pat.

Helena Halme is the award-winning author of contemporary Nordic romance with a hint of noir. Originally from Finland, she now lives in the UK.

• On the happiness and good work-life balance in Finland
• Why saunas are important to Finnish culture
• Why cross-country skiing is so popular in Finland
• The Aland Islands, summer sailing and inspiration for a romance novel
• Finland’s rocky history with Russia
• Finnish food and book recommendations

You can find Helena Halme at HelenaHalme.com

Transcript of the interview

Joanna Penn: Helena Halme is the award-winning author of contemporary Nordic romance with a hint of noir. Originally from Finland, she now lives in the UK. Welcome to the show, Helena.

Helena Halme: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Joanna Penn: It’s great to have you on the show. Now I want to start with this hilarious thing. According to the World Happiness Report for the last two years, Finland is the happiest country in the world.

I want you to tell us, why is Finland the happiest country?

Helena Halme: You tell me. It always makes me laugh as well, because Finns can be really miserable.

If you go to Finland and you don’t know anybody, they are really hard to get to know. But once you do know them, somebody told me that Finns are like puppies. Once they get to know you, they’ll never leave your side. But the Finnish are really private people.

They are very outdoorsy. They love the forest. 65% of the country is covered by forest, and they like being on their own.

There is a really successful set of modern books called Finnish Nightmares. And it’s all about this character, Matti, it’s drawings about situations that most people really in the Western world, find to be fine. For Finns, it’s a little bit painful. Like if you live in this in a block of flats and somebody who lives opposite you opens the door at the same time, you don’t really want to see them. Or if somebody sits next to you on the bus.

And it’s full of these awkward moments that Finns really find difficult because they’re so used to not really having many people around, so I don’t know why they’re so happy.

Joanna Penn: It’s interesting, as you mentioned, 65% of the country is forest. Maybe that’s got something to do with it.

Time spent in nature is one of the things we are all encouraged to do to be happy.

Helena Halme: Yes. And joking aside, It is a wonderful lifestyle. They have very short working hours. They seem to be very efficient at what they do even though they work very short days. They have long holidays, three or four weeks in the summer is not unusual.

And they seem to have got the balance of working and leisure time sorted. Their schools are excellent. Child-care is excellent.

I don’t know why I left.

Joanna Penn: Now you’re talking yourself back into it!

I did spend one summer in Helsinki and I’m so glad it was the summer. It was light all the time. I was in my twenties so I enjoyed some vodka. And the people were wonderful and friendly and just lovely. But I was quite shocked by one of the communal saunas, where people I actually worked with were naked in the sauna.

I want to ask you about the sauna. What part does that play in Finnish culture?

Helena Halme: Well. It is a complete contradiction. I think the country is a contradiction because we’re very private people, but then we take our clothes off in front of other people. People are just not as body-conscious. I can’t really explain it.

We invented it, I guess, but it’s a cultural thing that Finns had to have somewhere to wash themselves and they lived in a hut and they just put a stove at the one corner and then stood washing themselves around that. And that’s how saunas really became the modern thing that they are.

But it’s a disarming thing because everybody’s naked, and you really don’t know who’s the boss and who’s their employee?

And it’s not a sexual thing. I have to emphasize that as you probably found out, it’s nothing to do with sex. And in fact, a human body naked is very unsexy little thing. It’s actually what you put to hide the bits that makes it sexy.

So it’s a strange thing, but if somebody said, what’s the thing that describes Finland best? I would probably say the forest and the sauna and the lakes. Those are things that, to me, mean Finland and I wish I could explain it. It’s just one of those quirky things.

Joanna Penn: It’s so funny because almost you’re describing an introvert culture. Finland is a Western culture, but the concept of taking your clothes off is unusual to many people.

Germany was the other place I went to where there’s much more comfort with nudity. But in the UK and in America, Americans listening will be like, what? This just sounds kind of scary, but it’s not scary.

As a visitor, I did wear a swimming costume. Is that okay?

Helena Halme: Well, they would go, “Foreigner”.

This is no bad thing. As I said, it’s almost an equalizer, so everybody is equal in the sauna. So, that’s what it’s about really.

