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WHEN I TRAVELED TO Helsinki in late January to meet Sanna Marin, the millennial feminist environmentalist who had just become prime minister, the world looked so different than it does today. Back then, reports were slowly beginning to circulate about a strange, deadly virus in China, but it all felt very far away. Finland, like many European countries, receives its fair share of Chinese tourists, and Finnair has had popular direct flights to China. In central Helsinki, I saw groups of Chinese tourists lining up outside the Louis Vuitton shop, some wearing masks, but I didn’t think much of it. That was before the new normal of life amid a global pandemic arrived with stunning speed, upending so many of our assumptions and taking thousands of lives. Protecting and caring for citizens in the time of the coronavirus has challenged political leaders around the world unlike anything since World War II, as German chancellor Angela Merkel put it. Back when I met Marin, all this was yet to come.
At that time—thinking about it fills me with what can really only be called nostalgia—the 34-year-old Marin had been in power for just over a month. In December, she won an unexpected party vote to become Finland’s new prime minister, becoming the second-youngest leader in the world (after Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, 33). Along with her photogenic governing coalition of four other women, most under 40, Marin was hailed as an icon of progressive feminism, a new leader for a new era—with an ambitious agenda to match. No need for the future is female T-shirts. In Finland, the future was already here.
Or at least the future as we imagined it back then. In the meantime, Marin, like all her European counterparts, has become a crisis leader.
After a few weeks in which she was criticized for not taking more urgent action to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, in mid-March she did something her country had never done in peacetime: invoked the Emergency Powers Act, allowing for an infusion of public funds for health care and social welfare. She also ordered the closing of the nation’s schools, museums, libraries, and public gathering places, as well as its border—but as of this writing, not its day-care centers. Day-care centers are the heart of the Finnish welfare state, and they are particularly close to Marin’s heart. All that was still to come when I sat down with Marin. Let me take you back—a postcard from the not-so-distant past.
It is a drizzly gray January day in Helsinki, and Marin is crouching by the front door of her official residence, tucking her chatty two-year-old daughter, Emma, into waterproof red overalls. Marin’s mother stands by, ready to take her granddaughter outside for an airing. It is such an ordinary domestic scene—a mother dressing her child—that you could forget for a moment that Marin is actually prime minister. I have been invited to observe the morning send-off from across a receiving room in the residence, a modest 19th-century wooden mansion with a view across a cove of the pale-gray Baltic Sea, which was once the summer redoubt of Russian governors general. The water is normally frozen this time of year, but it’s been an unseasonably mild winter. Once Emma and her grandmother are out the door, Marin offers me a brisk handshake. “That was my daughter,” she says by way of greeting. She’s dressed sensibly in slim black pants, black pumps, and a black button-down blouse flecked with small white half circles, by the Finnish brand Papu. Her hair is gathered loosely at her neck. As we settle into chairs at a round wooden table where a few pink and white tulips stretch their long necks from a glass vase, Marin tells me Emma just had a birthday, but she and her partner, Markus Räikkönen, a communications executive, delayed the celebration. “I was working,” she tells me. Really? I say, feigning surprise. She smiles ever so slightly.
Women in politics are forever asked how they can possibly balance work and family—while male politicians are so often given a pass on the question. But Marin is happy to talk about Emma, as well as her own childhood—how she was raised by a working-class mother and her same-sex partner, and was the first in her family to graduate from university. She would like it known that she is a living example of the benefits of the Finnish welfare state; that Finland’s generous parental-leave policies can stimulate the economy, not hinder it; that its world-famous free public schools helped her get where she is today. And that Finland wants to lead the way in fighting climate change, with a goal to become carbon neutral by 2035. “It’s very ambitious, but I think we can manage it,” she tells me in perfect English, with a hint of an accent.
Climate is the issue that brought Marin to politics at 20. “I think it was the frustration of noticing that the older generation didn’t realize how important it is,” she says. “Climate change is the issue that everybody in my generation thinks about. It is the Berlin Wall for our generation and the younger generation than me.” (I imagine Marin still believes that, even if the new Berlin Wall to bring down isn’t a wall but rather a virus.)
