On Saturday 12th we visited the Finnish embassy in Nyhavn, where media and culture secretary Veera Weisdorf described both the mission of the embassy and her perception of the work environment there. She also talked about general trends in Denmark, how the Danes perceive Finns and which aspects of the Finnish culture interest them.

After Veera’s presentation, we were lucky to also meet Niina Aagaard ja Pirjo Hamnström from Finpro – a company which promotes Finnish trade in 56 different countries around the world. In Denmark Finpro aims to help Finnish small and medium size companies enter Danish market and vice versa. At the moment, approximately a hundred Finnish companies operate in Denmark.

Niina and Pirjo gave us an hour introduction to the Danish market and entrepreneurial life, talking for example about the main similarities and differences between Finland and Denmark. It became evident that although Denmark and Finland are culturally the closest countries in the EU, there are still rather large differences when it comes to communication. The most evident example is the use of small talk in the discussions with other people – in Denmark you just have to be able to keep up the conversation at least on some level because long breaks that the Finns love are perceived as offensive.  Also the business thinking of the Finns differs significantly from that of the Danes: In Finland people are not telling other people about their business ideas like they seem to do in Denmark but rather hide it so that no one would steal the ideas. In Denmark it is just the opposite – the organizations can get organized with each other as well and even the smallest companies are very well connected with other companies. So the message was to be active for example by asking questions when in communication situation with the Danes and to network  whenever there is a chance to do it.  In addition, it was really surprising to hear that in Denmark as many as 80 per cent of the start-ups still stand alive after 3 years. After the meetings, I felt I could actually deepen my knowledge on entrepreneurship in Denmark in general quite a lot as well as get to know Danes a bit better.