And people really do not look at each other’s bodies. I love it. That’s the one thing that I really miss about Finland, the saunas. It’s also the cleanliness. When you step out of a sauna, if you don’t wear a swimming costume, you are so clean.

It just cleanses the whole of your body and I really miss that wonderful feeling especially if you can then swim in the lake afterward. You can’t get that sense doing anything else, it’s fantastic.

Joanna Penn: That is going to be the first tip; brave the sauna.

Helena Halme: And thank you for using our pronunciation as well. I have tried over my 35 years here to educate the whole of the UK that it’s pronounced sauna, not saw-na, but you know, it’s a long way to go.

Joanna Penn: You also mentioned the lakes, so tell us about those.

Helena Halme: There are about 200,000 lakes in Finland. And when you think about that, it’s a country the same size as the UK, roughly. That covers a lot of the landmass as well. So you have 65% forest, and then 30% lakes. So there isn’t an awful lot of land left and lakes really were formed in the ice age, very much like the Lake District here.

And in fact, Finnish lakes are very similar to the Lake District in the UK. In the Lake District, the lakes are deeper and there are mountains, whereas Finland is fairly flat.

I think something like 75% of people have a cottage by a lake and they go there in the summer. They go there for Christmas and that I suppose, and they always do have a sauna. I guess that alone time or family time, it may be the reason why Finns are so happy because they do prioritize outdoor activities, time with your family or time alone. So it centers them and then they go into the busy life of work.
So I think that’s really also part of the Finnish happiness equation.

Joanna Penn: This just sounds amazing.

Helena Halme: Why did I leave?

Joanna Penn: We’re going to come back to that.

You did mention the land is flat, so many people do cross country skiing. That does seem to be quite a normal thing. And that’s something that I think, again, like a lot of British people, when we say skiing we mean downhill skiing.

What is cross-country skiing? Explain it a bit, because it is quite different isn’t it?

Helena Halme: It’s very different. It’s basically the skis are much narrower. I think they are a third of the width of the downhill skis, and they’re much longer, so they’re slightly shorter than you yourself are. So they’re much, much longer than the downhills skis. And you really literally have to push and glide.

So it’s flat skiing. You ski forward and you push yourself with your poles and you glide with one foot out and then the other. Now, to me, this comes naturally. But when I took my husband, the original Englishman, when I took him cross-country skiing the first time, he kept falling backward because of course in downhill skiing that’s the thing. You rest on your boots.

But when you cross-country ski, you just have literally trainers, but they’re attached to the skis and so you can’t rest back on your boots.

And so he kept falling backward.

Joanna Penn: It is more like a walking action than a skiing action.

Helena Halme: Yes. If you ever go on a cross-trainer, it’s a bit like that, even though you go up, but you literally just have to push yourself. It’s gliding with one foot and then lifting the other foot. I’m trying to think how I do it now. You lift the other foot a little bit and then slide, slide.

Joanna Penn: There trails and guides and specific places that people can go to do that?

Helena Halme: They are everywhere. In cities, whenever it snows, even in Helsinki, they have an indoor area where you can go round on a cross-country trail.

And they’re lit at night. Because of course, in the winter, especially in Lapland, there is no sunshine for two or three months. And so all the trails are lit so you can see and it’s wonderful actually. It’s really, really wonderful.

When I go to Lapland, I cross-country ski more than downhill now. And it’s hard.

Joanna Penn: I’ve heard that. It’s very good for fitness, isn’t it?

Helena Halme: It’s the best thing for fitness and also when you go downhill because there are few downhills, it’s quite scary because you have to keep to the tracks. And so it’s exactly the opposite of downhill skiing. So you have to sort of lean away from the curve rather than into it.

When you go downhill skiing you have to lean into the mountain. Exactly opposite almost. So it is quite difficult to learn. But, for me now, I have done it for years and years. Obviously I was nearly born with skins on my feet, but it’s still difficult now because I don’t do it every day in the winter. Only a couple of days in the winter.

Joanna Penn: You mentioned that going to Lapland and that just sounds so very romantic to people, especially as recording this in the run-up to Christmas.

Tell us about Lapland.

Helena Halme: Lapland is wonderful. The best thing to do in Lapland is obviously to see Father Christmas.

Near Rovaniemi, there is something called Santa Claus Land and it is very commercial. But at the same time, you get to see Father Christmas and he can be quite Finnish.