Although few in Finland expected Marin to rise so fast, she had been a rising star in the center-left Social Democrat party. Widely admired for her equipoise and directness, she had cowritten the party’s environmental platform and had been a member of Parliament since 2015. In December, when her predecessor—Prime Minister Antti Rinne, a male, boomer-era former labor-union leader—was forced to resign in the wake of a postal-worker strike, her party chose her in a narrow vote to replace him. Suddenly her image was ricocheting around the world, with British tabloids storifying Marin’s well-curated social-media feeds and declaring her a leader for the Instagram era. Her young female-led coalition was hailed as a countercurrent to the right-wing nativism sweeping across Europe—and prompted soul-searching in countries dominated by male leaders.
The reality is more complex. Marin’s government is fragile by Finnish standards, and its critics say it has set impossible goals—trying to boost the economy while also capping carbon emissions. That was even before the coronavirus crisis hit. And Marin has had to find consensus with her four coalition partners, who share a gender but not necessarily an ideology. They are the Green Party, whose dynamic leader, Maria Ohisalo, the interior minister, has as much star power in Finland as Marin; the Left Alliance; the more free-market-friendly center-right Centre Party; and a Swedish-language party.
Meanwhile, the right-wing nativist Finns Party, which wants to restrict immigration and which made a campaign issue out of defending red meat and carbon-generating cars, has led in opinion polls—a clear sign that Finland shares political weather patterns with the rest of the West. (The Finns were thrilled when Marin announced in mid-March that Finland, like a few other European countries, would close its borders to try to prevent people infected with the virus from coming in.)
Though Marin’s government is expected to serve out its four-year mandate, the Social Democrats hold 40 seats in Parliament, while the Finns Party is fast on its heels with 39. “We have a very left-wing government for a country that is not so left-wing at all,” says Emilia Kullas, the director of EVA, a pro-business think tank in Helsinki.
I ask Marin about this rightward tendency. “I find that our job is to give people hope for the future,” she says. “One of the reasons why there are so many populist movements in Europe, right-wing movements, is that people are frustrated and lacking hope,” she says. “They have maybe lost their jobs. They are worried about the income of their family. They are worried about the future of their children. And I think when you have hopelessness and when you feel that you are mistreated, then you are trying to find answers to your life. Populist parties give simple answers to complicated questions.”
Marin has smooth, pale skin, round cheeks highlighted with a tiny bit of pink rouge, and alert green-blue eyes. When she speaks, she comes across as measured and a bit remote, quite cautious, but also warm. Here in Finland, where people tend to speak their minds directly or keep their counsel, she has a quiet dynamism, exuding composure and competence. She’s less a firecracker than an eco-sustainable light bulb: slightly low-wattage and a bit cool, but trusted, dependable, and likely to last a long time.
THE FINNS I SPEAK TO over my five-day visit at the end of January and the first days of February admire her but are more concerned about whether her government will deliver, especially on the economy. Still, there’s excitement about the attention she’s drawing to Finland, the way you might cheer for the national team in world championships. “We used to be famous for Nokia. She’s the new Nokia,” says Anna-Liina Kauhanen, a reporter and columnist for Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading daily newspaper. (Nokia, which ruled the cell phone world before the iPhone eclipsed it, was once a business-school case study in how corporate hierarchy stymies innovation; the company has since reinvented itself as a successful global network infrastructure provider.)
Finland is a small country of 5.5 million people, but it punches above its weight in terms of soft power—the egalitarianism, family benefits, and forward-thinking environmentalism that Marin embodies. And so it is no surprise that she has been making the most of her new position on the world stage. A few days after becoming prime minister, Marin met her European counterparts in Brussels, where in a sea of dark-blue suits, two women in particular stood out: Marin and Merkel. Two months later, Marin received rapturous press at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she spoke about Finland’s commitment to gender equality and its climate goals. (And what about her 2019 trip to the Trump White House, as part of an official visit by the president of Finland? “It was very interesting,” Marin tells me. Did Trump behave? What was he like? She won’t bite: They discussed 5G technology and ice-breaker ships, she says. “It was a great honor to be at the White House.”)
