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The Documentary: Neighbourhood: Neighbourhood: We Might as Well be Finnish

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2a BBC Neighbourhood WS Website 1920x1080_FINLAND.jpg

08/08/2018 GMT

Neighbourhood: We Might as Well be Finnish

Neighbourhood

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Neighbourhood, Neighbourhood: We Might as Well be Finnish

Talking to Finns about what it means to be a nation squashed between Sweden and Russia

Talking to Finns about what it means to be a nation squashed between Sweden and Russia.

How has Finland been shaped by its two very different neighbours, Sweden and Russia?

These days, Finland is considered to be one of the best governed, least corrupt, most educated nations in the world. It has even earned itself the title of 'World’s Happiest Country'. Yet the self-deprecating Finns have long seen Finland as a scrappy underdog wedged between two much bigger countries, Sweden and Russia. There’s even a saying of sorts that captures this sentiment: “We can’t be Swedish. We don’t want to be Russian. We might as well be Finnish.” Kavita Pillay travels to Finland during the country’s centenary of independence to find out how this Nordic nation has been profoundly shaped by its two much bigger - and very different - neighbours.

Image: Composite by D8 Design Agency

The Documentary: Neighbourhood

Five neighbourhoods from across the globe that reflect the complexity of our local worlds

Five neighbourhoods in Nigeria, Finland, the US and India that reflect the complexity of our local worlds

In a collaboration between the Sundance Institute and BBC World Service five programmes explore the complexities of Neighbourhood across the globe. 

Trying to rent a flat in the biggest city in India, Mumbai, with more than twelve and a half million inhabitants; modernising Nigeria’s city of Lagos for its astonishing 21 million people; talking to Finns about what it has meant to be a nation always squashed between Sweden and Russia; to two very different American neighbourhoods, a community garden in the old mill town of Lowell in Massachusetts, and the ancestral homeland of the Shinnecock Indians out at Conscience Point on Long Island near New York – these are places that reflect the infinite complexity of the local worlds in which we live.
 
That’s five Neighbourhoods on the BBC World Service.

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