He told me off once when I went there with my children. I speak English to them and he told me off for not speaking Finnish to my kids. And I thought, ‘Well, hello.’

But he’s a real great person. He can be very funny as well. You can take rides on reindeer, and on sleds pulled by reindeer. There is snow, snow, snow, snow. There’s so much snow.

There can be Northern lights if you’re lucky. It’s wonderful even though it’s dark because there’s snow on the ground. During the day there’s a little bit of light. It sort of tends to reflect that, and then, then even those dark, it isn’t that dark because of the snow.

And there’s silence. That’s the other thing about Finland, this silence.

You don’t get silence in the UK anywhere really. There’s silence in Finland.

Joanna Penn: Silence is fantastic.

On the opposite end of the scale to Lapland is your recent book, The Island Affair is set in the Aland islands?

Helena Halme: Yes.

Joanna Penn: Tell us why are the Aland Islands are so special and why did they inspire you to write?

Helena Halme: I have been going to the Aland Islands for the last 20 years in the summer. My mother is married to an Alandy, a guy who was born in the same house where he still lives, and these are a little bit like the Channel Islands, but they are a little bit more quirky than that.

They are a self-governing part of Finland, but they are Swedish speaking. So you have to speak Swedish in order to settle there. You’re not allowed to settle unless you pass a Swedish speaking test. There are very few people living there. I think it’s about 30,000, but they rely on tourism.

So because there are a tax-free set of islands, they rely on tourism from Finland and Sweden. And in the summer the number of people triples. It’s an island of contradictions.

It’s beautiful. The archipelago is just stunning. There are thousands and thousands of islands. Most of them are unoccupied, tiny, tiny outcrops. But at the same time, they’re very independent, but they’re very dependent on Finns and Sweden for tourism. And they’re more Swedish than they are Finnish, but they belong to Finland.

There’s this quirkiness of independence and dependence. And I just love that kind of contradiction again, and that’s why it’s in the books. I just wanted to bring that to people. I want to describe that strange place to people and I hope I have.

Joanna Penn: Give us an idea of what the islands look like because the title An Island Affair, in many people’s minds, they’re seeing white sand and palm trees.

But what do the islands look like? What’s the feeling there?

Helena Halme: They are stony, craggy islands. There aren’t really beaches, well, there are a couple of beaches, but, how should I describe them?

Pines. Rocks. The main island has a city and it’s very Nordic in the winter, there is snow and there are Christmas markets and candles outside and lights strung on the trees and stuff like that.

And in the summer, it’s a Nordic summer Island, so it does get quite warm in the summer, but not necessarily so. People just come there to party and to stay in the tiny cottages by the sea swim, have a sauna. It’s a holiday island from that point of view. To me, that’s a normal holiday.

Joanna Penn: Personally, I don’t like sand beaches. So I much prefer a stone beach with the sea and things like that. So I get that.

But I just wanted to let people know, because it’s such a diverse country.

Lapland versus the islands versus Helsinki, these are very different places.

Helena Halme: They are. Yes. Everybody has a jetty. Sailing is one of the things that people mostly do there because of the archipelago.

So there’s an archipelago, which you can actually take if you’re driving and take ferries from the small islands all the way from Finland to the Aland islands, and you don’t have to take the large ferry which stops there on their way to fit in Sweden.

People sail a lot from Finland to the Aland islands in the summer because it’s just so easy to stop at any Island and put down the anchor.

Joanna Penn: I found that everyone in Finland that I met spoke English as well as you do.

Does everyone speak English or is that just a function of the Finns I might have met?

Helena Halme: Most people do. Especially in the Southern parts, in Helsinki.

Where I’m from it’s a little bit rarer, but really, especially now with the internet and the TV, because Finnish is such a difficult language to learn. It’s been said that it’s the third most difficult language to learn, so Finns know that if they have to go beyond the borders – and they are certainly 5 billion of us, they’re going to have to speak another language. Schools particularly are very much orientated towards learning other languages.

When I was at school, I learned English from the age of seven. Then I learned Swedish from the age of 11, and then German and French. I speak four languages and that’s not unusual.

Joanna Penn: Let’s talk a bit about history because when I was there, people would talk about the Russian influence. And of course, you’ve mentioned Sweden.