It is on the issue of benefits for parents that Marin becomes the most animated. She shows me pictures on her phone of the famous baby box that all Finnish new mothers receive from the state—stylishly designed, filled with clothes and products; a stuffed animal, a snowsuit with gray and green polka dots. The practice dates to the 1930s and was a way to encourage mothers to get prenatal care. On her Instagram feed, Marin has mastered performative pregnancy and motherhood. Here she is, very pregnant, in formal attire with Räikkönen, her partner, in a tuxedo. There’s the baby box. Then here she is breastfeeding Emma. Or Emma snuggled into a little metal basket of a crib on wheels, which Marin tells me she rented and returned once Emma had outgrown it. In the home scenes, there’s plenty of natural light, and Marimekko ceramic plates and bowls.
For her own wardrobe Marin sticks to Finnish brands like Ma-ri-mek-ko (of course), Uhana, Papu (“Designed with love in Finland; made with care in the EU,” its labels read), and Nouki. “It’s important for me that the clothes that I’m wearing are ethical, so they’re not produced by child labor or in an environmentally unsustainable way,” she tells me. Helsinki is, in fact, filled with secondhand clothing shops. On a rainy weekend afternoon I poke into one, called Relove, and strike up a conversation with a woman named Suvi waiting in line for the fitting room. She tells me she’s enthusiastic about Marin, even though she voted for the Greens. “I’m excited to see how it will go,” she says.
On another afternoon I wander around Helsinki’s Central Library, Oodi, an architecturally stunning and inviting space that feels like a combination of library, WeWork, café, day care, and DIY heaven, where you can read a book or reserve a conference room, sewing machines, or a 3D printer. (Or at least you could before it, too, shut its doors to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.) This being Finland, the spaces are designed for easy access for strollers, so it’s normally filled with parents and small kids. At a comfy bench in the entrance hall, Ari and Hanna Slioor, a 30-something couple, are busy wrangling their two-year-old, Aino, dressed in hot-pink and orange stripes. Both tell me they like Marin, even though they’d voted for the Left Alliance. “She knows what she’s talking about,” Ari tells me. “She says what she thinks.” Hanna, who works as an English and Spanish teacher at a vocational college, took a year and a half off after Aino was born, while Ari returned more quickly to his job as an interpreter and translator. Even in super-egalitarian Finland, such gender imbalances are common.
Marin wants to fix that, too. In February she announced that Finland would offer equal paid parental leave, 164 days, to both partners, regardless of gender. (It’s also a way to help boost the birth rate, which has been dropping in Finland, as it has across Europe.) The news sparked the envy of stressed-out multitasking parents in certain other developed Western countries with far less generous state support. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio--Cortez tweeted a New York Times story about Finland’s new policy, writing, “This could be us, if we want it to be.” (It received a quick retweet from Marin, who is savvy about her social-media feeds.)
When Emma was born, Marin and Räikkönen split their parental leave in half; she took the first six months and he the second. Of course, it helped that her mother and Räikkönen’s parents all live within walking distance of their home in Tampere, a formerly industrial city north of Helsinki. Marin has said that after her Social Democratic party voted to make her prime minister, she called Räikkönen to ask if it was okay for her to accept, and he said of course; he’d already spoken to her mother to sort out the child care. “He has more to balance when it comes to work,” Marin tells me with a certain pride. “If there is a situation where Emma is sick and we have to take her home, it’s my husband’s job to do this.” Räikkönen seems like a great guy, I say. “He’s the best,” she says, and here she really does smile.
