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Following the news that Finland has for the eighth year running been named the world’s happiest country, the independent publisher Eye Books has acquired world rights to Happy Land, a personal account of life in the Nordic nation by Tim Bird, a British-born writer who has lived there for more than 40 years
Finland scored the highest rating in the 13th annual World Happiness Report, released on 20 March to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, and compiled by asking people to evaluate their lives. It also won that top spot in each of the previous seven years. In his memoir, Bird explores what contentment truly means to Finns and how their outlook has evolved, particularly in response to recent global events such as Finland’s accession to Nato.
A sideways view of the happiness award, it examines the country’s unique position in the Nordic region, highlighting its distinct culture, history and language. The author also shares his personal journey to Finnish citizenship, reflecting on an identity shaped by four decades of life in Finland as a ‘professional foreigner’.
Eye Books publisher Dan Hiscocks acquired world rights to Happy Land from Tom Cull at Cull & Co. Ltd. Hiscocks says: ‘Finland has always been something of an oddity in Europe, with a daunting language and an ambiguous status in the Cold War years, straddling West and East, and it’s a less obvious tourist destination for British travellers than many of its neighbours. Yet every year it hits the headlines as the happiest place on earth. Tim has spent far more of his life in Finland than the UK and is in a great position to tell us why.’
Tim Bird says: ‘In the last decade, Finland has been newsworthy to an unprecedented extent, by virtue of joining Nato and its repeated ranking as the world’s happiest country. While there are various specialist English-language histories of Finland, there is a shortage of well-informed, first-person narratives, with elements of travel and memoir, and I’m delighted that Eye Books has seen this opportunity. I’m very much looking forward to working with their team to make my book a reality.’
Happy Land will be published in hardback in January 2026.