What are some of the historical aspects that still impact the country today?

Helena Halme: We were first under Swedish rule for a long, long time. At the end of the 19th century, Sweden lost Finland in a war to Russia. So we were grand a Duchy of Russia for a hundred years until 1917 when we get into our independence from Lenin.

The Russian influence is obviously quite strong still, particularly culturally. We pickle everything, you know, beetroot and mushrooms. And we eat a lot of rice filled pastries and very heavy meats and stews and stuff like that. Those are traditional foods. People don’t eat them as much anymore, but those are traditional foods.

Because we then had a war against the Soviet Union, which was then during the Second World War, because they wanted to invade us and we didn’t want that. So we had a war, we won, which is quite good.

And then we had to ask Germany for help, which was a bit of a mistake during the Second War. Finland has this sort of hate relationship with Russia, even now. Even now when Putin is trying to assert his influence and constantly flying planes in our air space and there was this talk that he’s been buying up strategic islands in the archipelago.

That’s another contradiction about the country, that Finland is in a very strategic position in the Baltic, because if that landmass was to be invaded, then you could actually have very good access to quite a few countries around the Baltic. There are these stories and conspiracy theories, and so we have a sort of a real hate relationship with Russia.

On the other hand, with Sweden, we have a love-hate relationship. We love them because they’re so good at everything. There are so many good things about Sweden, but they are so arrogant. We think they are incredibly arrogant. Like an elder brother who you love to hate.

We are a small country, a tiny, tiny country next to a massive superpower. So, we’re bound to hate them. But during the cold war, we were literally just a balancing act, how Finland managed not to get invaded, I really don’t know. It was quite a balancing act to have to do that. Now there are coming out all sorts of stories about how that was done. But yeah, it’s scary stuff.

Joanna Penn: I think it’s so interesting and I’m glad you’ve explained it because when I was there, I was like, do these people really hate Russia? It’s so interesting because we often think of countries as this kind of self-contained environment but actually, as you say, with the borders, here in the UK, of course, we’re still going through Brexit. When you have sea around, obviously we have the border with Ireland.

Borders are very different when your country is sandwiched in the middle of things, as you say, right next to a big superpower.

Helena Halme: Absolutely. I remember when I was a child because we traveled around Finland a lot. My father believed that you shouldn’t go abroad if you don’t know your own country. So we went everywhere, every summer camping, which I still hate.

You could see the border, which was just this strip of land, which is stripped of trees, and on the other side, there would be a sentry up a tower and with machine guns. And I remember seeing it and my parents were like, no, no, no. Don’t go there. Because you just knew that if they shot anyone on the Finnish side, nothing would happen. Nobody would take it up. You just knew that we were vulnerable.

And also, at school, you weren’t allowed to use the word Russian. You had to use Soviet — they were Soviets, not Russians — and you weren’t allowed to talk badly about Russians. I don’t think that’s the case anymore, but certainly not since the disarmament of the Soviet Union. But it was a real threat. You knew that you had to be careful.

I’ve actually written a book about that era because it’s coming back to me. I wrote a book about it set in the cold war about a schoolgirl who gets involved in with the KGB and stuff.

Joanna Penn: Tell us the title of that book.

Helena Halme: It’s called The Red King of Helsinki.

Joanna Penn: Talking of the darker side, one of the things that has become, I guess in the last 10 years, is this obsession with Nordic noir, which is this darker side of that whole area, I’m guessing?

Why is Nordic Noir so popular?

Helena Halme: I think it’s got to do with the fact that the image of the Nordic countries and Finland and Sweden, and Denmark as well, is that it’s a very well organized, a very happy place. It’s full of rational people, working and doing their own thing.

And then when you have these dark forces and dark deeds and people being tied up with tape in a chair and these sorts of things that it’s such a contrast to the happy place that I think it sort of appeals to people.

I think somebody said that particularly in the UK it is so very popular because it’s quite close to British culture, but it’s different.

So it’s very easy for the Brits, particularly to identify themselves in these people. There are Nordic people who are very similar to them, but different. And I think that’s really it.

Joanna Penn: This is an audio-only show, but people don’t look different, right. Finn’s don’t look any different than British people.

