He is great!! Too bad he is an alcoholic.

And one thing worth mentioning about Finland - Russia: The Finns don't have a lot of complaints about the period when Finland belonged to Russia. According to them "Russia was better than Sweden" because Russia more or less left Finland alone.
It's kind of fascinating to think that Finnish heroes like Mannerheim were actually educated in Russia and spoke Russian.

I think they like Russia really, it's just the Winter War and the affect of all those Amercian films with bad-guy Russians that had a bit of effect. They used to say that they preferred Sweden over Russia in a comparison between their neighbours. But lately as Sweden has gone over the top with political correctness which is not so big in Finland, they might begin to change their minds.

Dropping the Visa requirement would do miracles, I think. Finland wants to relax it, or drop it altogether, it's just that they can't due to EU rules.

Just read recently about one of the biggest poets in the Swedish language - turns out she actually lived her life in what is now Russian territory (somewhere in Karelia, forgot where...) She spoke all three languages, as well as German (impressive!) but her mother tongue was Swedish so that was what she wrote most of her poetry in. She even went to school in St Petersburg, but the Russian revolution was completely disastrous for her family - they lost everything and she died at a sanatorium for tuberculosis. Very sad. Edit Södergran. Not my favourite poet, but some of her prose is nice and her story is rather fascinating from a modern perspective.