The couple met when they were 18, in Tampere. (She says at a party; he says at a bar.) “She was a little bit more serious than her peers,” he tells me when we meet for coffee at an upscale mall in downtown Helsinki. And she was always interested in politics. “The important thing is to be supportive,” he says—about child care and everything else. “She may talk about some issues and I can act as a sounding board,” he says. While we’re speaking, a woman with a baby in a winterproof stroller and a squirmy toddler comes to sit at the next table over. She doesn’t recognize Räikkönen, and that’s how he likes it. Though he makes cameo appearances in Marin’s Instagram feed, he prefers to keep the focus on her. He works for a communications company and comes more alive talking about Finland’s tech culture—Angry Birds, the super-addictive smartphone game, was born here, and so was Linus Torvalds, the software engineer who invented the Linux operating system. He shows me how he can pay for parking with an app on his phone.
Marin and Räikkönen have been engaged for several years but aren’t yet married. “We need to put the date into the schedule,” he says. Neither proposed to the other; it was more of a joint decision, he says, after many years together. They’ll have a civil ceremony, not a church wedding. Meanwhile, both are focused on work and spending time with Emma, with scant downtime devoted to the occasional movie or series. Marin admits she’s seen the cult hit Borgen, the series about a fictional Danish woman prime minister, but if she sees herself at all in the character of Birgitte Nyborg, who navigates the infighting of a fractious multiparty coalition, she isn’t saying. The more time I spend with Marin, who fields questions like a pro and deflects them just as skillfully, the more I think how hard it is to wield power if you’re young and female. All leaders have every decision questioned, every move cross-examined, but the scrutiny is even more acute for women. Marin’s response, as for many in her generation, seems to involve deploying Instagram. She can curate her image herself, revealing as much or as little as she wants, and keep total control.
In 2017, when Marin was an MP, the couple took a three-week holiday to Italy—by train, of course, the preferred mode of environmental-savvy Nords and Scandinavians. Marin likes going for nature walks in her scant free time, and she’s the (vegetarian) cook in the family. She recently came to the aid of an acquaintance who jokingly posted a request on social media for government help with a pasta recipe—a flash of Nordic humor, mocking the notion of the nanny state. “And of course, as the prime minister of Finland, I had to respond,” she says. (And posted her recipe for tomato sauce, spiked with capers.)
Though Marin and Räikkönen divide their time between Helsinki and Tampere, where she made a name for herself on the City Council before becoming a member of Parliament, they’ll likely move operations to Helsinki full-time before the next school year, once they find a slot in day care for Emma. “We are all in the same line in Finland. There’s no fast lane for ministers,” Marin says. Finns take all this for granted. “Everything works. Everything is arranged in a way that you don’t have to go through a lot of trouble to arrange your life,” says Anu Partanen, the author of The Nordic Theory of Everything, a memoir recounting the culture shock she faced when she moved from Finland to Brooklyn. Partanen sees Marin as a poster child for the Finnish model. “She’s said as much—because of the education system, the high-quality social services, it’s been possible for her to come from a not supereducated, privileged background to become prime minister and at a young age,” she says. “It speaks well for the system.”
Back at the official residence, Marin and I talk about the unfrozen Baltic Sea in view of the house, an effect of global warming. “Of course I’m worried,” Marin tells me. “Of course we all should be very worried about this,” she says. “And not just worried—we should all act, or this will get much worse.” It’s a clear-eyed sense of what’s at stake, and how political action can be a solution. The pandemic is still weeks away when Marin tells me this, but I’d like to think her sangfroid is what Finland needs to guide it through the crisis. We hear Emma in the other room, who has returned from frolicking outside with her grandmother. Marin greets her and helps her take off her muddy purple plastic rain boots and her red overalls. Emma babbles something in Finnish, and Marin explains she’s saying she no longer needs her little pink hooded wool collar now that she’s back inside. I tell Marin’s mother that she has a very important job. “I’m the most important person in the country!” she answers and leads Emma up the stairs of the house. The small girl peeks down through the white wooden banister. Marin waves to her, and then it’s back to work.