Helena Halme: No, but I can tell a Finn, can you? I don’t know why I’ve asked myself lots of times, but I can always tell a Finn.

Joanna Penn: Before they even speak.

Helena Halme: Yes.

Joanna Penn: How interesting. Let’s talk about that because it’s so interesting.

Your language has actually changed in this interview. At the beginning, you started to say ‘they’. You would say they do this, they do that. And then since you’ve warmed up, you’ve started to say ‘are’ and ‘we’. You’ve almost reclaimed your Finnishness!

You are a Finnish ex-pat living in the UK and you’ve lived here for a long time, I think.

What do you notice particularly about the difference between the Finnish and British cultures?

Helena Halme: It is, the silence I think is the first thing.

I live in London. You can’t find silence. And also not just the silence of the forest. There’s a lovely forest next to us, Queens Wood, but it’s not silent. There’s always airplanes going, or you can hear the traffic or whatever.

But it’s not just that, because, of course, in places in the UK, you can go and find silence, but it’s the silence between people. It’s incredibly difficult to sit next to somebody in the UK and not say a word. That comfortable silence that you have around people. People just don’t have it. I do miss that because now I’m spoiled.

I’m completely corrupted. When I go to Finland, I talk all the time and they must think, that’s a very strange person. Right language. Right accent. But she’s strange.

So it’s that that I miss and, and things like I’d rather watch an ice hockey match than a football match. I rather go to the woods than a park. I’d rather eat rye bread. When I came here with over to the UK, there was only sliced white.

So I had to do the worst thing possible and eat Russian bread. Because they had Russian rye and it’s quite dense. You can’t get it now. Actually, Russian rye is still the closest to Finnish bread.

And simplicity. The simplicity of language. In the UK, people say things that they don’t mean and to a Finn, that’s really difficult because they say, “Oh, we must get together.” And you think they mean that we actually must get together.

A Finn thinks, “Oh, that’s nice. He’s actually demanding, or she is demanding, that we get together.” And it took me years to realize that what they’re saying is, “please leave now and don’t contact me ever again.” It’s really difficult, and I guess that now, thinking back, it’s the thing that really unsettled me in the first years that I was here because I didn’t even know I didn’t understand them. And so that, that took a long time to get used to.

Joanna Penn: That’s so insightful. British people do that. I don’t think Americans do that. I don’t know. I struggle with the American way of, ‘have a nice day.’ In England, people don’t say that, but if they said it, they wouldn’t mean it.

Helena Halme: I know. And I often wondered that too, because particularly I think it depends on where you are in the US because there are such differences between States. If you’re in New York, I think you’re a bit more skeptical, I suppose.

But it’s also the sarcasm; it’s so cutting. I’m used to it now, but I was thinking, Oh my God, it was like a personal insult to you, and it really takes a long time to get used to it.

Joanna Penn: It’s always so interesting to hear an insight into your own culture, and then you kind of realize what it is, and I think as an ex-pat for so long, you have an insight into both cultures.

So just on food, you mentioned the sour rye bread, that kind of dark bread. If people listening don’t know, it’s that almost black, quite thin and dense. So you only need a small piece. We’ve talked about pickling and actually pickled herring is tasty, and it’s very healthy.

Anything else that people might want to eat or drink or give a try at least.

Helena Halme: Liquorice is another sort of a quirky, strange thing that we love in Finland. And people actually have withdrawal symptoms

Joanna Penn: They’re addicted to liquorice!

Helena Halme: It’s salty liquorice. It’s very bitter again, talking about what vodka, there’s liquorice vodka that tastes just like sweets would taste. Deadly. Never have it because you think, Oh, well, this not very strong when it’s very strong.

And I suppose there are sort of things like fish, meat, pork pie, and it’s got, again, a rye crust on it. I just cooked in the oven for a very, very long time, and it’s got sprats, rather like little herrings so that they’re almost like baby herrings. It sounds not nice, but it’s delicious.

There are Karelian pies, which are really my favorite and our family’s favorite, which is again rye dough. And there’s rice pudding, if you like, inside and you cook them in the oven and you have it with butter and egg and it’s just delicious.

But these are the things that when you tell people about them, they go no, that’s all right. I don’t need to taste that. But if you go to Finland you must taste these things because they are just so delicious.

Joanna Penn: Definitely. I remember enjoying the food very much. I actually think now with the rise of sourdough and more artisan bread, that taste for the slightly sour is coming back into the cuisine.

Helena Halme: I think so. We also eat, or a lot of not biscuits, sort of cheese biscuits, but they’re sort of like rice crackers. I suppose that’s the way to start if you like, but it is the same kind of, it’s the same bread, but it’s just been dried out. And it’s very healthy. You can’t eat very much of it, which is another good thing. You’d have a slice of rye bread and that’s it.

Joanna Penn: It’s very dense. It will keep you going for a whole day of cross-country skiing!

Apart from your own books, what are a few books that you would recommend about Finland or set in Finland?

Helena Halme: The first one is quite a classic. I really like this book, and it’s also been made into a film, and it’s called The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna.

It’s a story of a reporter, a city dweller, who nearly runs over a hare in the countryside. He is chasing a story with his cameraman and he decides to save this hare who’s bleeding and just has a little wound. So he decides to look after it. And just disappears into the woods and the cameraman is going what happened?

So this guy then starts having adventures. He’s going literally walking up north and through the woods. And sometimes something gives him a lift and it’s about really how he wants to find that silence and those forests and going back to his roots, if you like, and leaving the rat race behind.

That was written in the 70s but it still really true today and if you want to find out about the Finnish psyche, that’s the book to read.

Then there’s another one, which is quite a fairly modern one came out about I think it’s about 10 years ago. It’s called Purge and it’s by quite a famous Finnish-Estonian writer called Sofi Oksanen and it’s a Nordic thriller really, but it’s set in Estonia and it’s set in during World War Two and today. And it carries a really serious message about people trafficking and how politics can really affect the small person.

The name shouldn’t put you off because it’s also a thriller, so it’s very fast-moving, but it’s an incredibly good book. It’s the international bestseller and it’s won all sorts of international awards.

There’s another one, which I just literally finished reading and there’s a guy called Antti Tuomainen and he has written really dark Nordic noir set in Finland, but he started writing these mash-up books, a little bit like Fargo or Coen brothers kind of books.

The latest one is called Little Siberia and it’s set in a small village in North-Eastern Finland where a meteorite has just landed on somebody’s car. And it’s worth a million euros. And this small country priest is in charge of keeping it safe.

And you can imagine what happens. So it is quite a fast-moving again. It’s a bit of a thriller and he’s searching for himself quite a lot too. It’s quite a lot about ethics and what you should do and what you shouldn’t do, and about love and betrayal.

It’s a really brilliant book. So I can go on and I’ve got lots of books if you want me to go on.

Joanna Penn: No, three is good. And of course, your own books, we’ve mentioned a couple of them.

Are all your books set in Finland?

Helena Halme: Yes, they are Finland and Sweden and the UK. My series is called Nordic Heart. It starts in Finland, and then it goes to the UK and Scotland and then Sweden. So it’s all sort of that sort of area. But, they all have a Finnish character in them.

Joanna Penn: This is interesting because of course you don’t live in your home country and you call Britain home. I’m in a cross-cultural marriage too, and a lot of travel means going back to the other person’s country. For us, it’s New Zealand. So you’ve got at least a cheaper trip!

What does travel mean to you and how does it help your writing?

Helena Halme: I think that if I didn’t travel, I’d write less because every time I travel, I have an idea. So everywhere I go, I always have a book set there.

I have book sets everywhere because it just inspires me. As soon as I’m on the airplane, I’m thinking, Oh, that’s a good idea. Either I sort out a problem with the book that I’m writing at the moment, or I find new plots, new ideas.

It’s inspirational. Hugely inspiration. Even going home, it’s usually inspirational.

Joanna Penn: Fantastic. So where can people find you and your books online?

Helena Halme: Well, probably the best place is my website, which very simply is HelenaHalme.com and I’m also on Twitter. I’m on Instagram. I’m a Facebook, a LinkedIn. Pinterest and all of those places are more serious. I’m fairly easy to find, I hope.

Joanna Penn: We’ll thanks so much for your time, Helena. That was great.

Helena Halme: Wonderful. Thank you.

Trees photo credit: Vincent Guth on Unsplash

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